Pearl Harbor Essay Example for Free

Pearl Harbor Essay Though the attack was focused on Pearl Harbor a Japanese fighter plane crashed on the island of Niihau. The Niihau Incident (or Battle of Niihau) occurred on December 7, 1941, when a Japanese pilot, Shigenori Nishikaichi, crash-landed on the island of Niihau after participating in the attack on Pearl Harbor. He crashed 19 feet from where Hawila Kaleohano, a native, was standing. Unaware of the current attack on Pearl Harbor but knowing the US had bad blood with Japan, Kaleohano seized the opportunity of taking the pilots papers and pistol while the pilot was still incapacitated. In Hawaiian tradition, Nishikaichi was later treated with the upmost respect. Since his English was limited the Hawaiian natives could not understand him so they sent a Japanese born man who only exchanged a few words with Nishikaichi, seemingly disturbed the first interpreter walked away. The second interpreter, Yoshio Harada, undisturbed listened to what the pilot had to say and decided to take up arms with him. Some days later on Saturday, December 13, Harada and Nishikaichi captured Ben Kanahele and his wife, Ella Kanahele. They ordered Kanahele to find Kaleohano, keeping Ella as a hostage. Kanahele knew that Kaleohano was rowing toward Kauai, but made a charade of looking for him. He soon became concerned about Ella and returned to her. Harada told Kanahele that the pilot would kill him and everyone in the village if Kaleohano was not found. Kanahele, noticing the fatigue and discouragement of his two captors, took advantage of the brief distraction as the pilot handed the shotgun to Harada. He and his wife leapt at the pilot. Nishikaichi pulled his pistol out of his boot. Ella Kanahele grabbed his arm and brought it down. Harada pulled her off the pilot, who then shot Ben Kanahele three times: in the groin, stomach, and upper leg. Ben Kanahele then picked Nishikaichi up hurling him into a stone wall. Ella Kanahele then bashed him in the head with a rock, and Ben slit his throat with his hunting knife. Harada then turned the shotgun on himself, committing suicide. Ben Kanahele was taken to Waimea Hospital on Kaua? i to recuperate; he was awarded with the Medal for Merit and the Purple Heart, but his wife, Ella, did not receive any official recognition. The news of the attacks did not travel fast to the other islands, as technology there was very limited especially on the smaller islands. Charles Owens, living on the island of Maui during the attacks, says â€Å"I didn’t hear of the attacks immediately, I only heard of them a while after, I didn’t really know what to think. How could something so big go without us hearing about it until days after, so that was kind of messed up. † Back on Oahu, the two hour attack was straining on. Their first order of business to blow away all aircraft to eliminate the possibilities of a counter-attack. They bombed all the plans that were sitting wingtip to wing tip also bombing mess halls and killing hundreds of unsuspecting people. Some US pilots were able to get their planes off the ground but once they reached the skies they realized how outnumbered they were, still they fought for their country and fired as best they could. Since the Japanese finished bombing their intended targets of aircraft carriers; they went to their next chief target, the battleships. The eight battleships were all hit, the USS Nevada, Tennessee, California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Maryland, West Virginia, and by far the worst loss the USS Arizona. The battleship row was destroyed. The people on them were quick to react and fought hard, but the ruthless Japanese bombed the ships into oblivion. The Japanese were sending America a message, that they were the superiors and were ready to destroy America along with the rest of the world with its Axis power allies. The Japanese had also launched out five midget submarines, these could only hold a two man crew, but they were all sunk at the beginning of the battle by the US pacific fleet. At 9:45 a. m. he Japanese felt that their mission was complete. They returned back to their air craft carriers feeling pride in destroying copious amounts of people’s lives and completely taking away others. The total death count for them was 78, a death count which paled in comparison of the almost 4,000 US lives lost. The military people of Hawaii fought long and hard to save their home but little could be done since it was a surprise and they didn’t have any proper time to react. Thi s day would mark a turn in history. This day would be a day that was often thought of in war, a day that was a reminder of what the soldiers of America were fighting for. This was the day that pushed America into World War II with a fighting vengeance. A saying often used in newspapers was â€Å"Remember Pearl Harbor. Work. Fight. Sacrifice!! We’ll remember and by God, you WON’T forget! †The day following the attack, President Roosevelt addressed the congress and asked for a declaration on war against Japan and he got it, marking the day the US officially became a part of World War II. In Hawaii, on the 16th of December, Adm.  