Georgia Supreme Court Solicits Input on Recommendations for Bar Education – SaportaReport

By John Ruch

The Georgia Supreme Court is seeking public comment on recommended changes to attorney licensing and training.

Ideas include a new program for law students that focuses on experiential learning and a reduction in mandatory continuing legal education (CLE) for attorneys.

The recommendations are included in a preliminary report by the Georgia Lawyer Competency Task Force released Dec. 21. Established by the Supreme Court in March 2021, the task force is led by Keith R. Blackwell, a former judge at the court and now an attorney with the firm of Alston & Bird.

The report goes into many specific details of the legal profession, but explains them all in layman’s terms in the context of the importance of public trust in the legal system. He discusses issues such as enabling inactive attorneys to volunteer to fill the backlog of those who cannot afford legal representation.

Some important recommendations revolve around a critical look at the effectiveness of CLE. They are asking to reduce the number of CLE credits required annually and not to increase the number of course hours and to focus the material on ethics and/or the attorney’s practice.

The report also proposes a competitive “Georgia Scholars Program” in which second- and third-year law students would complete “experiential and doctrinal coursework” with a final course presented to the Georgia Board of Bar Examiners.

The bar exam, passing which is a necessary step to become a practicing lawyer, is the subject of several proposals. This includes the fact that third-year law students can already take the exam in the last semester and some exam topics are changed. The report also discusses the pros and cons of the NextGen Bar Exam, an alternative exam that is gaining momentum to focus more on legal skills and less on memorizing the laws.

For more information and a full copy of the report, visit the Supreme Court’s website. Comments can be submitted to comments@gasupreme.us through January 31st. The comments will be reviewed by the task force and reviewed for changes when producing a final report.