What's the bar exam like anyway?

You've always heard about "the bar" but what do you really know about it? Unless you've taken it, probably not much. Well join the club. Let's discuss. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:05Josh Clark?

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• 1:40Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:49Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is one of those good old fashioned rootin', tootin', rudy fruity, uh, episodes of Stuff You Should Know.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Rudy, tooty, fresh and fruity?

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  That's right. I forgot the rest of it, but yes, you knew what I was laying down.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Can I shock you right off the bat?

• 2:10Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  I don't think I have ever been in an IHOP restaurant and eaten.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  I don't think so.

• 2:20Josh Clark?

  See, this is normally where I'd be like, what?

• 2:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:24Josh Clark?

  But I don't think you're missing enough to warrant a what?

• 2:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, if I, it was always Waffle House if we were going to do something like that. So yeah, never been in an IHOP.

• 2:35Josh Clark?

  The two are actually not really that comparable to tell you the truth. I mean, they're, if you went to a Waffle House and then went to an IHOP, you wouldn't be like been to one, been to the other. Their, their menus are different enough, the vibes different enough.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  Is IHOP more relatable to like a Denny's?

• 2:51Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  Okay. I've been to Denny's, but not much.

• 2:54Josh Clark?

  Then you don't need to go to IHOP.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Can we thank the listener who suggested this episode?

• 3:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I remember the email, but I don't remember their name.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. Cause I finally actually wrote it down and we're not doing it weeks later, but this came from listener Rowan. And I'm not sure how to pronounce this last name, but I'm going to go with Garandacy?

• 3:17Josh Clark?

  That's a great name.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Garandaisy?

• 3:20Josh Clark?

  I like Garandaisy more because of the daisy part.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. But Rowan wrote in and I was like, you know what? I think someone in Rowan's life had taken the bar and I think they realized that they didn't know much about it. And I was like, you know, I've never really thought much about the bar exam and I don't know anything about it.

• 3:35Josh Clark?

  Well, didn't they also send a, like a little clip or an anecdote about how crazy it gets during the test? Like how nuts people will, or what nutso lengths they'll go to, to finish.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I think I do remember that actually.

• 3:48Josh Clark?

  Well, save it.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Save it.

• 3:53Josh Clark?

  Let's talk about the bar exam, Chuck. For those people who aren't aware, and from what I can understand, essentially every country in the world that has lawyers has a bar exam. But it's the test that you have to take in most places to become a practicing attorney, to become licensed as an attorney. And that's it. There's bar exam, everybody. Goodbye.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. And, you know, they, they, the, the word bar is there because I think it's named after the literal bar railing in a courtroom that divides the public from, you know, the, the business end.

• 4:33Josh Clark?

  Right. Where they, yeah, where you're not really supposed to go past or else a bailiff will jump on you.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:40Josh Clark?

  I remember there was a local news story once about a judge who'd been drinking like during work.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  And like, they followed him like on his lunch hour and followed him into like a, a place where he was drinking.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 4:53Josh Clark?

  They were like teeing up the story and they said, this judge not only passed the bar, he went in and drank at it. And that, I mean, like, I saw that 15 years ago and it stuck with me ever since.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  That's so lazy.

• 5:06Josh Clark?

  It is, but, I mean, I thought it was pretty good to tell you the truth.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, that's like when, uh, in the old days when we were writers for HowStuffWorks.com. And like, a shining week is when I wrote a clever, uh, uh, what do you call the thing under the picture?

• 5:21Josh Clark?

  Caption.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Caption. Now I can't even remember caption, with the word caption. That's how far we've gone.

• 5:27Josh Clark?

  Do you remember any good ones?

• 5:29Speaker 03

  No, no, but I was like, hey, Emily, check this out. I wrote a clever caption. It was my first professional writing job, so I was, uh, you know, showing pride.

• 5:36Josh Clark?

  No, I remember that. We used to tell one another our great clever captions.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, look at this one.

• 5:41Josh Clark?

  Music lyrics we'd fit into, to articles that we just thought we were so sly about.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And now we just say dumb things with our mouths.

• 5:49Josh Clark?

  Right. Well, I feel like we've shaken off all of the curious lawyers who don't normally listen to us, so we can get started, everybody. Um, one of the things about the bar exam I never understood, and I would guess also that most people out there who aren't attorneys or aspiring attorneys wouldn't really get, but there's a lot of criticism about the bar exam. It's just not, it's not just some test that lawyers have to take to get licensed, which on its face sounds great because like with any professional licensing, that protects the public from incompetent lawyers. They have to show that they understand a minimum standard of how to practice law that will prevent them from being such a dipstick that

• 6:32Josh Clark?

  their clients are going to get electrocuted because they represented them so poorly. It's way, way more intricate than that.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:40Josh Clark?

  Socially speaking, culturally speaking, socioculturally speaking.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because you don't want to end up with a Lionel Hutz, right?

• 6:48Josh Clark?

  No, he almost certainly did not pass the bar.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Well, we'll get to it, but you don't necessarily have to pass the bar in every state in the United States to practice law. But sit on it, everybody, because that's coming.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  I guess we should go back in time and talk about a little bit of the history, because if you go back to colonial days, pre-states in the United States, or not in the United States, but you know, what will one day be the United States?

• 7:16Josh Clark?

  Goodbye, rest of the curious lawyers.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  Exactly. There were no bar exams because there were no law schools. If you wanted to work as a lawyer, you would apprentice or clerk for a practicing lawyer for, you know, sometimes you would just do it and donate your time to working for them. Sometimes you would do that and actually pay them.

