The Bar Exam in California

The L.A.Times reports:

Former San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Angela Alioto won't even say how many times she failed the California bar examination before she finally was licensed to practice law.

"Consider it to be several," said the antidiscrimination lawyer and daughter of the late San Francisco mayor and famed antitrust lawyer, Joseph Alioto.

"And understand," she quickly added, "that for the last two years in a row I have been nominated as a national trial lawyer of the year."

Add two former governors, an eminent legal scholar and a former state Supreme Court justice to the ranks of those, like Alioto, who learned the hard way that obtaining a license to practice law in California is hard. In fact, it's harder than in almost every other state.

Of the 5,260 people expected to take the state's bar examination beginning today, more than half are likely to fail, rates from previous years indicate.

A guild wants a barrier to entry to artificially jack up wages.What makes things worse is an inordinate number of lawyers are in state legislatures making laws to restrict people from entering a profession.