Jacob Hornberger: By limiting the supply of attorneys through a rigorous and expensive system involving getting into and attending law schools and then passing an extremely difficult, state-administered bar exam, lawyers are able to keep the number of practitioners artificially low, thereby enabling them to charge higher prices to the public. In fact, as J. Gordon Hylton, professor of law at Marquette University, pointed out at a law conference at the University of Virginia School of Law, the reason Virginia imposed bar exams in the first place as a prerequisite to practicing law was to impede blacks from becoming attorneys, especially since the number of black attorneys was increasing during Reconstruction, when there were no state-imposed impediments to practicing law.