Kimmel and Gen. Short were stripped of their commands and in 1942 they were found guilty of neglect of duty and held exclusively responsible for the catastrophe that was Pearl Harbor by the Roberts Commission. Later in October of 1944 Kimmel and Short were found not guilty due to a Naval Court thinking they acted appropriately to the situation with the knowledge they had received. This was later overruled by the Chief of Naval Operations, claiming if Kimmel had done aerial reconnaissance he may have found the Japanese fleet located a mere 250 miles off Hawaii. In decmeber of 1955 a Defense Department investigation reveals others share responsibility with Kimmel and Short but does not divulge the information on whom these ‘others’ are. It was not until the year 2000 that an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act found Kimmel and Short performed to the best of their abilities in the situation that they were given and their ranking was restored. February 19, 142, executive order 9066 was signed; this was the order that called for the internment of all Japanese Americans living on the west coast during World War II. Ironically no Japanese-Americans were taken from Hawaii. It was strange to most people in Hawaii, like Bernadine and Charles, that people uninvolved were being punished. Why America would be fighting for equality and against oppression when it was so willing to oppress their own brethren? It boggled the minds of the still young Bernadine and Charles who still could not fully comprehend what the attacks had done. The internment camps were horrible, the conditions were poor, the food was rationed and below nutritional. The children in the internment camps went to school and the thought of patriotism was pushed deep into their minds. The adults could work for 5 dollars a day or were given the option of joining the army. The latter option was not popular as many no longer felt they wanted to die for their country. Internment camps were looked at as a wartime necessity. Many Americans were plagued with a fear of a second attack or the Japanese working from the inside out to destroy them. This was and would become a continual theme in American history of oppressing people because of the fear of a possibility. It wasn’t until 1988 that congress tried to financially apologize to the Japanese-Americans that were affected by the internment camps by granting them each 20,000 dollars. Thought the camps never reached the atrocities preformed in Nazi death camps in World War II, they still left a scar on American history. In whole the attacks on Pearl Harbor caused the death of 3,500 American citizens, the destruction of 18 ships (including all 8 of the fleet), and 350 destroyed aircrafts. The only thing sparred that day were the air craft carriers.

Automobile :: essays research papers

History After the steam engine was invented in the early 17th century, various attempts were made to apply this source of power to self-propelled road vehicles. Early efforts were unsuccessful, except for those that produced interesting toys such as the machine developed about 1680 by the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton, wich was propelled by the back pressure of a jet of steam directed to the rear. The first successful self-propelled road vehicle was a steam automobile invented in 1770 by the French engineer Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. It was designed to transport artillery, and it ran on three wheels. The British inventor William Symington in 1786 built a working model of a so-called steam carriage. The 19th century The first automobile to carry passengers was built by the British inventor Richard Trevitchick in 1801. In December of that year, Trevitchick conducted a successful road test of his vehicle, wich carry several passengers, on an open road near his native town, Illogan. His success was due to the greater efficiency and smaller size of his power unit, wich was the first to have the piston moved by steam at high pressure. In the United States, the inventor Oliver Evans obtained the first patent on a steam carriage in 1789. In 1803, he built a self-propelled steam dredge, wich is regarded as the first self-propelled vehicle to operate over American roads. In France and Germany, meanwhile, attention turned to the development of the internal-combustion engine. By 1980, more than 300 million cars and 85 million trucks and buses were operating throughout the world, forming an indispensable transportation network. Germany’s Volkswagen sent its first shipments of autos, popularly known as Beetles, to the Unites States in the early 1950s and eventually became a major force in the U.S. auto industry. The first Japanese imports to the United States was 16 compact pickups arrived in 1956. Ten years later, Japanese vehicle imports reached 65000 units. By 1980, the Japanese claimed 2.

