The SPPE: What It Is and Why I Almost Said No.

If you’re a law student in Oregon, you’ve probably heard whispers about the SPPE. Or maybe you haven’t heard a thing, and honestly, that wouldn’t surprise me either.

That’s part of the problem.

The Supervised Practice Portfolio Examination (SPPE) is one of the newest pathways to attorney licensure in Oregon. People have already completed it. They’re out there practicing law right now, fully licensed. And yet most law students, and even a lot of practicing attorneys, have no idea what it is.

I know, because I was one of them. Here’s how I found out.

I found out I failed the bar exam on a random Tuesday afternoon, driving home from work. No dramatic phone call, no sitting down first. Just me, my car, and my phone buzzing with the kind of news that rearranges something in you. I don’t remember the drive after that. I just remember that the version of myself who thought she had a plan didn’t exist anymore.

A few weeks later, I went to the Oregon family law conference with everyone from my firm. I wasn’t in the mood for a conference. I was still carrying the fail around like a weight I hadn’t figured out how to set down, somewhere between ashamed and down and, if I’m honest, a little prideful about it too. So when people around me started talking about this new program, something about an apprenticeship, a portfolio, skipping the bar exam entirely, I only half-listened. Pride has a way of making you deaf to the exact thing that might help you.

Then my boss, an attorney who’s been practicing for almost thirty years, leaned over. Alyssa, why aren’t we doing that? she said. Something like, screw the bar exam, it doesn’t mean anything anyway.

I actually started considering it. But I was still stuck on the question underneath all of it: am I really a lawyer if I didn’t pass the bar? I knew, logically, that it’s just a test, an arbitrary hurdle that has nothing to do with whether you can actually practice law well. But logic doesn’t do much against the particular sting of watching people around you pass while you didn’t. I sat with it for a few days.

Back at the office, my boss brought it up again. You could work and get your licensure through this, she said. And then she said the thing that actually got through to me, something like: I know not passing the bar is a hard pill to swallow. I know you’ve got something to prove now, like you have to go back and pass it just to prove you can. But you don’t. There’s a more secure way to get where you’re going, and I’ll support you if you take it.

So I did.

That conversation is the real reason this blog post exists. Not because the SPPE is some perfect, easy alternative; it isn’t, and I’ll get into that later in this series; but because someone looked at me at a moment when I felt the most behind I’d ever felt, and showed me a door I hadn’t let myself see.

So, what is the SPPE, exactly?

The Supervised Practice Portfolio Examination is an alternative pathway to attorney licensure in Oregon. Instead of sitting for the traditional bar exam, qualified applicants spend 675 hours in a supervised apprenticeship under a licensed attorney, building a portfolio of real legal work, client interviews, negotiations, written work product, that demonstrates competency. That portfolio gets reviewed by the Oregon Board of Bar Examiners. Pass, and you’re a licensed Oregon attorney, bar exam never taken.

The program was approved by the Oregon Supreme Court in late 2023 and welcomed its first cohort in May 2024, the same cohort my boss pointed me toward at that conference.

According to the Oregon State Bar, the goal of the SPPE is to provide a competency-based path to licensure while removing unnecessary barriers to entering the profession. In plain terms: instead of asking can you pass a two-day test, it asks can you actually do the work of a lawyer.

I went on to complete it myself, two years after that day in the car.

In the next post, I’ll get into who actually qualifies for the SPPE, how to find a supervising attorney, and the things I wish someone had told me before I said yes.