The Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) have initiated an 18-month study to analyze the current state of legal education and bar admission procedures in the United States. The committee will also explore reasons behind the dwindling numbers of attorneys practicing public interest and public service law.
A press release from the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) revealed that a 12-member Committee on Legal Education and Admissions Reform (CLEAR) has been established to conduct this analysis. CLEAR's responsibilities include determining how efficiently law schools prepare their students to be practice-ready, identifying appropriate standards for assessing minimum competence for practicing law along with alternative strategies for attaining such competence, and ascertaining factors causing the decline in numbers of public interest and service lawyers.
The NCSC press release disclosed that New Hampshire’s Chief Justice Gordon J. MacDonald will head CLEAR, while New Mexico's Chief Justice C. Shannon Bacon will serve as vice-chair.
MacDonald expressed concern over current conditions stating, "Our profession is falling short in meeting the public’s needs. There are vast legal ‘deserts’ where too many litigants are forced to confront an unfamiliar legal system without a lawyer. Legal service organizations dedicated to the public interest are unable to recruit and retain qualified attorneys. And, many new lawyers are not ‘practice ready’ upon admission to the bar. These issues contribute to a growing access-to-justice gap and undermine public confidence in our legal system."
CLEAR is tasked with investigating these problems comprehensively before making recommendations to state supreme courts by June 2025, as per information released by NCSC.
According to information available on their websites, members of CCJ consist of top judicial officers from all 50 states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and Virgin Islands; whereas COSCA's membership includes each state court administrator or their equivalent from the same territories.
