"Many law school deans, bristling from criticism that they are replenishing their ranks with less academically qualified students as the number of law school applicants has fallen sharply..."

"... began to openly question the mechanics of the bar exam. About 80 law school deans last November jointly asked, for the first time anyone remembers, for details on how test questions were chosen and scored. The situation was already touchy after remarks made the previous month by a top bar exam official, who defended the results as indisputably correct, and then, in what the deans viewed as verbal dynamite, labeled the test takers as 'less able' than their predecessors."

From a NYT article titled "Bar Exam, the Standard to Become a Lawyer, Comes Under Fire," which contains the juicy nugget: "All states but one, Wisconsin, require passing the bar exam to become a licensed lawyer...".