The Ethics of Copyrighting Ethics Rules

The ABA's decision to make its ethics rules a commodity, now going on twenty years strong, together with the NCBE's desire to nationalize testing of bar applicants by using the Model Rules, engenders the dangerous view that testing checks for those inclined to unethical behavior. In light of the ABA' s successful efforts to wring even more revenue from increasingly financially-burdened law students, the creation of an essay examination in ethics sounds less like a call to renewed professionalism than a pitch for another product for the NCBE to sell to state bar examiners. It is a bureaucratic culture's last-gasp effort, one that should be rejected firmly and finally