While I was in New Jersey I used the opportunity to go to the dentist. I saw the new guy again. It's sort of interesting - I came into the practice when I was four years old. Which was exactly when this new dentist was born...
Anyway, because he's a recent arrival to the profession his licensing exams are still fresh in his memory, so we compared notes. In some ways dentistry exams are better than bar exams. Like in the fact that they are regional, meaning that he could practice in any state in the northeast without needing to be retested - a luxury lawyers don't have. (He would have to take the test again if he wanted to change regions, though.)
They also contain a clinical component. Now, in some ways bar exams do too, like through devices such as the Multistate Practice Test, where we are given some facts and need to prepare a brief or memo from them. Arguably that portion of the test is a little less "hands-on" than the dentistry exam, but then again lawyers are a little less hands-on with their clients than dentists are anyway.
However the dentistry exam seemed to share the bar exam's predilection for testing on the least common denominator of the practice. For the bar this means that we're tested on all this common law that no longer is in use in any jurisdiction. But because it is not used in any jurisdiction, it's equally wrong in all of them. Whereas if they tested us on actual law of a jurisdiction it would only be right sometimes, and it's apparently better to be wrong all the time than only sometimes. For the dentistry exam this testing attitude meant that he had to perform some outdated techniques.
Now, that would be bad enough if he were doing them on a mannequin, as was the case for some of the skills he demonstrated. But for other skills he had to perform them on a real, live person. Like filling cavities, which he did on his mom and his brother's friend. Of course, after he told me he'd done this on them I got to thinking that it was awfully fortuitous that his mom and brother's friend just happened to have had cavities he could fill for his exam...
Turns out there was nothing fortuitous about it. He, like all other dentistry students, had had to go to great lengths to find potential patients. He did it by throwing a big party and then screening all the guests, and as it was he still had to pay his "patients" $100 for the privilege of fixing their teeth. (Apparently his classmates were also forced to bribe people as well.)
So I guess on reflection maybe law students don't have it so bad. If our tests were more like the dentists' we'd have to go pay people to rob a bank or something...