Scores from the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE) are in. The Learned Sergeant has dominated. Bamcis!
Now, I’m delighted that I’ve scored as highly as I have, but I’m doubly happy because I had intended this post for a while and didn’t want to sound like the whiny kid who failed and instead lashed out. That was an exceptionally hard test and as the days counted by I was more certain than ever I would find myself taking the exam again. I wasn’t even marginally close to failure. 2 weeks of study, watching videos on my telephone (I had n0 internet), with my little little girl on my back, arms around my throat screaming, “Your backpack wants you to jump! Your backpack wants you to get down!”
The MPRE is one of the requirements pressed upon law students prior to their acceptance to the state Bar in addition to graduation by an ABA accredited school, passing the actual Bar exam and passing muster of the Bar association itself. Now, the MPRE is hardly the inconvenience to practice that the actual Bar exam is, but it is still an odious and unjust flexing of muscle by the Bar Association. It is them tugging on your leash, lest you get the foolish idea that you’re a free man, able to make a living through consensual contract between yourself and your client.
Beyond the fact that the Bar Association has no right to exist, the idea that a group of people can come together and dictate ethics of those they will allow or disallow to work in their sector is nothing short of bullying. This is not to say that there should be no rules, only that those rules should be laws, just like those any person must follow. For example, a lawyer surely should not be allowed to tamper with jurors. Then there are those rules that can qualify as either empty or immoral. For example, a lawyer must not overcharge their clients. Now, in my mind you cannot overcharge a client. Whether you charge him $10/hr or $1,000/hr, it is not overcharging someone if he freely and with knowledge accepts your offer.
Part of the problem comes from the the concept that those rules you are tested on are of two separate categories: MUST rules and SHOULD rules. MUST rules, whether I agree with the rule, or the right to impose the rule, at least make sense. SHOULD rules have no place in a test. To do so is very nearly to legislate morality. At the least, you are being asked to give your time and effort to memorize and thus internalize the moral edicts of those who immorally limit access to the law in a protection racket.
But this problem will not correct itself. So long as law schools continue to indoctrinate students into the belief that they are some form of “elite” they will continue to believe they should have the power not just over law, but over morality as well.
A video you ask? Of course! Check out this video from the Jungle Warfare Training Center in Okinawa, Japan. This was from the cycle just before we showed up the first time.
