Student exposes Bar exam's failings

Disenchanted with his experience of studying to become a lawyer in Taiwan, James Yang (楊智傑) decided to write a book about it.

In the book, Come on! Law-yer! Judge! Liar?, the National Central University (NCU) student attacks the Bar exam as being an unreasonable way of assessing students.

Yang says the exam creates a lot of problems in law education that keep many students away from the legal profession even though they were willing to devote themselves to careers as lawyers, prosecutors or judges.

Taiwanese students can study law at the undergraduate, graduate and doctorate level.

Those who complete their four-year undergraduate law education are eligible to sit the Bar exam.

Yang is the first person to publish a book detailing the problems of the country's Bar exam and how these problems affect law education.

Yang, a second-year graduate student of the NCU's industrial economics law division, graduated from the National Taiwan University's (NTU) Law Department last year. He then sat for the Bar exam but decided to leave in the middle of it.

Yang told the Taipei Times that he realized many questions on the test came from material taught exclusively at cram schools or selected from famous law professors' publications.

A student can't do well on the test, he said, if he or she hasn't gone to cram schools or read the publications of certain professors.

"The Bar exam is supposed to be fair, isn't it? Would you call this fair then?" he said.

He wrote in his book, published on July 15, that to pass the Bar exam, many law students stop going to university classes and start going to cram schools during their third or fourth year in college.

Yang said that he didn't deny the benefits of cram schools. However, he said students forgot what their priorities should be.

"I have to say that cram schools do help students outline the textbooks while they are studying for the Bar. But students are misled. They don't realize that attending classes on campus should be the most important thing for them," he said.

Yang said that seats are often empty for important classes such as international business since the course is not included on the exam.

However, if the course is included in the exam or taught by a professor who has been or might be an examiner, most students will attend.

In addition, Yang said that students in the NTU's law department used to share class notes so they could skip classes and spend more time at cram schools.

"Absent students will borrow class notes from those who attended so they still know what was going on in class when they were absent. That has become a tradition on the NTU's campus and left a lot of students thinking wishfully," Yang said.

He told the Taipei Times that he had decided against pursuing a career in law. However, he still hopes to pass on legal knowledge to the younger generation if possible.

Yang also said he was not planning on trying to continue studying law in another country.

"I'd have to spend lots of time and money to do that and I can't afford it," he said.

"I will not take part in the Bar exam ever again and I'm not planning to take other exams to become a judge or a prosecutor. But, if I have the chance, I'd be more than happy to study for a doctorate degree in law and become a law professor in the future," he said.

NTU law professor Hsu Tsung-li (許宗力) said he did not recommend that students go to cram schools. However, the school does not have the authority to ask students not to go either, he said.