Law school educators, practitioners and even a student expressed concerns Tuesday about scrapping the state's current bar exam and adopting a test used in more than a dozen other states.

The testimony, which questioned the worth of a “portable” law license, the potential impact on minority students and readiness of law schools, came at the first of three hearings on adopting the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) in New York at the City University of New York School of Law.

In October, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman proposed the state adopt the UBE used in 14 other states, mostly west of the Mississippi River. New York would be the largest, most prominent state to use the exam.