Intimations of the American Character: Five American Writers

America’s only 230 years old, give or take, therefore to ask after the American character is much the same as asking after the character of a two-year old – not impossible, but hardly definitive. There’s a an anecdote of general reportage that on Nixon’s first trip to China Kissinger asked Mao what he thought of the French Revolution. Mao answered that it was too soon to tell.Perhaps it is too soon to tell what the American character is as can be determined in the literature of the 17th – 19th Centuries, but one cannot mistake that in the various works of its first significant authors (writers who felt themselves sufficiently invested in this democratic experiment spread over some six million square miles of beautiful and infinitely resourceful land) the first intimations if not indications of who and what we are (as opposed to where we came from – the old countries) make themselves known.Harold Bloom, Professor, author, reader, man of extrao rdinary powers of memorization, idiosyncratic, self-proclaimed Falstaffian, wrote, ironically enough, a work entitled â€Å"The Anxiety of Influence. † With reference only to the title, which implies so much, especially for any would–be artist who seeks place his/her own unique stamp on his/her work, one encounters the first problem for the truly creative: We are not born without context. Mozarts aside, we must school ourselves, absorb, learn, model, mimic and copy before we write, paint, sing, play music, dance, in a wholly new and original way.The struggle to achieve what is original implies its own anxiety. Like Michelangelo’s slaves f marble, will we ever break free? Has American broken free of its overwhelming British influences? And if we have broken free, if we have achieved a unique and American voice, to whom do we owe the credit for the great break with our bi-continental past? The important word here is context. No source is tapped in a vacuum. We are the progeny of forebears; we are the ancestors of those to come.Time being what it is we can only look back. First, review the grim declamations of Jonathan Edwards and feel the anxiety of that faith which rested in an angry God, full of spit, fire and fury, an unhappy parent disappointed in his children, a God in a nominally Christian world, who’s narrowed the avenue of salvation to inches of rock-ledge that can be traversed by so few that a minister’s left with little to do but warn his congregation about how bad it’s going to be when they’re dropped like spiders into the eternal flame.Of course, no God is ever as awful as his followers and Edwards’ admonitions are the high point of that drive towards â€Å"purity† which drove the puritans from the corrupt Anglicanism of Elizabeth and James (not to mention Henry VIII who had his own take mercy and forgiveness). If one were to read too much of Jonathan Edwards, one might conclude that the American character is a dour, determined and fatalistic, the unfortunate result of Augustine’s fear dripped through Calvin’s Swiss rectitude by way of Anglo-Saxon provincialism played out in the hands and minds of truly brave pilgrims determined to reform themselves almost out of existence.In short the first expression of America’s self, its character, was a reaction to the wavering, the wiggle-room, and the corruption in late Elizabethan, Jamesian-Protestantism. It is the expression of what one people might attribute to a god who’s angry with the failure of his children. But Edwards’s declamations are not the word of god so much as their expression of man angry with man.Ironically, the supposed anger of this god, by way of Edwards, will move Puritan congregation to embrace a work ethic (Protestant, New England, rural, elemental, purifying) which will stand in opposition to the source of the Reformation, itself – Luther’s reading of R omans which asserts salvation by grace and not by good works. But time passed and America, with its depth and breadth of resourcefulness, its brave and entrepreneurial people who made the move, took the chance, crossed the ocean in search of a better life, and would not be held captive in the ornate chains of those ministers well-schooled in the endless dark night of the soul.Brave people, entrepreneurs, the â€Å"can-do† sort of people who cross oceans are not the type of people to succumb to anxieties. And they are not without humor. Indeed they require humor, because humor is the step-sister of practicality. The ironic point of view, the wit, the clever turn of phrase, the creativity and intelligence of the comedic mode, are often the best means to drive home points and conclusions and directives that might otherwise be lost in the didactic drone of dogma.Ben Franklin gave voice to humor and common sense and practicality in his writings. We look upon him now, perhaps unfor tunately, as a cartoon figure of Disney’s imagination, or that precious gent employed each early summer