• 7:36Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Which, you know, it seems like a pretty good system and we'll talk more about apprenticing later because for my money, I think that's a pretty good way to do things.

• 7:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  But by 1750, which is pretty early on, all of the colonies got on board, basically, and said, all right, we need, we need standards for people to do this job and we need to kind of all agree on what that's going to be.

• 8:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and like a lot of stuff or most things with American law, they were following in the tradition of England, which had had some sort of exam or another for people to become attorneys as far back as the 16th century. But America wasn't that far behind, you know, a couple hundred years. Apparently, the first one was Delaware in 1783. And it was essentially just you would go and hang out with a judge and they would quiz you on some legal stuff.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:30Josh Clark?

  And if you got it right, you were, you were accepted to the bar. You were an attorney from that point on. It was okay for you to practice. It was also supposedly looked on as very easy, too.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I imagine a lot of that depended on the judge that you got and like maybe how much they liked you in those early days. It was really sort of the Wild, Wild West.

• 8:51Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  Libya helped us with this and she dug up a pretty fun story about Abraham Lincoln, who was a bar examiner for the state of Illinois in the 1850s and was apparently just like at a hotel, chatting with a lawyer in a room. And the lawyer answered a few questions and Lincoln was like, congratulations, you're an attorney.

• 9:12Josh Clark?

  So great, man.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I love that story, too. I mean, I can just see Lincoln busting it out so casually.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the takeaway is the guy didn't even know the test had begun, essentially.

• 9:25Josh Clark?

  No, he had no idea.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 9:27Josh Clark?

  I'm glad you added that part.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 9:30Josh Clark?

  So the actual first written bar exam, kind of like they are today, that popped up around 1855, I think, in Massachusetts, and then it became a requirement about 20 years later in Suffolk County, where Boston was. And by 1920, written exams were like the way to go. And because now it wasn't just getting quizzed with the judge, law schools started popping up and developing to kind of train you to prepare for that written exam at the very least. And they actually became an alternative to apprenticing, which, as you'll see later on, is kind of inverted these days. But that was something you could do if, like, say, all of the lawyers in your town were jerks.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:15Josh Clark?

  You could go to a law school instead of apprenticing. When you graduated law school, then you could take your bar exam. Those were your two ways, your two paths to the bar exam back then.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. By 1921, the American Bar Association was around, and they said, you know, we really prefer a written exam to license. I don't think they mandated it at that point.

• 10:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  But they, you know, the states generally kind of fell in line behind the ABA. And I think by 1931, another decade later, the American Association of Law Schools got together with a committee, and they said, all right, we need to develop a real system here. So they came together with the National Conference of Bar Examiners. And at that time, 1930s, they were really, like, the testing that they were concerned about was what they called black letter law, just sort of... Really unambiguous, black and white, yes or no answers to things on like, you know, how things are literally legally defined and not a lot of like, you know, hypotheticals being bandied about.

• 11:19Josh Clark?

  Real world stuff.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Which you're going to get more these days in the bar exam.

• 11:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but one of the problems with taking a test like that is that your hand can get cramped. They didn't want prospective lawyers' hands cramping. So in 1972, the National Conference of Bar Examiners came up with the multi-state bar examination. And that created a multiple choice test.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:45Josh Clark?

  It also really kind of dug into like your knowledge. But at the same time, you can also say like, this is where it became a little more standardized and less loosey goosey. But in that sense, it also became a little more scientific minded by creating a test that you could say, this is right, this is wrong. And it wasn't just legal terms. They were applying it to hypothetical situations. But it was still multiple choice. So you could grade it much more easily.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know how I feel about multiple choice in a test like this. Anytime you can sort of guess.

• 12:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  I don't think you can necessarily guess your way to success, but I don't know.

• 12:27Josh Clark?

  I think you just came up with a T-shirt.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Guess your way to success.

• 12:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, totally.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  And then on the back, just A, B, C, D, and just a check mark next to the C.

• 12:37Josh Clark?

  All of the above.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  All of the above. Go ahead.

• 12:41Josh Clark?

  You go ahead.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Oh, well, as this is sort of developing over the decades, I think we're at the seventies here, but it kind of became clear during this period that like, hey, what we've got here is a gatekeeping service, essentially.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Ostensibly, the reason was, like you said, is like, we want to keep only like, you know, really knowledgeable people that know what they're doing in these jobs to protect people that hire them for lots and lots of money. But as this was happening, it became even more clear that there was a side effect of that, which was, You know, immigrants, black people, other people of color that were vying to become attorneys were having a harder time. And this is evidence, really early on, in 1912, they accidentally admitted three black attorneys into the ABA because they didn't have, you know, like, check here for race. And then they were like, oh goodness, we accidentally let in three

• 13:38Speaker 03

  black attorneys. So we need to start screening, basically, for race.

• 13:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they said, we need to add a check here for race thing on the application to take the bar exam. And that's essentially what they did. So from 1912 all the way to 1943, if you checked African American, or god knows what they had down for you to check back then, you were just not allowed to take the bar exam. Sorry.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:06Josh Clark?

  Like, this is, it was an actual, like you said, a gatekeeping mechanism to prevent black people from becoming lawyers in the United States. And so in 1925, prospective black lawyers said, nuts to that. And they got together with actual black lawyers and they came up with the National Bar Association, which is still around today, as an alternative for black attorneys to basically become attorneys, rather than have to go through the ABA.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, you know, since then, especially in like the 1970s, there, there seemed to be like a series of lawsuits from black lawyers in different states that were suing over various, what they thought were, you know, discriminatory policies within the test. I don't think many of those were successful, though, were they?

