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St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Abolish the MPRE

First Page

151

Date Created

9-26-2025

Publisher

St. Mary's University School of Law

Editor

Alyssa Boggs

Last Page

203

Abstract

. In nearly every jurisdiction, applicants to the bar must pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE). Its purpose, according to its owner, the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), is “to measure candidates’ knowledge and understanding of established standards related to the professional conduct of lawyers.” It does test whether an examinee has kept in short-term memory the rules and exceptions that make up part of the understanding of what it means to serve as a lawyer. However, success (or initial failure) on the MPRE has not been correlated with ethical conduct or misconduct. For example, the Texas Board of Law Examiners does not keep records of the success or failure of Texas bar applicants. The numbers of lawyers who have been disciplined and have needed more than one attempt to achieve a passing score on the MPRE is unknown. No correlation between professional misconduct and performance on the MPRE has been demonstrated or disproved. The MPRE’s utility lies largely in focusing law students on the subject, in the hope that such study will stick once they are licensed. Because the MPRE was not meant to serve as an “exclusionary” mechanism, achieving a passing score on the MPRE tells us only that.

So why has it become a standard tool in the bar examination kit? From the late nineteenth century on, elite American lawyers have believed a law school course in legal ethics might lessen professional misconduct or exclude unethical candidates from the bar. Such demands on law schools were regularly made before World War II. From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, law schools re-imagined both the social role of lawyers and the duties owed by them to the public. This shift was made clear when legal academics substituted “professional responsibility” for “legal ethics.” The latter concerned memorization of rules; the former emphasized the lawyer’s duty to exercise judgment wisely, in part to serve as leaders in society. From the 1950s to the early 1970s, law schools greatly expanded teaching of professional responsibility to meet that leadership challenge.

This came to a halt as a result of the “lawyers’ scandal” of the Watergate affair of 1972–1974. The legal profession’s effort to reinvigorate the public’s trust in lawyers and demonstrate integrity in the profession took several paths. One path was the creation of the MPRE, which demonstrated that newly-admitted lawyers knew the rules of professional conduct.

The MPRE has been part of the bar admissions landscape since 1980. It has outlived any usefulness it once may have possessed. It provides no evidence useful to the public, or, more particularly, those members of the public who need legal services. It imposes an unnecessary and costly burden on law students. It cheapens the efforts by law schools to form their students’ professional identity. Finally, it may serve to make bar candidates cynical about the whole exercise. It is time to abolish the MPRE.

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