New Mexico, Connecticut consider new pathways to licensure
New Mexico and Connecticut are the latest states to consider alternative pathways to bar licensure, a move that would potentially expand access to legal services statewide.
Last week, Connecticut created the Public Service Pathway to Licensure Task Force, which is a joint effort of the state’s bar foundation and bar association. And Sunday, the New Mexico Supreme Court announced a committee to develop an alternative, supervised-practice means of licensure that focuses on a skills-based assessment of a bar applicant’s legal abilities and is expected to report to the state supreme court this spring.
The moves come after a July report from the Committee on Legal Education and Admissions Reform—the group established to conduct the study by the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators—suggesting that innovative pathways to licensure could help address access to justice, as well as readiness to practice law.
The council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is currently seeking comment on a proposal that would broaden Standard 316, which requires that 75% of a law school’s graduates must pass the bar exam within two years to meet the minimum for accreditation, to include licensure assessment outcomes and successful completion of an alternative pathway, not just a bar exam.
Though the Connecticut committee is still being formed, Brian Gallini, the dean of the Quinnipiac University School of Law, and Emily Gianquinto, the president of the Connecticut Bar Association and a special counsel at McCarter & English, will be co-chairs; it was announced last week.
“We have a set of names that they are going down the list of folks who represent a really wide range of perspectives on the issue, just to make sure we’ve got diversity in all of the forms, including the area of practice, perspectives on bar exams, perspectives on perspectives on the NextGen bar exam,” Gallini told the ABA Journal.
Gallini, a former dean of the Willamette University School of Law, was on Oregon’s Alternatives to the Exam Task Force, which developed the Supervised Practice Portfolio Examination, launched in 2024 and requiring candidates to conduct a 675-hour paid apprenticeship under a qualified supervising state-licensed lawyer.
“It took three or four years for that to get up and running,” he says. “So right now, I’m hurrying up and waiting.”
Angela Schlingheyde, the executive director of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, told the Journal that the state was “in the very early stages of building the task force and hope to have the first meeting within the next couple of months.”
In Connecticut, the widespread need for legal aid is growing beyond capacity of the legal field, according to a report by the state bar foundation released in October.
Meanwhile, in New Mexico, graduates from an accredited law school would receive a conditional license to practice law upon acceptance to the alternative program, according to a March 1 press release from the New Mexico Supreme Court. Candidates would have to work at a paid full-time job under the supervision of an admitted attorney and submit their work for review by the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners to determine competence to practice.
“For supervisors, this program will provide a pool of candidates who are able to practice upon graduation while also giving rural practitioners a new recruitment tool to encourage attorneys to practice in different parts of the state,” the release said.
The National Center for State Courts gathered information about similar models in other states and is surveying people in New Mexico to make sure that the proposed program’s qualifications and requirements fit the state’s needs, according to the press release, and a final report to the New Mexico Supreme Court is expected this spring.
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