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Is the bar exam the best way to find out whether a candidate is minimally competent? Maybe not.
In the past few years, more and more states have been considering or implementing different pathways to the bar that involve hands-on work in real-world legal practices that is evaluated by bar examiners. How each state’s program works varies, but many involve law students or graduates working with supervision in legal deserts, helping to ease access-to-justice issues, as well.
In this episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast, the ABA Journal’s Julianne Hill talks with Deborah Jones Merritt, a professor emerita at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Merritt is a co-principal investigator of a landmark 2020 report, Building a Better Bar.
Merritt, also a 2025 ABA Journal Legal Rebel, discusses how—and whether—these programs work and what they mean for law students, the legal profession and the public.
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In This Podcast:
Deborah Jones Merritt. (Photo by Maddie McGarvey)
Deborah Jones Merritt is a professor emerita at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She graduated from Harvard College in 1977 and from Columbia Law School in 1980. After graduation, Merritt clerked for then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court. From 2017 to 2019, she served on the ABA’s Commission on the Future of Legal Education. From 2024 to 2025, she assisted the national Committee on Legal Education and Admissions Reform. Merritt is a co-principal investigator of a landmark 2020 report, Building a Better Bar, and she is a 2025 ABA Journal Legal Rebel.