• 14:56Josh Clark?

  No. The one that sticks out the most, that I've heard the most described as, like, well, just basically a good example of the lawsuits that came around at this time was Tyler versus Vickery.

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:09Josh Clark?

  Tyler v. Vickery, if you're a lawyer.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:12Josh Clark?

  It was a class action suit that alleged that Georgia's bar examinations' cut score, which is the minimum score you have to have to pass, had been adjusted with the introduction of the multi-state bar exam. Remember the multiple choice test that they introduced?

• 15:30Josh Clark?

  That it had basically been introduced and designed to continue to keep black people from passing the bar exam. And the Fifth Circuit Court of Georgia said, we don't really think that's true. For some reason, they said, we don't see any intent to discriminate, which is neither here nor there, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prevents employment discrimination.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:54Josh Clark?

  But they also said, here's the thing, the bar, the American Bar Association is not an employer, they're not a labor organization, they're not an employment agency, so therefore, Title VII doesn't really apply to them. And the court said, ABA, continue to discriminate through the bar exam as you see fit.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, that, I'm not, I don't know much about lawyer stuff.

• 16:16Josh Clark?

  I don't know spit about lawyering.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  No spit. In my civilian mind, I see that as kind of a punt, legally speaking, and maybe that was, that, maybe that's, you know, a lot of times you decide something on precedent and whether or not you feel it's right or not, that's just the precedent. But, I don't know, that felt like a punt to me by saying like, well, they're not an employer, an agency, or labor organization, so we're just sort of not gonna hear this one.

• 16:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and this, this reveals to me something that I just find fascinating is when lawyers sue other lawyers, or bodies of lawyers, or judges rule on the test that it takes to create lawyers and therefore judges, it's, it just seems so fraught with basically opinion, because they're so, like, it's not like the judge is learning about this for the first time, they're coming at it from fresh eyes, like, this is, like, part of their fabric is, is having been a law student and becoming a lawyer and then becoming a judge, you know? I just, I just find it fascinating.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  Should we wrap up sort of the, the testing stuff and then take a break?

• 17:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's get back into the evolution of the test again.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so now we're in the late 80s, 1988, I'm a junior in high school, still seeking that first kiss. And the NCBE has added the multi-state essay examination at this point. So now you're back to essaying, which is how it previously had been until that multiple choice test.

• 17:44Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  And in 97, it handed over the multi-state performance test, or the MPT, which says, hey, let's- Sort of do like, do some practice stuff. Like, write up a brief for me or write out a memo or draft a memo. We'll see how you do on that. And then finally, in 2011, the Uniform Bar Exam or the UBE was adopted by most states, where all three of those tests kind of make that one up as one big test.

• 18:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is, you know, if you're a state and you don't feel like going to the trouble of coming up with your entire, your own bar exam, now you can just use the UBE.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:23Josh Clark?

  And it's, it's proven, like, it's, it's, there's all sorts of great questions in there. You sacrificed state law, but a lot of people say like, well, like, law students don't need to sit around and memorize state law. That's a waste of time in favor of the UBE, which is pretty rich because a lot of people argue that the UBE itself is a waste of time because you have to memorize general law rather than state law, which we'll talk more about that. I just, I'm chomping at the bit right now.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it did make it like more easy to transfer from state to state and stuff like that.

• 18:57Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  And we'll get into those specifics too, but let's take that break.

• 19:01Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  And we'll get into the basics of the bar right after this.

• 19:26Josh Clark?

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• 20:28Speaker 04

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Legend. What still makes you just sit down at the piano?

• 20:50Speaker 05

  If you sat down at 9:00 AM and then at noon, you had a full song that you recorded and put in your voice recorder or you recorded at your studio, you just created something brand new that didn't exist when you woke up. What a beautiful feeling it is. I'm always excited to write something new. I've been writing for Broadway, which has been a new challenge with new collaborators and these amazing performers who are triple threats, who can sing and dance and act and do all these amazing things. And I want to keep feeling that. And so that means not resting on my laurels, going out there and continuing to create something new.

• 21:26Speaker 04

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 21:46Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, it turns out there's 56 jurisdictions in the United States. I didn't. 50 states plus some territories. You got some overseas possessions. You got a, you know.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  What else?

• 22:02Josh Clark?

  So there's 56 and each jurisdiction is, has its own like highest agency that basically says these are the standards to become a lawyer in the state. And again, a lot of them just said, you have to pass the uniform bar exam. That's the standard. But they also can kind of mess with it here or there. And it's up to this, this agency that's associated with the highest court in the state, usually the state Supreme Court.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. In most jurisdictions, if you, just to take the bar exam. You have to have graduated from an accredited law school from the American Bar Association, which usually means a three-year program. Some states, though, are like, hey, if you're not, if you didn't go to an accredited school, that's fine. We'll still let you take the bar. If you are in Washington State, Virginia, Vermont, or California, they allow a legal apprenticeship to swap out law school, which I think is super kind of cool.

• 22:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  And Maine and New York let you, it's about like a year or two of that law school for an apprenticeship.

• 23:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure, which is pretty neat. It's, it's old school. It's a throwback kind of thing.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:09Josh Clark?

  If you want to take the bar exam, most of the time it's given in February and July. Those are your two options. And then you're going to pay some money for it. And there's a lot of ways you're going to pay money for it just to register to take it. The bar exam itself, it can be a few hundred dollars. It can be more than a thousand dollars, depending on your state and how greedy they are.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:33Josh Clark?

  If you want to use a laptop, you want to type out your briefs and your memos and your essays rather than write them out because you get hand cramps like the old lawyers used to.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:44Josh Clark?