to dress up in velvet, lace and granny glasses, to walk the streets of Philadelphia and scare children with the stilted language of the poor mimic. But to do so would be our loss. Franklin was a genius.He was a polymath, self educated and like most early Americans, born (as if dropped whole) into a new land affording infinite potential without the â€Å"floors or ceilings† of given classes, gifted with the curiosity and intelligence to make sense out of the new, original American experience, and to express the process for others. He was an inventor, a newspaper man, a man of letters, a political in-fighter, a political theorist schooled in the writings of the Enlightenment.He was a humanist who, unlike his ascetic Puritans ancestors of Boston and environs, believed that humans were of value, body, mind and spirit. Franklin dared to believe, in the most general sense of the lesser-dogmatic theists that man was deserving of something better than Edwards’s angry white bearded, sententious, demanding, unpredictable, inconsistent and contrary God.Through Franklin the American character first developed the genius of common sense, leavened with humor. In the settlement of New York by the inveterate, humanistic Dutch and Philadelphia by the easy, peaceful, sometimes silent Quakers, Franklin, the man who traveled south, denied the anxiety driven, forbidding world view (so often fostered in too-cold climates) that sought to prepare man for eternity while denying the value of the here and now.Through Franklin we learn that man is capable of creativity, here and now, that man can better his station in life, that life is worth living and that process, ritual, form and style (Franklin’s writing can not but reflect some of the 18th Century politesse) are meant to follow function and that substance, rather than appearance, is the determinative va lue.Throughout a review of Franklin’s writings, one is struck by that wave of humanism and democratic values that asserted themselves in the wake of decadent royalties and courts and found their most eloquent expression in the preamble to America’s Declaration of Independence, penned by Jefferson (edited, polished, affirmed, if not ghost written by Franklin. ) Emerson, the sage of Concord, virtually unknown in cocktail conversation today, but for the notion of some salty rigid circumspect New England self reliance, is the American writer with whom all American writers must contend.Like America, itself, full of contradictions and principles that outran its very self, Emerson was an iconoclast, who looked about the beauty of Concord and saw that although the world was good, man made institutions, were, over time, necessarily corruptible and, instead of assisting the individual in his walk through life, ultimately hindered the individual from clear sight, a post-Christian pantheism, a transcendent vision of God’s grandeur and all that can be deduced, derived from that.In a way analogous to the solitary loneliness of the dark night of the soul, Emerson encouraged the brave entrepreneurial American, optimistic, human, and sufficiently wise not only to appreciate the comedic mode of life (i. e. , life is ultimately and always salvageable), but to travel past the thickets of dogma, to apply his gifted and most importantly his co-creative mind to an understanding of the world about him. Yes, the America might be the New Jerusalem, a new place of unbounded physical grace, but the kingdom must be experienced within as well.Emerson’s transcendent view is best appreciated when one posits the pure permeability of the divine through nature and then through the very self. Humanism need not stand in opposition to Edwards’s angry god, but need only accommodate God, affording Him the place he’s had forever, within and without ourselves. Thoreau lived a mile from Emerson. They were friends to the degree that that they could offer and receive friendship.Both were complex, but Thoreau gave voice and body to complexities, contradictions that flowed from Emerson’s first indications of a uniquely American voice. (All men are created equal, and yet Americans buy and sell slaves. ) Thoreau is a photographic negative to much of what Emerson implies. Tough they both lived in this grand new country, Thoreau, the prophet, also recognized problems which would and still occur to this day in a country so bountiful it invited a work ethic as boundless as its resources, size and frontiers.Work is a balm to the anxious and energetic soul. Perhaps it’s too much to say that all work is busy work (though a walk down Park Avenue on a Monday in September might make one wonder), but work and the American’s over-praise of the over-valued activity is a defense to work’s essential nature – a distraction fr om the anxiety of being. Americans praise those Americans who work hard, keep their heads down, work hard, never look up, never question, and might ask after function but never purpose.And these are the