Arizona To Let Third Year Law Students Sit For The Bar

The Arizona Supreme Court has amended its rules to allow third year students to take the bar exam in that state.  There are certain conditions attached to the allowance.  Students must have taken 90% of their courses or have no more than eight hours left to complete to qualify for the exam.  Students must not be enrolled for more than two semester hours in the month of the exam or the previous month.  The most important condition is that law students (via law school certification) must show they have graduated within 120 days of the first day of the bar exam.  The rules allow an additional 60 days to make the showing.  No graduation or certification within these time frames means the results are voided. 

The Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law lauds the move in a press release: 

Judy Stinson, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the College of Law, echoed Sylvester’s comments about the advantages that the rule change will provide students. 

“It is a win-win for everyone involved,” Stinson said. “This rule change will make our students more employable earlier and give them the ability to offset the cost of their legal education sooner as well. It will also allow students to take the bar exam in Arizona in the spring and take another state’s bar exam in the summer, should they choose to do so.” 

Third-year students who are allowed to sit for the February bar will already have completed more than 90 percent of their coursework prior to taking the exam, which will give the College of Law flexibility in crafting the final weeks of their law school education. 

Brian Leiter suggests that there will be a push for an in-house bar review course.  I know that many schools, particularly those with less than stellar bar passage rates provide some form of bar review.  These typically do not substitute for the commercial versions popular with law students.  Arizona law schools might find a better solution by contracting with one of these commercial bar services to provide that service as part of the preparation for early takers. 

I just want to mention one more point.  The Arizona official Court Rules site is “powered by Westlaw” and includes this note (as of today): 

This site from West provides free access to an unannotated version of the Arizona state and local court rules as published in West's Arizona Revised Statutes Annotated. The contents of these rules are current through amendments received as of May 15, 2010. 

Seriously?  The rules are available on commercial Westlaw with amendments through October 12, 2012.  The site has this note as well: 

This site has been upgraded to assure you a positive Westlaw experience. 

Over two years without an update, I don’t think so.  [MG]