  You're going to have to pay a fee for that. And the reason why is because there is no chance you're going to be allowed to bring your own laptop.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  No.

• 23:52Josh Clark?

  Because they keep the, the, the place so tight and are so hawkish about preventing cheating that they actually provide tampons to people who need them because you're not allowed to bring in your own tampon.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Wow, really?

• 24:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's happened. And apparently it's not just an isolated thing that they have a bowl of tampons.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 24:18Josh Clark?

  And you grab one if you need it and you hope that they don't run out if you really need it. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's like, there's no way you're bringing your own laptop in.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, or tampon.

• 24:28Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  So, wow, I never knew that. That's a nice little tidbit.

• 24:32Josh Clark?

  Thanks. I thought that was pretty great, too.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  So, you got to have money to register, like you said. You have to have money to, you know, a lot of times people take off work for several months. So you have to have a, a life that can do that, you know, which indicates a certain amount of at least either privilege or maybe hard work and saving, if that's how you did it, which is great. And then almost assuredly, you have paid several thousand dollars, maybe as much as $6,000 to take preparatory courses. About 60% of the market share in the United States is a company called B A R B R I, Barbry. It can be up to 6,000, maybe as low as 1,800 bucks.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  And they have been around since the 1950s. And I was like, what does Barbry stand for? And I had a weirdly hard time finding out what it stood for until I sadly Wikipedia just turned it up. I should have gone to the most obvious place. But I think when they merged in 2021, or no, no, no, they merged in the 70s, I think. And it was just the names of two companies. I think Bay Area Review was B A R and the Bar Review, Inc. was B R I. And so they just squashed those together. So kind of a boring story.

• 25:51Josh Clark?

  I had seen that it was a merger of Barbizon Modeling School.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 25:55Josh Clark?

  And Bree, meaning the makers of brie cheese around the world.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Wow, that's a mashup I could enjoy.

• 26:03Josh Clark?

  Right. And the $6,000 one that you can pay for, like the premium test prep, they actually have somebody take the test for you and they even provide the person with a wig that matches your hair. So it looks a lot like you, too.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  I did see, though, they have a guarantee. If you do not, if you pay that money to them and you don't pass the bar, you, I think you get to take the course again for free one more time if you're taking the exam again.

• 26:32Josh Clark?

  Okay, that's not bad.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  So you don't get your money back, but you get to retake the course at no charge.

• 26:36Josh Clark?

  No. Barbizon Modeling has long had a motto, you don't get your money back.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah, exactly.

• 26:42Josh Clark?

  So let's break down the UBE, the Uniform Bar Examination, which is the culmination of decades of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, hard work, sweat, blood, tears, joy, pain.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:56Josh Clark?

  And again, it's, you can break it down into three parts that kind of came along separately. The first, remember, was that multiple choice test, the multi-state bar examination.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:07Josh Clark?

  There's 200 multiple choice questions. I've seen 175. I guess it depends on. I don't know your jurisdiction and how much, how valuable they find 25 questions.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe.

• 27:18Josh Clark?

  But it covers seven different areas of the law. You want to take them?

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Sure. Simple procedure, contracts, of course.

• 27:25Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  Tort.

• 27:27Josh Clark?

  Ooh.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Constitutional law. Criminal law, the sexiest law.

• 27:31Josh Clark?

  Careful.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Criminal law and procedure, that is. Evidence, which is its own category, and real property.

• 27:38Josh Clark?

  Ka-ching.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  And that is 50% of the UBE score. Then the, the other two are the multi-state essay, once again, which is 30%. And then the two multi-state performance tests, tasks, and that is 20%.

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  Yep. So you're like, okay, I could take that. No problem. Sure, you might be able to take it. You probably wouldn't pass. And you'd give up 12 hours plus of your life, 12 hours just of the test. It's spread out over three days technically, but the UBE takes up two of those days. 12 hours divided by two days divided by four sessions. So three in the morning, three in the afternoon. Go to your hotel room, can't sleep, toss and turn, come back the next morning, three in the morning, three in the afternoon.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, well, we should mention too, that's another reason you might be paying some extra money if you don't live near a testing site, like travel and room and board and all that stuff.

• 28:33Josh Clark?

  Good point.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  And scotch at the end of the day, of course.

• 28:36Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  It's graded on a 400 point scale. Depends on the state and what they consider passing. Generally 260 to 270. I said state, of course, jurisdiction. And then apparently it's like, it's not like acing the bar gets you anything more than passing the bar. You pass it and that's great, but I have some inside info from attorney friends, which I'll kind of dabble in here and there, but I think it's sort of untoward to, you don't go in and be like, ooh, ace the bar.

• 29:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw a Reddit post where somebody posted like, I got a score of 330. And I mean, is that high? I don't mean to make anybody who's got lower than that feel bad, but I'm just curious. Like, what do you guys think? And it was like, you disgust us.

• 29:26Josh Clark?

  Like that is just sad. So yeah, it's not really cool to flex on people over your bar score.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  And you pass. That's all that matters.

• 29:33Josh Clark?

  That's right. And then if you do pass, there's always a gaggle of attorneys, usually quite experienced, seasoned attorneys, who just are waiting for you to finish. And when you finish, they embrace you. And that's how you know that you've passed the bar exam.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  We did mention that those UBE scores are portable. You can, it's not like the old days when you had to pass that state's bar. You know, I think that's how it used to be kind of across the board.

