I took the MPRE yesterday. That's the ethics/professional responsibilities section of the bar. I hope I passed, I assume I passed. It's 60 questions, 10 aren't graded. I'm not sure how it's scored but from what I gather you can score a maximum of around 150 and need something like 80 points to pass. So basically you have to do a little better than 50%. It seems that the scores are adjusted so that if everyone missed question 25 then it's not counted.
You are probably amazed at this point. How does anyone become a lawyer after such a rigorous examination of the expectations of this highly venerable profession. As dumb as this test was and as dumb as the scoring is (the dropping questions makes some sense to me after taking the test b/c some questions were written incredibly poorly) there will still be some people who fail. It boggles my mind. If Jack Abramoff was able to pass it what kind of a sleazy bastard fails it. I think you should have to go register as a sex offender if you can't pass it. You deserve some kind of shame.

I think one of the first places that lawyers should start reforming themselves is in the professional responsibility section. It's a joke. Almost anyone could pass this test with four hours of preparation. When lawyers talk about their ethical responsibilities and those responsibilities are measured by such a low bar then no one takes us seriously. I don't blame people for that either. There should be some actual ethical analysis of what's going on in the rules. We want to avoid conflicts then we should avoid conflicts. Getting a client, who apparently doesn't have a deep understanding of the law in first place and therefore hired a lawyer, to sign a consent form is a bullshit cop out.

I need to go eat some snickerdoodles to get the bitter taste out of my mouth after the test yesterday.