Legal Training: A perspective from the USA

Legal Training

Legal Training: A perspective from the USA

Charity Mafuba reflects on her journey to qualify as a lawyer at the New York bar

In my first year of Law School at BPP University in London in 2015 that I decided I would study for the New York Bar to qualify as an attorney.

Following my graduation in 2018, I attended a couple of taster sessions for the New York Bar Course held by a law course provider called Barbri and I was immediately hooked on the idea. I was eligible to sit for the New York Bar exams without the need to complete a US LLM as I had already completed a three-year full-time Law Degree in England.

There are a number of advantages to taking the New York bar exams compared to qualifying as a lawyer in England and Wales. One is that the cost is substantially less (about $6000 dollars) than the cost of the LPC or BPTC in the UK which is about three times that amount. You are required to pay half the cost of the course up front and the rest of the balance in six equal monthly instalments.

The course is administered and run online which is another advantage as most students are either working full time or have other commitments. This means that you can more easily balance and schedule in advance other commitments in your life. There is an option to study either on a six or ten month plan and I chose the latter. I found it reassuring to know that if you fail the first time, the provider I chose offers a flexible sameState course repeat within 12 months of receiving your results at no extra cost.

Completion of my first degree in England was an advantage, as it is a common law jurisdiction, the content of the syllabus was about 70% similar to the US. Consequently, I found studying and preparing for the New York Bar a far less arduous task than anticipated. The 30% difference in legal content includes subjects like Secured Transactions, Federal Civil and Criminal Procedure. Some of the legal terminology was also different to that used in England and Wales such as they will use Plaintiff rather than Claimant.

The exam itself, for the New York Bar, was a multiple-choice format of 50 questions which is completed online and the pass rate is 30 out of 50. There is also an Ethics exam (the MPRE) which requires a pass score of 85 although interestingly, neither the results of these exams contribute to the overall score which determines whether you have passed the exams.

There is then a Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) which can be transferred across states that have UBE jurisdiction, a further multiplechoice test which makes up 50% of the overall grade and a paper involving six essays (which are akin to problem solving questions) which makes up 30% of the grade.

The final part of the bar exams is called the Multistate Performance Test (MPT) and is designed to test an applicant’s ability to use fundamental legal skills in a realistic real-life scenario for a newly qualified lawyer. The student can only make use of the material provided in the exam (e.g. factual data, cases and other reference material) to answer the two questions in the exam and this makes up the remaining 20% of the overall score.

Completion of 50 hours of Pro Bono is also a pre-admission requirement. However another positive aspect of passing the New York Bar is that no pupillage or training contract is required. You are immediately able to start practising once admitted and licensed.

You are likely to find work quicker in the US but interestingly here in the UK, US firms and banks (and more recently some UK law firms) are increasingly becoming amenable to hiring New York Bar qualified attorneys who may not yet have qualified in England or Wales.

‘You are immediately able to start practising once admitted and licensed’

Unlike in England and Wales where once qualified as a lawyer you can practise anywhere, in the US you are only able to practise in the State that you are admitted to. However depending on an applicant’s score, there is then scope to transfer to another state and practise there pending satisfactory compliance with additional requirements.

Undertaking the New York Bar Course and being admitted to the New York Bar is one of the most worthwhile career investments that I could have made. I look forward to seeing where it takes me career-wise. It takes a lot of determination but with the increase in cross-border transactions, the qualification certainly serves as a resourceful asset.

Charity Mafuba

Charity Mafuba

New York Attorney and Counselor-at-Law