Commentary on Ontario Law Society Report on Scrapping Bar Exams
The Law Society asked for input on how to modernize the licensing process for candidates and concluded to remove written examinations. The full report is here: https://lawsocietyontario-dwd0dscmayfwh7bj.a01.azurefd.net/media/lso/media/about/convocation/2025/convocation-september-2025-professional-development-competence-committee-report.pdf#page=11 . I submitted my input to the Law Society and reproduced it below:
Dear Members of the Professional Development and Competence Committee,
Re: Consultation on the Proposed Modernization and Reform of the Lawyer Licensing Assessment Process
I am writing in response to the invitation issued by the Law Society of Ontario’s Professional Development and Competence Committee (the “Committee”) seeking input on the proposed plan to modernize and reform the assessment of lawyer licensing candidates in Ontario.
I welcome the opportunity to provide comments on this important initiative. I have been practicing law in Ontario since January 2015. I am an internationally trained lawyer and have the benefit of going through the NCA process and writing the barrister and solicitor examinations through self-study without the benefit of the index system so I have personal experience in the struggles your report has identified. Last year, I successfully wrote and passed the Florida Bar examination and the American MPRE so I also have experience writing licensing examinations in other jurisdictions. I am on the Law Society’s barrister and solicitor examination tutor roster, a coach and mentor for the Law Society and have tutored at least 30 students referred by the Law Society as well as outside the process. I have made several Youtube videos on the Ontario bar exams with positive feedback from students over the past few years.
I currently run KPA Lawyers, a full-service law firm headquarters in Mississauga but with offices in Toronto, Haldimand County, Collingwood, and Sault Ste. Marie. I am actively involved in the recruitment, training, supervision and professional development of early-career lawyers and licensing candidates within my firm. All told, I have discussed the licensing process with hundreds of lawyers entering and going through the licensing process across varying locations in Ontario and feel my unique experience can assist the Committee. I have a strong interest in the effectiveness, fairness, and long-term impact of the licensing and assessment framework. The manner in which competency is evaluated at entry to the profession has significant implications not only for candidates, but also for the public, employers, and the administration of justice more broadly.
Before proceeding with my response, I commend the Committee for undertaking a review of the current licensing assessment model and for engaging stakeholders in a transparent consultation process. In an evolving legal services environment—marked by changes in practice models, technology, client expectations, and access-to-justice considerations—it is appropriate to re-examine whether existing assessment methods continue to meet the Law Society’s public interest mandate.
My comments are offered with the goal of constructively contributing to the Committee’s work. They are informed by the personal and practical experience I’ve outlined at the outset. I welcome the Committee to reach out to me personally at jacob@kpalawyers.ca or 905-965-6263 for further assistance which I am willing to provide at no cost to the Committee.
As I understand it, the Committee is seeking input on two questions taken directly from the Law Society website. I will take each in turn.
1. Do you agree that the lawyer licensing process should incorporate both training and assessment, in the manner described by the Committee above, to determine entry level competence?
To the extent that the lawyer licensing process should incorporate a skills testing course and assessment in a more fulsome manner than the LPP, yes I agree. I see this as no different than articling or the LPP which is meant to provide licensing candidates with real world experience on the practice of law, inter-client relationships, drafting, negotiations and ethics. This would simply be a modernization of that process. That being said, I do not agree that the written examinations should be completely removed in favour of such skills training. The reasoning and evidence provided by the Committee’s report (the “Report”) does not sufficiently provide that the removal of the written examinations would eliminate the concerns they raise in that very Report nor would their removal be achieved while maintaining entry level competence. On the contrary, this removal would succeed in lowering the entry level competence required for an Ontario lower and would increase the costs to do so.