workers, the people, the men and women, who live the lives of quiet desperation. Thoreau is a radical in that he goes to the very source of an idea cloaked in so many assumptions and â€Å"givens† that the questioning itself renders him an iconoclast, an eccentric of the first order. Living alone by a pond is nothing compared to asking those questions which might upset the underpinnings of a society too busy to ask anything. Thoreau loafs with the intensity of a Kant.He questions not only the American way of life with its work ethic, but also the proposition that life’s primary value lies in work and that through work (only work) man will find his identity, ultimately his purpose and after this life perhaps his salvation. Thoreau is a â€Å"loafer† like Whitman, but Thoreau does not loaf to escape work, he â€Å"loafs† to escape meaningless work and to question the assumptions of New England in the early 19th centuryThere’s a cliche in the work-a-day world, devoted to the corporate mind and group think that sublimates the individual to the will and survival and perhaps betterment of the group. It is this: Nobody’s indispensable. Thoreau either heard or intuited this dismissal of the human and his efforts (Willy Loman 100 years on), and said: Why do we engage in a system which demands our lives, makes false promises and considers us utterly dispensable? The American work ethic makes promises and offers the appearance of payback to justify itself. Indeed, such a charade is one under-pinning of the capitalist system.We’re promised ticky-tacky houses, country clubs, swimming pools, unlimited credit at usurious rates, nice clothes, the right schools for above-average kids, and of course the magical totem , the icon, t he car, the uber-van, the humvee, the mode of transportation that will â€Å"tell them who we are. † Thoreau anticipated all of this – the uneasy contract by which Americans remain trapped in the first and second levels of the hierarchy of needs while our demi-gods of celebrity and power achieve a self-actualization denied everybody else. Not surprisingly we are then bought off with television, sports, bread and circuses.One of the contradictions in Thoreau is that the assertion of the individual is Romantic, but the means employed is ascetic and classical. To live deliberately is not to live with frippery or Boucher’s swings or the ease of decadent courts. To live deliberately is a radical undertaking, directing the speedy to slow down to take time to loaf and view the smallest, finest things, those effects of creation which in their brief majesty put to shame all the useless memos, briefs, papers, efforts and transactions set down in the 19th Century’s ethos of success and wealth as the outward sign of grace.Thoreau stands in opposition to the America’s madness for work. Walden has changed lives. People have been seen reading it during their rush commutes. Whitman turns within and explodes without. He does not so much challenge the hustle and bustle of the great democratic experiment as he seeks to encompass it, to swallow it, to take it in, because the genius of the poet – this new American poet – is begin enough, grand enough, to express the vastness of it all. Indeed every part of every part is a part of every part.To turn within is to look without, to subsume the All. Whitman breaks the line open. Even a grade student looking at a poem by Whitman and a poem by Philip Freneau can’t help but see the difference in form. The old and tired expresses itself in neat stanzas, century old rules. But Whitman’s lines span the page. They scan and pose propositions only to complete the circle with their o pposition stated like closing a door on a completed whole. The compliment forms the greater proposition.This is a poet not so much of contradictions (though he admits as much), but a poet, like a demi-god, who can reconcile the apparent and real contradictions of life. Does America contradict itself (Slavery – All men are created equal)? Yes. Can America reconcile its contradictions? Perhaps. One war says we have; other wars say we have not. Perhaps it’s too facile to remark that whereas the country was split north and south, Samuel Clemens, born in Missouri, a border state, obtained his unique voice traveling north and south along a river which in its own way sought to hold the warring halves together.In Huckleberry Finn Twain reconciles the optimism and humor of Franklin, the adventuresome self-reliance of Emerson, Thoreau’s marginal iconoclast and Whitman’s reconciled over-soul. And yet, Mark Twain, the humorist, the colloquial voice of wisdom, the woo ly relative we place at the head of the table, soon encountered, as America encountered the cracks and flaws of life, its random terribleness, its self-inflicted wounds.At the very heart of the American character is the mater of slavery, the ludicrous contradiction of eloquence scripted to blow trumpets of gold and light bonfires of freedom that would