Lawyers serve as expert guides to the legal system. As such, they must know about the legal processes that occur in courts, legislatures, administrative agencies, and alternative dispute resolution channels. To assist clients effectively, they must also understand these processes at state, local, national, and (increasingly) international levels.
Lawyers must also understand the products generated by these processes: statutes, rules, regulations, judicial opinions, administrative regulations, advisory opinions, and other types of authority generated by agencies or alternative dispute resolution processes. They must understand the weight of these legal sources and how they relate to one another. They must also understand the complex relationships of authorities generated at the state, local, national, and international level.
The current bar exam, like legal education, tends to focus on the judicial process (especially in federal courts), judicial opinions, and some statutes, rather than other legal processes or sources of law. Administrative agencies receive very little attention, although they dominate many areas of law practice. Nor does the exam test for knowledge of alternative dispute resolution processes (negotiation, mediation, and arbitration) that affect much of contemporary law practice.
The current exam also concentrates on federal law, model codes, and restatements—rather than on the law of particular states or localities. This is understandable, given an exam designed for national use, but the focus is contrary to what most new attorneys experience. The Building a Better Bar study suggests that almost half of new attorneys work exclusively with state or local law; about nine-tenths of them use at least some state or local law in their practice.
The three major studies of minimum competence agree that knowledge of legal processes and sources of law is an essential component of minimum competence. These studies also stress the importance of state and local courts, local court rules, administrative agencies, the legislative process, and alternative dispute resolution processes in entry-level law practice.