Indian Law Remains Vital to Washington State
The Washington State Bar Association Board of Governors has been asked to consider adopting the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE), on shortened time, casting doubt on the future of the current Washington State-specific admissions exam. It appears that an October 13, 2009 internal WSBA report urging reform of Washington’s bar exam, could be acted on by the Board as early as January 2010.
The last substantive change to the exam, namely the Board’s decision in October 2004 to add federal Indian jurisdiction to the test, culminated from 2 ½ years of deliberations amongst and between various WSBA stakeholders. With that in mind, the proposed reform effort seems to be moving too quickly to allow time for the Board and entire state bar to fully consider how the reform might impact, e.g., Washington’s three law schools; civil legal aid in our state; the diversification of our state bar, and above all, the competence of Washington lawyers and the integrity of our profession.
In 2004, the BOG considered all of these questions relative to Indian law, concluding its addition would positively impact, inter alia, the provision of indigent legal aid, the diversification of our bar, and lawyer competence. See “Bar None! The Social Impact of Testing Federal Indian Law in Washington,” Washington State Bar News, August 2007. By letter to the WSBA Board and local law school deans, a slower, more deliberate bar exam reform process has been urged, which will allow these types of issues to be fully vetted, with the full participation of all interested WSBA parties.
If some form of local bar exam reform is eventually believed to be in the Washington public’s best interest, at least one state-specific day of testing should be maintained, and Indian law should either be left as its own topic or included in state-centric civil procedure, contracts, torts and/or other topics. As University of New Mexico Law School Professor Gloria Valencia-Weber writes: “Ultimately, each state, its history, and its contemporary circumstances provide the basis for why familiarity with Indian law can strengthen the knowledge that licensed attorneys use to serve their clients and the public interest.” In 2004, the WSBA decided that Washington’s history and contemporary circumstances, including historical and modern tribal-state relations, compelled the addition of Indian law to our exam. We can ill afford to lose sight of Indian law as part of that which makes us the Washington State Bar Association.
For information about efforts nationwide to include Indian law on state bar exams, visit Turtle Talk.
