by Bob Paolini, Esq.
Interview with Bridget Asay
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Bob Paolini: I am here today with
Bridget Asay from the Attorney General’s
Office, which is how I think most people
know you, but many people may not know
that you are also the chair of the Board of
Bar Examiners.
Bridget Asay: That’s right. I have been
serving on the board in some capacity for
about twelve years.
BP: So we are here to talk a little bit
today about something that is called the
Uniform Bar Exam. You hosted a group a
couple of weeks ago at the law school that
involved some judges, lawyers, members of
your board, and some faculty and students
of the law school. Before we get into that,
specifically, let’s go through the Board of
Bar Examiners. How is it made up? How do
you get appointed to it? How does it all
work?
BA: All of our members are appointed
by the Supreme Court. We have seven
attorney members and two lay members as
the voting members of the board. We also
have seven associate members, who are
attorneys, who assist with administering
and grading the bar exam. Altogether we
have sixteen people. Our primary job is
to oversee the admission to the Vermont
bar through the bar exam and through
reviewing requests for reciprocal admission
from attorneys licensed in other states.
BP: You actually preside at and give the
bar exam?
BA: We are staffed through the judiciary.
Most lawyers knew Martha Hicks-Robinson,
who had that position for many years until
she took another job in May of this year. The
position is now being staffed on an interim
basis. That staff person, the administrator,
has principal responsibility for administering
the two days of testing. The board crafts
essay questions for the exam, grades the
essay questions, and proctors the exam to
oversee its administration.
BP: So the two lay members of the
committee, do they have some background
in education or something similar?
BA: The current lay member is Andrew
Stein who is in the Auditor’s office, and
we have a lay member vacancy that the
court will fill soon. We have had an array
of different interests and experience. We
have had in the past people with education
experience, testing experience, and other
18
times the focus has been on representing
the consumer. I think that is the point of
having lay members—to represent the
consumer and the public.
BP: Describe what the bar exam looks
like nowadays for those people who might
want to block it out of their minds. It’s still
a two-day exam and you said something
about grading the essay portion of the
exam, so what is the other portion?
BA: One day is a 200-question multiplechoice test. Most states have been
administering that for a long time, so
most people are probably familiar with it.
It’s called the Multistate Bar Examination
and tests general legal principles in areas
like contracts, torts, and criminal law and
procedure. The other day of the test, as
in many states, is an essay exam. We have
six essays. Two are Multistate Performance
Tests, which are products that we purchase
from an organization called the National
Conference for Bar Examiners. The other
four are essays that specifically test
Vermont law, and those are the essays that
the Board of Bar Examiners develops. The
board grades all six of the essays.
BP: Go over again the two performance
tests that you say you purchased from the
National Conference of Bar Examiners.
What does that mean?
BA: It’s a different way of testing
someone’s legal analysis skills. I think
adding this component to the bar exam
came out of concern about whether we
were adequately testing the things that we
expect newly licensed lawyers to do. The
multiple-choice exam is about applying
legal principles that you have learned
in law school to hypothetical situations.
These performance tests give the applicant
a library of legal materials and a set of facts
to work with. It’s more like what a real-life
lawyer might do with a client, if someone
walked in and you interviewed them,
found some statutes or case law, and had
to put those things together for a specific
legal task. On the test, the task could be
a memo to a senior partner; it could be
the outline of a deposition; it could be the
closing argument in a trial—but that is the
idea, that you are expecting the applicant
to draw on a library of materials that is
provided, analyze the law, and apply it to
facts, right there in the moment.
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • WINTER 2015
BP: And the other four questions that
you have drafted are different? They
are formatted differently than those two
performance tests?
BA: The other four look more like the
kinds of questions that you may remember
from law school. A hypothetical fact
situation and two or th