• 30:04Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  They're transferable for two to five years after taking the exam. It depends on the jurisdiction, of course. And then if they, if you're in a jurisdiction that doesn't utilize that UBE test, most of them still have the MBE as a big part of their exam, usually with their own specific, like state law stuff, if they do that. And there's usually also a third day, what you were talking about earlier, that third test, which is like a 60-question ethics test.

• 30:35Josh Clark?

  Right. It's called the Multi-State Professional Responsibility Examination, the MPRE.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 30:41Josh Clark?

  And they ask you questions. It's scored separately, but they have questions like, you know, Attorney Lionel Hutt's brought in a bag of pot to one of his, one of his clients into prison. Is Attorney Hutt's guilty of loving too much?

• 30:56Speaker 03

  Right. Was that a real Simpsons thing?

• 30:59Josh Clark?

  No.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. Cause I could see that.

• 31:02Josh Clark?

  They only really talked about pot like on a couple of really great episodes, but you know.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  No, that wasn't their bag, not normally.

• 31:10Josh Clark?

  That wasn't their bag of pot.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. That wasn't their sack?

• 31:15Josh Clark?

  Don't use that word.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, sack's kind of gross, isn't it?

• 31:19Josh Clark?

  Moist.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Oh, boy. What was the other one?

• 31:23Josh Clark?

  Moist sack?

• 31:26Josh Clark?

  Or pussy? Go look that up in the transcript.

• 31:30Speaker 03

  Don't. Don't do it. Uh, let's talk about pass rates because it really obviously depends on the state. They can vary pretty wildly, actually, from looking at some of these stats. Uh, I think for first timers, uh, from July of this year's testing, uh, 2025 first timer pass rates, there was a range like, uh, from 66% in Connecticut to almost 90% in Utah. So go Utah. Uh, if you look at overall rates, not necessarily just first timers, uh, 2025, 50, only 54% in the state of Alabama. Uh, once again, compared to 86 in Utah. So I don't know what's in the water out there in Utah, but those attorneys are sipping it up.

• 32:08Josh Clark?

  Oh, it's widely considered a really easy state to pass the bar.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  Oh, is it really?

• 32:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 32:14Josh Clark?

  Um, some very hard places to take the bar around the world, actually, that I saw Nigeria, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Ontario, Canada, Canada.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 32:26Josh Clark?

  New York state, all like New York state's bar exam is so difficult. It's like as hard as the entire nations of Singapore's. Um, so there are, it definitely varies by jurisdiction and by country, just how hard it can be.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Wow, that's interesting. Uh, I do know that of the 2022 graduates, this is just another sort of stat for you. Um, over 90% of graduates from accredited schools, uh, passed within a couple of years. But there's, from what I see, there's really no shame to, for it to take a crack or two, um, to pass the bar. I don't think, uh, I don't know if it's something you, you're going to like run around the office telling people on your first day. But I don't think it's like a mark of shame. There've been plenty of very successful attorneys, uh, very famous attorneys that didn't pass the bar on the first go, including, uh, Michelle Obama and, uh, Hillary Clinton and, uh,

• 33:18Josh Clark?

  All the Dems.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  I think JFK, yeah, a bunch of DIMs. Uh, JFK Jr. I think took two or three times to pass.

• 33:26Josh Clark?

  I saw that.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  And, uh, old Kim Kardashian, uh, took a time or two.

• 33:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think three.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  Three?

• 33:34Josh Clark?

  And there's actually limits on how many times you can take it, depending on your state, your jurisdiction, your territory.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Oh, well, they just say, sorry, it sounds like you should try another line of work.

• 33:45Josh Clark?

  There are some places that say that. I don't know if they actually say that. The gaggle of attorneys tells you that when you fail the sixth time. But there are other places that have discretionary rules where after you reach a certain number, like say, I think six is the highest I've seen, you can apply to take it again. You can basically go to the state bar and be like, please, I want to be a lawyer so bad. I'm just really terrible at this.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it is a test and some people aren't great test takers. We'll kind of talk about that in a little bit. But also, I imagine there's plenty of things you can do with a law degree if you haven't passed the bar, right?

• 34:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, it's like you see somebody referred to like, oh, this is a lawyer or something, but they have it like they're in some field that has nothing to do with law. You're just like, they very frequently are advisors, like just they know how how far you can bend the law. There's a lot of stuff you can do with it.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  All right. Yeah, you can always teach, I imagine.

• 34:47Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, that's you. I have a little cute little addition addendum to this this part.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  Let's go.

• 34:55Josh Clark?

  The youngest person ever to pass the bar is Sophia Park. She passed the bar in 2024, age 17, 17 years, eight months.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  And was that after law school even?

• 35:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she started law school at 13.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  Oh, she's one of those.

• 35:13Josh Clark?

  So she beat the previous record by three months. The previous record had been set at age, I guess, 18 years and one month by her brother, Peter.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  Man.

• 35:24Josh Clark?

  Isn't that nuts?

• 35:26Speaker 03

  It's a smart family.

• 35:27Josh Clark?

  It is. They really wanted to be lawyers.

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Or, you know, are they practicing law? Or are they just like, I just wanted to show off?

• 35:36Josh Clark?

  Oh, I believe they're both practicing law.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 35:40Josh Clark?

  Well, should we take another break, Chuck? I guess we should.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Well, the one more little tidbit here at the end. You know, we said that it's a bar exam is basically to say, hey, you can practice law. The one other thing that it does is it helps determine what schools can teach it. Because the ABA requires that law schools, if you want to be in accredited law school, a certain percentage of your graduates have to pass the bar within two years. Otherwise, your accreditation goes away.

• 36:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw 75% of your graduates have to pass.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  All right. Or they're like, sorry, I guess you're not teaching well enough.