out-enlighten the enlightenment. And still the ships came from the west coast of Africa. Slaves – bought and sold. These contradictions are essential. They are indicators of life itself and neither America, its character nor its poets and writers are immune.Though we can look fondly on America’s optimism, humor, practicality, favor of substance over form, the acknowledgment that form follows substance, that in America merit counts – we must also look upon the all too common type, born of the all too common fatigue evident in a country that offers just enough in a zero-sum game to keep the citizen alive one more day , for one more effort, for one more expenditure: We know the desperate worker, who expends enormous amounts of energy, convincing himself, fooling himself that what he does has meaning and purpose, that he’s paid enough (as all those bleeding-heart liberal programs for all those minorities don’t get in the way) and that someday, maybe when he retires with a weak heart and a spent spirit, he and his wife will travel the length and breadth of this great country and call to mind something of what that old gay poet wrote – something about atoms and bed-fellows and lilacs This too is the American character – desperate, tired, vain, prejudiced, spent, rigid, utterly human and, for all of it, ultimately forgivable.

Are There Too Many Lawyers

Today we welcome John Nikolaou  to the blog to discuss an important issue: Are there too many lawyers out there?   There is general sentiment in business communities across the nation that there are too many lawyers. Some even look at lawyers with disdain. This does not bode well for law school hopefuls concerned with the job market awaiting them upon graduation. But should they really be concerned? Are students enrolling in law school at high rates? Is there a glut of lawyers in the market driving down wages? Law school admissions statistics show just the opposite trend in fact, with less and less students enrolling in law school. The quality, price, and perceived value of a legal education remain the strongest factors in decisions to apply to law school. As for the job market, while some structural changes to the legal job market have decreased the availability of legal jobs, there is still an oversupply of law school graduates. These factors have combined to force change the legal education field itself. Enrollment in law school has certainly declined.   The American Bar Association reported that the number of enrolled law students dropped by 9,000 between 2013 and 2014. In addition, close to two-thirds of the 203 accredited law schools reported smaller first-year classes in 2014 compared to their 2013 numbers. These trends are not wholly caused by increasingly difficult admissions criteria, but rather the simple fact that fewer students are applying to law school: approximately 55,000 students applied to law school in 2014 compared to the 88,000 students in 2010. In fact, the decline in applications correlates to an average increase in acceptance rates. According to this data, it is now almost 40% easier to get into law school than it was ten years ago.   With rising admissions rates and decreasing applications, why are students not jumping on the opportunity to attend law school? The traditional path for becoming a lawyer is to attend a good law school, pass the bar exam, work off any debt in a few years through a well-paying job, then continue moving up in one’s career. This path is breaking up in several places, beginning with law school. The decision to attend law school is a complicated one: students now more than ever may have the option to attend a variety of law schools because of the dwindling application numbers. However, just because you get into a law school, doesnt mean it is the right decision to go. Some law schools have terrible bar pass or employment rates. Bar exam preparation and the quality of the education are two top concerns for law school applicants. There is an even greater risk of going to a low ranked law school given the steady rise of law school tuition and thus debt: a year of tuition can cost $44,000, even at schools that are ranked low on the U.S. News World Report list, while a diploma from a top-rated school usually costs an additional $10,000 or more annually. A J.D., however, doesn’t guarantee a bar license or a job after law school. Prospective law students have to make sure that they are attending the right school, managing the debt load, and working on planning their career from day one. While debt loads are on the rise, the traditional notion that a well-paying entry level legal job will help pay off law school debt soon is becoming less of a reality. Statistics from the National Association for Law Placement show that the percentage of class of 2014 law school graduates unemployed and seeking work was three times higher than that of the class of 2010. Alison Monahan  notes that the highly sought jobs at â€Å"big law† firms are becoming scarcer: â€Å"BigLaw is probably hiring fewer incoming associates than they did in the peak years before the recession. But numerically speaking, they never hired all that many young attorneys anyway.