The Report outlines 4 major themes as to the reasoning for removing the examinations which I will summarize briefly:
1. The increasing number of internationally trained students in Ontario who have the most difficulty passing the exams and have the most serious complaints against them after being licensed;
2. Too many operational issues such as accommodation requests, costs, security issues and that the written examinations do not reflect entry level competence currently;
3. A 2020 study conducted by a thinktank in Denver for the US bar examinations states that written examinations fail to maintain entry standards, and the success of programs like the LPP and PREP in other provinces are sufficient; and
4. To eliminate the written examinations would make licensing more consistent with other provinces to aid interjurisdiction practice.
Theme 1: Helping Increasing Internationally Trained Candidates
As it relates to the increase of internationally trained students and the difficulties they are having (ie only 57% pass rate), I agree that internationally trained students have a higher barrier of entry– they have little knowledge of Canadian legal system and practice, little support to help prepare for the written examinations, and smaller chance of being hired by employers than domestic students. This is not just true of internationally trained lawyers who immigrate from other countries, but also those Canadians, like myself, who attended school in another jurisdiction for whatever personal reason and would like to return. In either case, the answer is not to remove one of their barriers to entry – the written examination. The removal of the written examinations to reduce the barrier to entry for those candidate in of itself admits lowering the entry level of competence. Even if it is now been determined that a written examination does not accurately reflect entry level competency (we get to that argument), this had still been the standard to meet. Removing this burden especially for the purpose of increasing the pass rates for international students, in of itself, lowers the barrier of entry and it does so even for domestic students where the pass rate is 88%. It also sends the wrong message to the public as a whole: that lawyers need not have to meet a certain standard if some students fail to meet those standards. This is simply not the case in other jurisdictions or other professions (say the medical or accounting profession). The burden is on the candidates to meet the standards for the profession, not for the profession to lower the standards to meet an increasing foreign-trained population. Instead, modernizing the NCA process as outlined in the Report to ensure similar Canadian accreditation is the appropriate answer to ensure that internationally trained candidates are ready to meet entry level standards.
Theme 2: Addressing Operational Issues
Removing the written examinations may reduce costs in the short term but will increase in the long-term (more on that in my response to question 2). There will be new security concerns that will arise for skills-testing modules. There will be accommodation requests either way. It is naïve to believe that eliminating written examinations will eliminate all operational issues that have been identified – the issues will simply be replaced by similar ones. Ignoring these issues do not eliminate them. They must actually be addressed.
The issues that have arisen through conducting the barrister and solicitor examinations are well taken in how reflective they are in entry level competency, and I personally have commented on them publicly. The following is a passage from an article I published on the subject in LexisNexis Law360:
The issue with the current exams is that what it currently tests is not so much the content of the law, but rather how fast a student can read a question, find the answer to the question in the examination materials (the answers are most of the time word-for-word in the materials) and then answer the question – and to do that over and over again over a full day exam. As a result, the exams do not so much test the student’s competency in law but rather the ability for a student to develop a fast and efficient enough system to find the answers in the materials given. Those students who try to study the materials and attempt to answer the questions from memory without finding the answers in the materials are usually not correct. Moreover, since all questions are worth 1 point, further rewarded are those who understand time efficiency – better to skip questions about corporate dividend taxation or child support where a student has to understand the material enough to calculate amounts. Instead, the better strategy is to simply spend more time on those where the answers are readily found in the materials and analysis is not required. I’ve heard the argument that the way these exams are structured truly test how a lawyer is supposed to practice in real life: they are not expected to know everything but know how to look up answers and analyze new material. That may be true, but answers are never neatly packaged and organized in materials and answers are never exact as is called for by multiple choice nor do they need to be provided in one to two minutes from the initial fact pattern. Testing the reality of practice is done during the articling or LPP term (as is in the case of doctor residencies or trade apprenticeships). The purpose of a written exam should be testing technical knowledge and competency in the law.[1]
I conclude this article that the current examination should instead be modernized to include an essay component, update the subjects, and make it close book. This should eliminate the barriers related to the cost of obtaining an “index” (which barrier I personally believe is inflated since indexes are not required at all); eliminates the cost of reproducing thousands of pages of written materials every year; assists security enforcement since nothing will be allowed at testing sites; and gives students the chance to demonstrate their actual knowledge and application of the law. The transparency concern can also be alleviated because if candidates show their work in an essay type question, an examiner can show where they went wrong or missed in their analysis and how to improve for next writing. The written examination (if actually updated) will properly address operational concerns identified by the Report; eliminating them entirely will not address the concerns.