• 36:17Josh Clark?

  Exactly. I wanted my tidbit to be last, so I'm just going to repeat it now. Okay.

• 36:24Josh Clark?

  On second thought, we'll just go to break. How about that?

• 36:27Speaker 03

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 36:49Josh Clark?

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• 37:12Josh Clark?

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• 37:28Speaker 03

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• 37:51Speaker 04

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• 38:09Speaker 06

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• 38:31Speaker 04

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• 38:52Speaker 03

  All right, so we're back with more critiques and problems on the bar, because if you start to do a little digging, it turns out there's been a lot of, a lot of that over the years, for a lot of different reasons. You know, we've mentioned some of the stuff while it was developing, basically, you know, banning people of color from even taking the test for a long time. But Black and Hispanic Americans are still very underrepresented in the field of law. And, you know, that's a problem, because when you're a practicing attorney, like a lot of opinion, that's why they call them opinions, and judgment goes into it, and sure, it's based on precedent, but your perspective is important, and having diverse perspectives is also important.

• 39:37Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah, for sure. It's, it's a white male profession, essentially, statistically speaking, that is far and away the largest population represented in the legal profession in the United States. And there's statistics and figures that kind of show the disparity here. There's some data from 2021 from the American Bar Association that showed that white law school graduates passed on their first try at the bar exam at a rate 24% higher than Black students, 13% higher than Hispanic students, and 15% higher than Native Americans. So these are really substantial disparities in passing the bar the first time.

• 40:19Josh Clark?

  And so being in the hot seat, the National Conference of Bar Examiners is like, hey, hey, hey, everybody mellow out here. This is a, this is, this tracks with other scoring of racial disparities, like, like law school grades, LSAT grades, like this is in line with them, just leave the bar exam alone. And by the way, their interpretation is that this is an example of longstanding systemic racial disparities in the American education system.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:55Josh Clark?

  That start way back, long before the, the, somebody gets to law school and goes to take the bar. And that, the, the bar exam is just showing this, it's just reflecting this problem elsewhere. So again, stop looking at the bar is essentially what the NCBE says.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  It also kind of sounds like we're just a part of the grand history of, of systemic discrimination throughout our country.

• 41:20Josh Clark?

  Well, that's a critique of them too. People are like, that's your answer? Like, we're just perpetuating a, an already existing racial disparity? Like, that's essentially what they're saying in that argument.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a, it's definitely a strange argument. Other people say that, you know, just part of that disparity is, you know, the cost associated with law school and to be a successful candidate. And like we said, the privilege that it takes to maybe be able to, to pay for that and then take off months work and, and pay for the, the very best preparatory courses, you know, that's, it's just sort of all in the big soup of privilege, you know?

• 41:57Josh Clark?

  Right. I saw that black and Hispanic students who take the bar exam are 50% likelier to work during their bar prep. Period.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:07Josh Clark?

  Than a white student. Like, it's just, logistically speaking, racially speaking, it's just much likelier that a white test taker is going to be able to not work and just dedicate their time to

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:20Josh Clark?

  prepping for the bar. And I mean, that alone explains a lot of it. Because the bar exam is essentially,

• 42:31Josh Clark?

  like, it's a standardized test that where you memorize essentially year one law school stuff.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's one of the other critiques is that,

• 42:42Speaker 03

  you know, it's a memorization test and it, there have been plenty of studies that show that it doesn't necessarily, isn't a marker toward your future performance as an attorney, or you're like, you're how successful you may be.

• 42:55Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  There was a study in 2024 from Nevada that compared scores on the MBE and other components of their test of, I think, a little more than 500 new attorneys. And how they were basically rated, how affected they were by their peers and their supervisors and judges. And they did find a small positive relationship between some of the ratings, some parts of the bar, but at the end of the day, overall, they said it was minimally predictive of career success. And negligibly related, the Nevada performance test was negligibly related to success.

• 43:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, those low correlations were as low as one to 4%.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:36Josh Clark?

  I think 4% was the highest. As far as the actual whole bar exam relating to these ratings of how effective these lawyers were by their peers. They said, we can only account for that with 12% of the bar exam. The other, the rest of the distinctions or the differences in effectiveness has nothing to do with their score on the bar exam. And so people say like, well, what the heck is the bar exam doing? And again,

• 44:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:04Josh Clark?

  the National Conference of Bar Examiners are like, we're testing for lawyer competence to protect the public, dummy. And people say, well, how are you testing for? Legal competence.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:16Josh Clark?

  Like, what's, what is legal competence? And this is where the National Conference of Board Examiners like pull their shirt away from their necks and you can see like some sweat breaking out on their forehead because they've never given a definition of competence. And if you don't have a definition of competence, how can you in a standardized way test people for whether they meet that definition or not?

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:39Josh Clark?

  So people say like the bar exam under that, that description is by definition invalid. It is not, it's not a valid test, meaning that it doesn't test the thing it purports to test because we just have no idea what it is testing.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  You know what you just sounded like?

• 44:58Josh Clark?

  What?

• 44:59Speaker 03

  An attorney. It sounds like you just dropped the mic in court and then sat down and, and I was to your, just sat down on your left and I put my hand on your shoulder and was like, hell yeah, man. Got him. There've also been a lot of just sort of disasters in recent years, very public ones in terms of the bar. During COVID, they offered remote exams and it was just sort of a joke in a lot of cases. There were a lot of computer problems, like programs crashing. They had facial recognition issues and that sometimes they failed to identify dark skinned test takers. So that's, that's bad right off the bat. You also, again, you know, it was remote, so you had to keep your eyes on the screen

• 45:42Speaker 03

  at all times or they would think you're cheating if you're looking around or looking into your lap or something. So people were like literally urinating themselves in their seat because they couldn't move. And one woman went into labor and went through the test and gave birth and then came home and finished the second day.

