Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously decided to uphold its current rules allowing Wisconsin and Marquette law graduates to join the bar without taking an exam. The Court considered a petition to scrap the rule, according the the National Law Journal:
More than 70 attorneys signed a petition last year asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to change the rules to allow graduates of American Bar Association-approved law schools outside Wisconsin to also bypass the state bar exam. If the court declined to make that change, the petitioners asked that it require local law grads to sit for the exam as out-of-state graduates must do. The petition called for a 10-year test period, during which the diploma privilege would be extended to all or suspended for all, arguing that the rules discriminate against Wisconsin residents who attend law school outside the state.
Only one other state allows such a bypass – New Hampshire – and then only for a select cohort of UNH (formerly Franklin Pierce) law students who complete a special bar exam replacement curriculum.
I suspect that the Wisconsin diploma privilege provides a recruiting advantage to UW and Marquette, at least on the margins. While few students are probably passing up offers at Chicago or Stanford, I'll be lots of Wisconsonians are passing on Minnesota, Illinois, and DePaul. I'd love to see this advantage monetized. In a rational market, it should be worth at least $3500 – bar review costs – and I'd guess it's something more like $15-20K when you add in both failure risk and pain and suffering!
I would add another $10-40k for the opportunity costs to students who have to study the bar — UW and Marquette students can start earning a paycheck immediately after graduation, whereas graduates of other law schools must spend at least a couple of months studying for the bar, and many of them will not be able to begin employment until the bar results are posted.
This post illustrates why the recent 7th circuit case brought by an out-of-state educated lawyer potentially involved the wrong party as plaintiff. The parties who are particularly hurt by Wisconsin's diploma privilege rule are other law schools. Wisconsin's diploma privilege rule gives UW and Marquette as providers of legal education services an unfair advantage in the market for high-quality law students.
In my time teaching at a Wisconsin law school I can confirm that our students routinely mention diploma privilege as a huge attraction for them. On the down side for the Wisconsin law schools, I suspect that diploma privilege also discourages their students from pursuing high-quality internships or job offers out-of-state, as accepting those jobs will, typically, require a bar exam. Wisconsin-based law students are unnaturally scared of taking a bar exam–a conditioned fear that arises from diploma privilege.
Oh I do hope to visit some day! What a great place to work!