† She points out that technology has made lawyers more efficient, further lowering the demand for new lawyers at large law firms. The next best alternative is a position at a smaller law firm, however it is more difficult to get a job out of law school at smaller firms since they typically prefer experienced applicants who can hit the ground running. What are left are public sector legal jobs with average salaries maxing out at around $80K a year. Alison also observed that â€Å"for those who start with a low salary, its not clear that it necessarily increases that much over time. If youre looking at public interest work, for example, youre not going to see a huge salary increase as you gain experience.† Given the waning applications to law school caused by high tuition and questionable job prospects, law schools are making changes to their degree offerings to attract more applicants. According to U.S. News, more than a dozen schools now offer accelerated programs as pioneered by Northwestern Law School. In addition to accelerated programs, law schools are expanding their interdisciplinary tracks like the J.D./MBA combination, with Stanford Law leading the movement by offering 27 joint J.D. degrees. Law schools have also made attempts to ease the cost of attendance by developing part-time programs that spread tuition over more years. Some schools have been even more direct with the cost issue, cutting tuition and offering more financial aid and scholarships to attract top students. Elon Law and Brooklyn Law are two examples of such schools. As for curriculum, law schools have responded to the demand for clinical training programs so their students can gain real-world experience before they enter the job market. The recent trends in the legal field have also prompted a change in the law school admissions process. There is a nationwide debate about eliminating the requirement that law school applicants submit an LSAT score and allowing applicants to send in a GRE score instead. The GRE or Graduate Record Examination is a broad and flexible exam accepted by many master’s programs and business schools, whereas the LSAT or Law School Admissions Test is specifically tailored to evaluate an applicant’s skills related to law school academics. The acceptance of the GRE would increase the amount of applicants to law school, but I don’t think that would be a necessarily positive change. We have always said here on About.com that the happiest and most successful law students are those who have a specific interest in practicing law and making yourself study for the LSAT is one of the threshold tests of whether or not you are really motivated to apply to and attend law school. But if you have taken the GRE, it is possible you are  looking at a variety of  graduate schools at once and law school is just an option you are considering. Looking past law school, there is a growing movement to change the bar exam as well. Several states and organizations are advocating the adoption of the â€Å"Uniform Bar Exam† or UBE. The idea is that a universal U.S. bar exam would allow lawyers to sit for the bar once and be able to practice in all fifty states instead of today’s system in which lawyers may have to sit for several state bar exams. This change would potentially make law school become more attractive by  opening up a larger pool of job  opportunities since lawyers could practice in every state. With New York adopting the Uniform Bar Exam in July 2017, the idea that there could be one nationwide bar exam is coming closer to a reality. However, it remains to be seen if other large states, such as California, will adopt this exam or keep their own exam as a barrier to entry to a states legal marketplace.   It is expected that the changes in law school curriculum, admissions, and bar exam testing will cause an uptick in applications for the 2015-2016 academic year. The structural changes in law school and the legal job market, however, are expected to have lasting effect on the field. While the traditional path through the legal profession is becoming less realistic, Alison Monahan, however, says â€Å"the [current structure of firms] creates certain opportunities for ambitious grads who want to start a practice and can compete with larger firms using more efficient ways of doing things.† The general sentiment that there are â€Å"too many lawyers† may have some evidence to back it up, but that does not mean the legal field is dead. There are increasingly more opportunities for students to get dynamic legal training through a variety of programs and, with some innovation and determination, successful careers can still be carved out of the difficult legal job market. For more on law school, click here.