• 46:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. If you want to know how tough Loyola University law students are, there you go.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  What about California with the chat GPT questions?

• 46:11Josh Clark?

  This one, it's got a lot of schadenfreude around it, but California said, nuts to the UBE, we can do a better program ourselves and save money. So they designed their own bar exam, like just completely issued the uni- um, the uniform bar examination, right? And it just, the rollout was horrible. There were people who were taking the test, they would get error messages, the program would crash during the test, it wouldn't save their essays. Can you imagine finishing an essay and clicking to save it and they're like, nope, sorry, do it again?

• 46:45Speaker 03

  That's every student's nightmare.

• 46:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and remember, this is timed, like you have three hours per segment, right? Like if you don't finish in time, sorry, like you, you have to stop. So that's a huge part of it. And then also, like you said, chat GPT, it turned out was involved because some students were like, there like are misspellings and typos in some of these multiple choice questions. And the California state bar said, wait, what?

• 47:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, it turns out that some of those questions were chat GPT, um, uh, written by chat GPT, they weren't even reviewed by a lawyer, um, or a copy edited by the state agency that oversaw the test because, uh, you know, I don't know, money, I guess.

• 47:27Josh Clark?

  And this was another case of lawyers suing lawyers and lawyers suing their state bar and all that. And it like, uh, California has just lost so much money on it. Remember, this is a money saving thing too, so.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:40Josh Clark?

  Again, there's like a, a little bit of schadenfreude too.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, and there was one incident in, uh, New York where, uh, someone went into cardiac arrest while taking the test. That was this year in the July test. And, you know, people are like, you know, we should help here, right? And the test proctors were like, no, everyone be quiet and like. You know, just keep taking your test and we'll deal with this in the next lunch break.

• 48:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like they had to keep taking their tests while the paramedics were saving this this person's life like next to them. Essentially, that was what they were forced to do. That's how.

• 48:15Josh Clark?

  I don't know. You choose your own word. They are about assigning these tests or carrying out these tests.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  I was working a TV commercial one time as a P A years ago out in the desert and in California. And a crew member had a cardiac arrest and the director told them to move a big fake rock in front of. And they were tending to the guy, but they were like, we need to keep shooting like go move that big fake rock in front of the the paramedics so we can keep shooting.

• 48:41Josh Clark?

  I guess it's better than the director being like, take that fake rock and finish them off with it.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:47Josh Clark?

  And then drag them out of the way.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  One thing I wondered because I always kind of wonder like, how would we do if we took the S A T now? Like, you know, at this stage in life or something? I wondered about like a really experienced attorney years later, if they took the bar again. And Livia dug into that and found a study from 2021. 16 like successful experienced practicing attorneys from Oklahoma retook the bar essentially with no prep. It was just like, you know, their prep was their career on the theory that, hey, if it's if it's measuring ability, then this should bear out in the in the grades and none of them passed. They got scores ranging from 26 to 52%.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  So nobody would have passed that bar and and the lawyers who've been practicing longest did the worst out of all of them.

• 49:36Josh Clark?

  And then one general criticism of the bar exam too.

• 49:42Josh Clark?

  In addition to everything else we've just talked about is that it doesn't in any real way. Kind of jibe with what these lawyers are going to do in the legal profession.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:53Josh Clark?

  It's general questions about law generally in the United States. Again, it's essentially the stuff you learn in your first year at law school because the next two years you start to get into your specialization. And it's a lot of memory and memorization and a lot of lawyering. After you graduate and go through the bar and become an attorney is open book research to figure out where law applies.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 50:20Josh Clark?

  The bar exam is closed book, rapid fire testing. So they're like, this is not like it even putting away everything else, all the other arguments at its base, it's kind of a flawed test to start with.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And because of that, there are a lot of jurisdictions that have long had workarounds and alternatives, and there are changes on the horizon for the bar itself. Wisconsin, it's the only state, I guess, only jurisdiction that never stopped saying, hey, you went to law school and you can practice law in this state.

• 50:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  You don't have to take the bar here, which is pretty cool. I think you have to graduate from one of the states to law schools there and they call it diploma privilege. I think in the past couple of decades, New Hampshire has followed suit a little bit. And if you graduate with honors from University of New Hampshire Law School and you participate in court simulations and have practical experience, then you could be admitted to practice law without the bar.

• 51:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and we had said earlier that the, the law school was originally created as an alternative to apprenticeship. Some states have gone the other way now where the apprenticeships are alternatives to law school, like it's a path to the bar. I like it too. Vermont and Virginia, they allow apprenticeships instead of, actually instead of the bar exams themselves. Oregon offers apprenticeships where if you're a law school graduate, you can, you can become a lawyer without the bar exam. If you apprentice for, I think, 675 hours over four weeks in supervised work, you will basically become a lawyer after that.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  Four weeks? Four months?

• 52:01Josh Clark?

  No, four weeks.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  Four years?

• 52:04Josh Clark?

  No, I was joking. There's only 675 hours in four weeks, so.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 52:10Josh Clark?

  Like you would be doing 24 hours a day for a month as an apprentice, which seems hardcore.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  I'll assume your math checks out.

• 52:17Josh Clark?

