This summer, about 100 lawyers-in-training will sit down for the state bar exam, a grueling two-day affair that calls for examinees to write lengthy essays on legal principles and answer multiple-choice questions testing an encyclopedic knowledge of the judicial system. Those who pass will be given a stamp of approval to practice law - whether or not they've ever written a brief, argued a case or stood in a courtroom.

In the coming years, however, a handful of students at the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord will have the opportunity to take an exam requiring them to prove that they're ready for the real world. The exam would present students with a legal case, then ask them to spend two days interviewing simulated "clients," researching specific issues, preparing documents and negotiating with others. Students would defend their work before a panel of lawyers, judges, bar examiners and Pierce faculty members.

The exam would be the first of its kind in the country and the culmination of a two-year program aimed at giving law students more training in real-life situations -something that members of the legal community say can be lacking from the law school experience.

"The goal is not to make a different bar exam - the goal is to make better lawyers,"said Sophie Sparrow, a Franklin Pierce professor and a member of the committee that designed the program. "We see this as a performance test, a way to have people look at you in a simulated setting and assess that you're ready to practice and that you know what you're doing."

Members of New Hampshire's legal community have long discussed the bar exam's shortcomings, Sparrow said, and they have been looking at ways of improving law school education for more than 10 years. Though three years of law school and the current bar exam provide most students with a strong understanding of law, not everyone participates in internships and mock court organizations to complement their classes.

"A lot of lawyers are just not ready to practice when they get out of law school," Sparrow said. "There are people who can graduate from law school and pass the bar and never have had the experience of being in front of people in a courtroom setting. And they can hang a shingle up and be open for business. But you wouldn't go to a heart surgeon who hadn't done the operation a few times, would you?"

State Supreme Court Justice Linda Dalianis was among the lawyers and bar examiners who raised the idea of creating a new program about two years ago. They approached Franklin Pierce Dean John Hutson with the idea of designing an experimental, practice-based program to fix the disconnect between what law students learn in class and what they do as lawyers.

Dalianis, who was a trial judge for 20 years, said she has seen many new lawyers struggle because they hadn't had enough real-life training. It's also difficult for new lawyers to find good mentoring or apprenticeship programs after they graduate, she said.

It took two years of brainstorming and cooperation between the Supreme Court, Bar Association, lawyers and Pierce faculty members before the program's guidelines were clear.

The Webster Scholar Program is, for now, a pilot program that will last three years. Twenty-five honors students who have finished their first year of law school will be admitted each year. In addition to basic law school courses, they will have to complete an internship and a series of "practice courses"taught by practicing lawyers and designed to build legal skills.

In their second and third years, students will submit portfolios of written or multi-media work (such as a videotaped arguments or other proceedings) to be graded by a panel of lawyers, the program director, a professor and another student from the program. Students will be expected to evaluate their own work as thoroughly as do their teachers, Sparrow said.

"It would be a way of testing how well you can talk about your own work," she said. "And how well you can defend it. A critical piece of this program is getting students into the routine of assessing themselves, where they're involved in an ongoing process of self-evaluation."

The final exam would present students with a problem relating to a topic that they may not have studied before, such as a particular divorce case or area of tax law. During the two-day research period, students would have to teach themselves how to approach it - something that lawyers must do frequently. It would be tougher in some ways than the current bar exam, Sparrow said, and would better prepare students for life after graduation.

"The idea was to create a program and exam that not only have rigor but hopefully sets students apart from others when they graduate," said Bruce Felmly, a Manchester lawyer who helped design the program. "The current exam can weed out those who perhaps are not best suited for law, but it doesn't really replicate the kinds of challenges that will confront you on Day One when you step into the office."

Those who designed the program said it can't be replicated everywhere. New Hampshire's small size and tight-knit legal community made it possible for all the necessary agencies to collaborate, Sparrow said. And a bar license obtained through the Webster program would probably not be recognized by other states for at least several years, meaning it may only be an option for students who intend to practice law in New Hampshire.

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