A committee of chief justices and state court administrators is urging state supreme courts to lead reform in legal education and attorney licensing to create better practice-ready lawyers
Key highlights:
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Education and licensing misalignment — Legal education and attorney licensing are misaligned with the real-world skills and practical competencies new lawyers need to serve clients and address the nation’s growing access to justice crisis.
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Strong support for licensing reform — There is strong momentum and support for reforming traditional pathways to legal licensure, according to research conducted by a body of chief justices and state court administrators.
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Change will require leadership — Lasting, systemic change requires leadership and collaboration among state supreme courts, law schools, bar examiners, and the practicing bar.
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For decades, cracks have widened in the nation’s promise of justice for all, with millions of people every year unable to find or afford legal help when they need it most. As the legal system in the United States faces a reckoning, one outline for change has emerged with the recently released report written by the Committee on Legal Education Admissions Reform (CLEAR), a body of chief justices and court administrators from a variety of states across the country. (CLEAR cited support from the Thomson Reuters Institute in the production of the report.)
The CLEAR group is calling for a radical change in how lawyers are taught and licensed. The report cites several factors driving the need for reform, including:
Increases in legal deserts and self-represented litigants — Judges in courtrooms across the country routinely see self-represented litigants, while so-called legal deserts, especially in rural areas, leave entire communities with few or no attorneys at all. Indeed, according to the American Bar Association, more than half of rural counties nationwide are considered legal deserts, with less than one lawyer per 1,000 people. As a result, most litigants are left to navigate a complex court system with inadequate or no legal assistance in family, probate and estate, housing, consumer, and criminal matters, according to the Legal Services Corporation.
Declining interest in public sector work — The public interest sector, which includes civil legal aid, public defenders, and prosecutors, is buckling under the weight of crushing caseloads, stagnant federal and state funding, and a persistent shortage of lawyers. Indeed, students face numerous barriers to pursuing a career in public interest law, according to the CLEAR report, from less predictable career paths as compared to private practice, to a perceived lack of prestige in many schools, to the prospect of managing educational loans on a public interest lawyer’s salary.
Rapid technology changes — Compounding these challenges, advanced technology and especially AI are rapidly reshaping the legal profession. This, in part, is leading to reducing many hands-on training experiences that are essential for skill development because AI — which excels in tasks like legal research, writing, and drafting — now is handling work that had been historically assigned to associates and was a big part of how they learned their craft.
Defining practice readiness and minimum competence
Against this backdrop, the CLEAR report calls for overhauling how law schools educate attorneys and how bar admissions assess attorney readiness. More specifically, the report recommends a sharper, modern definition of practice readiness that more clearly defines the blend of knowledge, skills, and professional abilities that new lawyers must possess to competently serve clients from day one across four essential pillars. These pillars are i) foundational legal knowledge and analytical skills; ii) strong ethics and professionalism; iii) durable communication and interpersonal abilities; and iv) practical legal skills like advocacy, negotiation, and client management.
For the report, CLEAR surveyed of more than 4,000 judges, 4,000 attorneys, and 600 law students; and the committee’s findings consistently reveal that new lawyers struggle with practical legal skills, which include effective client communication, negotiation, and courtroom advocacy in addition to 17 other skills.
Feedback from survey participants points to the fact that these skills, which are crucial for the daily realities of legal practices, are not taught in law schools to a large degree. For example, only 7% of experienced attorneys with more than five years of practice report that newly admitted attorneys, most of which are right out of law school, were very well or extremely well prepared to communicate effectively with clients. Likewise, 61% of experienced attorneys said new lawyers were not well prepared or only slightly well prepared in negotiation, and 55% of experienced attorneys said the same about new lawyers when it came to questioning and interviewing witnesses.
In addition, 66% of judges say that new attorneys in their first five years of practice sometimes, rarely, or never competently conducted direct and cross examinations.
New pathways to licensure beyond the bar exam
Meanwhile, an additional insight from the CLEAR report highlights how the bar exam continues to focus heavily on theoretical knowledge and memorization, rather than the practical, day-to-day skills that define minimum competence. At the same time, the NextGen bar exam going into effect in 2026 is more focused on foundation skills, including legal research, legal writing, and issue-spotting and analysis.
To address the dissatisfaction with the traditional bar exam, some states have been piloting innovative licensure pathways that better align with the skills new lawyers need. Such approaches include curricular pathways, such as in the Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program in New Hampshire, and diploma privilege at the University of Wisconsin’s law school. Other methods are supervised practice models, such as in Oregon’s Supervised Practice Portfolio Examination, South Dakota’s public sector pathway, and temporary pandemic-era alternatives that provided graduates with the ability to prove their competence under the guidance of experienced attorneys.
Top recommendations for state supreme courts
The CLEAR group advocates for state supreme courts, as the profession’s primary regulators, to lead and foster innovation in licensure and practice readiness. The report urges state supreme courts to take such action as:
Lead collaborative efforts to realign legal education, bar admissions, and new lawyers’ readiness with public needs — State supreme courts are uniquely well-positioned to lead efforts to create a legal system that better addresses the legal needs of the communities they serve.
Encourage law school accreditation that serves the public — State supreme courts should encourage an accreditation process that promotes innovation, experimentation, and cost-effective legal education geared toward the goal of having lawyers meet the legal needs of the public.
Reform bar admissions processes to better meet public needs — This reform includes adjusting bar admission by setting passing scores based on evidence and piloting alternative pathways to passing the exam or equivalent assessment.
To put CLEAR’s recommendations for state supreme courts into practice, however, bold, coordinated action by law school administrators and the American Bar Association (as the accreditor of law schools) are critical as well. In particular, there is a need for expansion of experiential learning, such as clinics, externships, and simulation courses, to help students gain meaningful, hands-on experience and have direct responsibility with clients. In addition, aligning curricula with the realities of practice by integrating practical skills, ethics, and professional identity formation throughout, rather than relegating those factors to optional or add-on courses is another necessary reform.
Legal education and licensing must rapidly evolve to meet the nation’s urgent access-to-justice challenges, the CLEAR report notes. Law schools and state supreme courts must work together with renewed urgency and vision to lead this transformation. The failure to act by both law schools and courts means the justice gap in the US will only widen. Only with urgent, collaborative innovation to enact these changes can the legal profession deliver on the promise of justice for all in the decades to come.
You can access the full report by the Committee on Legal Education Admissions Reform here