  It does. I even used a calculator.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Oh, great. I think Washington State has a plan coming in 2026, so more states are kind of getting on board with this. California last year actually rejected a proposal to become more like Oregon with those apprenticeship hours, even though the State Bar of California's Board of Trustees said, "We think this is a good idea." The state Supreme Court said, "No, no, no." But coming around the corner now, we have the next-gen bar exam, right?

• 52:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the NCBE is like, everybody settle down. So, starting in 2018, they're like, "We're going to change this a little bit. The test's going to be shorter. We're going to make it so it's possible to take it remotely if need be." And then it's just going to be a little different where I think it's a little more essay-heavy than the original test, but they're also carving out some stuff that they're not going to test on, like family law and that kind of thing. So, it's a little leaner, meaner kind of bar exam that they're coming up with.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  All right.

• 53:22Josh Clark?

  Two things that I saw that are worth mentioning real quick. If you do away with the bar exam, there's a couple of benefits to that. One is that it puts the onus on law schools themselves to graduate competent lawyers. Right now, there are some law schools that are considered diploma mills because as long as 75% of your graduates pass the bar within two years, like you stay accredited and you can make a lot of money off that other 25%. That's one thing that would happen. Another one is that legal fees would probably come down because one of the functions of gatekeeping that the bar exam does is it artificially keeps the supply of lawyers low,

• 54:06Josh Clark?

  which artificially inflates the fees associated with lawyers, too.

• 54:11Speaker 03

  Uh-huh. I didn't think about that.

• 54:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 54:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. I spoke to my friend. I think I know a few attorneys here and there, but only like one good friend who's a lawyer. Uh, who is electing to remain anonymous in this case.

• 54:24Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 54:25Speaker 03

  But I did text him of kind of about all this and he said, I would say it's only useful in that it shows how you can collect and synthesize a lot of information under time pressure. But that's not really much different than most standardized tests. But as far as being an indicator of how you'll be as a practitioner, yeah, not so much. He says, for example, the bar will test you to some extent on the rules of civil procedure, but passing the bar doesn't mean you can walk into a deposition the day after you pass and know how to do that. As someone who's taken hundreds of depositions, you learn by watching, listening to more experienced attorneys do it, and then by trial and error, no pun intended, doing it yourself. He is in favor of the apprenticeships. He said it's probably a lot more helpful as long as your mentor, you know, knew what they were doing.

• 55:09Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  And then said, one thing he would like to see change is like, I think more emphasis on writing. He said, I see so many briefs written by someone who allegedly passed a bar, they're just horrible. He said, that's probably just a criticism of the legal education more than the bar. And then he said he wanted to remain anonymous and he said, I know it sounds silly or overly cautious when there are SCOTUS justices who can accept luxury vacations with impunity, but I'm supposed to be impartial here, so ragging on the bar might not be a good look.

• 55:43Josh Clark?

  I think that's smart.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:46Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 55:47Speaker 03

  I got nothing else.

• 55:48Josh Clark?

  Well, thanks for tapping your anonymous friend. That was good info.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 55:53Josh Clark?

  If you want to learn more about the bar exam, go take the bar exam. And in the meantime, it's time for listener mail.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  That'd be kind of fun. I mean, if it was free, I would take the bar exam just to, like with zero knowledge of anything, just to see like how poorly I would do.

• 56:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I would too. I'd be right next to you peeing in my seat and going into labor and having a heart attack.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  Wouldn't that be funny, though, if we got like, I don't know, even like a 20% or something?

• 56:22Josh Clark?

  Or if we passed and we just automatically became lawyers?

• 56:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 56:26Josh Clark?

  All right.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  All right, this is about the Salton Sea. You called for listener mail, right?

• 56:30Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  All right. Hey, guys, I was listening to the Salton Sea episode. In college, I took an ocean geography class and learned about inland seas. An inland sea, because remember, we sort of wondered the difference between seas and lakes?

• 56:42Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:43Speaker 03

  He said, "An inland sea can either be entirely landlocked or have a single river connected to the ocean. Inland seas are larger than lakes and have a salinity between a lake and an ocean."

• 56:52Josh Clark?

  Hmm.

• 56:53Speaker 03

  So I think you've mentioned something about salinity. They're typically remnants of larger oceans and have numerous islands, but of course, the scientific community names these things, and sometimes it can be rather confusing. The Caspian Sea, for example, is classified as a lake despite being known as the largest inland sea in the world, and the Hudson Bay is an island sea, or which is, did you know that?

• 57:17Josh Clark?

  An island sea or inland sea?

• 57:19Speaker 03

  Well, he says island, but probably meant inland.

• 57:22Josh Clark?

  Okay. I didn't know. I had no idea. Whether it's an island sea or an inland sea, I had no idea.

• 57:29Speaker 03

  Or Dylan's favorite sea is the Larrapentine Sea, or the Larrapentine Sea. It's an ancient sea that split Australia in half during the Cambrian Explosion. Being a longtime listener and learning about new things is the best part of my commute, guys. That is from Dylan.

• 57:47Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Dylan. That was great info. I still like your interpretation, Chuck, which I, if I remember correctly, you were saying that a inland, a lake would be landlocked, I think?

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it sounds like there's no true definition. I don't know.

• 58:03Josh Clark?

  Well, then let's keep going with yours.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  Great.

• 58:05Josh Clark?

  Nice try, Dylan. If you want to be like Dylan and send us a great email, you can send it off to [email protected].

• 58:17Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 58:32Josh Clark?

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• 59:03Speaker 07

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 59:16Speaker 08

  Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolir. Zolir may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolir should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolir is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolir.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolir. This is an advertisement for Zolir.

• 1:00:01Speaker 08

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  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.