Theme 3 - Written Examinations are not Reflective of Competency, a study found.
I acknowledge that it would be far more work to completely revolutionize the written examinations that it would be to scrap them entirely, but written examinations still provide a high enough barrier and screening for entry into the profession that it is worth keeping. It calls for a candidate to demonstrate not mere exposure but actual mastery of the technical knowledge required for entry into the profession. This is different than skills-testing (which is tested through articling, the LPP or some other experiential learning). It also ensures a general entry level standard across all law schools whether domestic and international.
The Denver study cited in the Report, while well-done, was completed over a number of years for a specific purpose – the modernization of the bar exams in the United States. As someone who studied and wrote one of the bar exams in the US, I can assure this Committee that the USA as a country (albeit from a common law system like Canada) is completely different in how they view, legislate and enforce the law. Each state is completely different in how they do so as well. The modernization of the bar exam in the USA is a project they have been undertaking for quite some time. This Committee should be weary of piggy-backing off of the study of a foreign country given our extensive differences. For example – the USA has a Multi-State Professional Responsibility Exam devoted purely to ethical standards, we do not. Each state is extremely different in licensing exams, skills testing, and character and fitness standards – our provincial differences are marginal in comparison. What’s more, the study acknowledges that it may be appropriate for some states to maintain written examinations. The Committee can also look at studies in other common law jurisdictions like the United Kingdom and Australia and it might note that written examinations continue there as well. It is not sufficient to remove the written examination entirely using this study as evidence; it simply does not reflect the realities of our country or even candidates in our province.
Theme 4 – Aids Interprovincial Practice
As it relates to aligning Ontario with inter-provincial practices, I do not understand the Committee’s issue with having Ontario maintain a different standard amongst the other provinces, specifically as it relates to population and cultural differences. The Labour Mobility Act already provides for a shortened licensing route for licensed lawyers outside of the province. For candidates who are not licensed, removing the written exams in Ontario may assist say Albertans applying for licensure in Ontario but it does not go the other way around – Ontario licensing candidates moving to Alberta will still have to take the Alberta PREP course. So the barrier to entry for new candidates to the licensing process remain the same whether with or without a written exam and this concern is ultimately not addressed by removing the written examination in Ontario.
Conclusion
All of that being said, removing the written exams to replace them entirely with the skills based assessment do not maintain entry level competence in response to the four themes identified by the Committee. It will not (and should not) increase the passage rates for internationally trained students, will not address any of the operational issues identified with the written examinations as costs, security, and competence testing will still be an issue. It has no bearing on interprovincial alignment and little relevance to the Denver study cited. Given the success of the LPP, a skills-based assessment would be helpful to replace articling entirely, and continuing to modernize the NCA process and to instead, review the modernization of a different written examination. A written examination that is more aligned with the goals of reducing costs of administration, increasing security, and reflecting knowledge of the law along with the creation of bar exam courses to increase transparency into the process will be more helpful in addressing operational concerns and pass rates among internationally trained students which appear to be the largest themes identified by this Committee. As mentioned above, I am happy to assist the Committee in the development of a new exam or courses to modernize this process at no cost to the Law Society.
2. If the Law Society proceeds with implementing the Committee’s recommendations, what concern(s) do you have regarding the implementation? How could those be addressed?
There are a few concerns with implementing the Committee’s recommendations, two major and two minor. I will outline them first and then explain how they can be addressed.
First, the new skills-based course will be likely more costly to implement than written examinations. The Report mentions that the Law Society will use an external provider for the course and to recoup the costs as much as possible with the Law Society paying for most of the costs up front to develop the course. The cost of creating virtual modules, individual lawyer professors and assessors, instructors, and transitioning within the licensing process is effectively creating a new virtual college run by the Law Society. This would be fine as an adjunct course that law firms can offer to replace articling and affectively train potential hires, but as part of the licensing process itself, it is much too expensive. If the idea is to recoup this cost, it would either increase annual lawyer fees substantially or worse, increase candidate fees who are already backlogged in law school tuition and licensing fees. Internationally trained students coming to Canada already maintain a higher cost than domestic students. Creating effectively another tuition fee on top of everything international candidates spend in moving to Canada would create an unreasonably high barrier to entry – one of the very concerns the Committee is trying to alleviate. If the Law Society doesn’t recoup its costs, then this entire exercise is more costly to the Law Society – again one of the very concerns the Committee is trying to alleviate.
The second major concern is that implementing a skills testing course and removing the written examination instead does not address the thousands of licensing candidates that will enter the course every year. The written bar exam effectively slows down the licensing process by offering a few times per year to write the exams and separate the exams, using scantrons to quickly assess pass or fail. A skills-based model beginning right after law school will have thousands of candidates working at their own individualized pace which require custom examiners to assess whether or not the skills have been maintained. This means that either the entry standards have to be reduced to make it easier to process the sheer number of applicants (which is obviously not the goal), or more costs would have to be budgeted to hire a matching number of skills-testing assessors to keep things moving for each candidate.
The scalability and cost are the two major concerns I have, but there are two minor ones as well. The first involves transitional students – those that are currently in the process. As when the LPP replaced articling, this will create a two-tiered system whereby some students will enter the market having passed the exam, others only skills testing, some failed one and done the other. There will be a large number of candidates unfairly hit with a negative perception as being “lab rats” for this new process but not being up to the standard for employers in the hiring process used to those students who passed a written exam. This will be especially true with internationally trained students.
The second minor issue relates to law school curriculums and expectations which are currently structured for students to learn the substantive law required and pass the written examinations. This is likely the main reason that Canadian law students are passing the written examinations at an 88% rate – they are better prepared from law school for the written exam. This means, the entire structure of Ontario law school curriculums will likely have to change en masse. Once again, the cost of this will be passed to students as part of tuition and there will be a transitional period as law schools themselves face this major change (on top of already updating curriculums to include new topics like artificial intelligence).
One idea that solves each of these issues to help implement this new process (and has also been identified in the Denver Study) is to use the law schools themselves to implement the course as the external providers. The Law Society can provide subsidies to the law schools and appoint representatives to ensure that the skills based testing is part of the curriculum in the final years of law school. This will avoid double taxation in terms of costs and is already scaled to work through thousands of students because the law school infrastructure is already in place address this. There are professors, virtual learning tools and modules, and clinics aligned with law schools that can be emphasized and the curriculum built around this new model. Internationally trained candidates (after completion of the NCA) can take the skills course through affiliating with a law school itself and build connections within the Ontario legal community while they do so similar to how it is currently done with the LPP at Toronto Metropolitan University.
While I still do not believe removing written examinations is the correct course of action, if law schools are a major part of implementing this process and aligned with the Law Society, it will go a long way in reducing costs, ensuring scalability, modernizing the entire licensing process starting from law school.
In closing, I appreciate the opportunity to provide input on the proposed modernization and reform of the lawyer licensing assessment framework. Any reform to the licensing process should, in my view, strike an appropriate balance between rigor, fairness, accessibility, and practical relevance to modern legal practice. Assessment models that meaningfully evaluate competence while recognizing the realities of articling, experiential training, and early-career practice will best serve candidates, employers, and the public alike.
I trust that these comments will be of assistance as the Committee continues its review, and I would welcome the opportunity to participate further in discussions or consultations as this work progresses.
Respectfully submitted,
Jacob Murad
President, KPA Lawyers Professional Corporation
[1] https://www.law360.ca/ca/articles/1813411/revisiting-the-bar-exam-jacob-murad published March 14,2024