Bar Passage Rates and Top Law Schools:
John Donahue's blog post on the Yale Effect paper has a lot of interesting claims, some of which seem sound and some of which I'm less sure of, but I was struck in particular by this claim:
UPDATE: I should take this opportunity to link to the world's greatest BarBri parody video. Hilarious.
My colleague Roberta Romano notes that Barondes speculates that Yale law clerks may know less legal doctrine because of the school’s famous emphasis on theory. But Romano points out that bar review passage rates would at least give a sense of whether Yale Law students are deficient in acquiring knowledge of legal doctrine. To test this I thought one might look at July 2007 bar passage rates by school for the single largest state. As it turns out, across all non-California law schools with at least 15 applicants, Yale had the highest bar passage rate (94.1 percent). California bar exam takers from the University of Chicago and Harvard did quite well, but their passage rates of 86 and 87 percent were clearly lower than that of Yale students. Yale law graduates are looking better all the time!Interesting point, although I doubt bar passage rates for Yale, Harvard, and Stanford have much to do with what law students actually learn at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford. In my experience, passing the bar is mostly a matter of how seriously students take their BarBri lectures [UPDATE: Or whatever lectures or books students use] to learn the fantasy world of law that exists only on the bar exam. For better or worse, the overlap between what students learn in school and what is on the bar exam is relatively narrow. As a result, bar exam passage rates don't shed much light on how much law students learn in school.
UPDATE: I should take this opportunity to link to the world's greatest BarBri parody video. Hilarious.
Is this similar to the fantasy world of law that exists only in law school?
Depends on your professor, I guess.
In other words, just as they are able to set aside the supposed Yale approach of theory-unmoored-from-the-law for purposes of passing Barbri, they similarly can suppress it for purposes of explaining the law and advising a district or circuit judge.
I might be missing some nuances of either side of the argument, but I think the bar passage rate is a signal of Yale graduates' ability to analyze, explain and apply the law, skills they similarly should be able to put to use in a clerkship.
Or, they are more willing to live in a fantasy world, whether of legal theory unmoored from practice, or of the bar exam, an argument in favor of the "Yale clerks cause reversal" thesis.
I have no idea which is the case.
True enough.
Reduction in opinion due to plugging evil BarBri: Much (but doubtless temporary).
Day one of law school at mine (Bob's Waffles and Law; no Law parking during breakfast hours) the BarBri hounds were on me to sign up right now! Now! Before prices go up! Now! Now! Now! Or you'll die! And never pass the bar! Aiiieeee!
It seemed that everyone was in on it; the school's dean tsked me for not taking BarBri or whatever else was out there, decrying my certain failure on the California bar. I kept getting pressured by new BarBri reps as the old ones flunked out or quit.
I passed the bar on the first try. I used flash cards (which were great, and used to not be owned by BarBri) and gin and tonics. Bombay gin and tonics help studying a great deal.
BarBri is evil. Don't believe the hype.
--JRM, only now clicking on the video
So while bar passage rates don't necessarily reflect what one learned in law school (indeed I recall hearing what was probably an urban legend about a study involving college grads who took the bar and "passed" at about the same rate as law school grads with similar grades), they DO reflect on one's ability to learn and apply straightforward legal doctrines. If the bar pass rates reliably reflect a superior ability in Yale grads in this respect, then that in turn suggests that judges with Yale clerks are not getting reversed because the clerks bungle traditional legal matters.
No plug of BarBri intended; I was one of the few grads my year who actually had to pay for the bar course, as I wasn't going to a firm, and I thought it was way overpriced for what you got. But it did seem like everyone was taking it.
Congratulations on your bar taking skills. I also took and passed the California Bar on the first try without BarBri or any other course. All the students flocking to the course is really a herd mentality, which I am naturally adverse to.
As to Donohue's claims about the death penalty, I have a discussion here.
I didn't pay one dime for BarBri, PMBR, or anything else. I bought the state books used and the Multistate books used, studied 8 hours day for 5 weeks, and played Texas Hold 'em (the name of the card game is banned here) every single night except for the nights before the exams.
The people I know who failed used those courses as a crutch, and thought that because they attended they knew what they needed to know.
It is 5-6 weeks of bearing down for something that will serve you until the day you die. You have already invested 2-3 years in it, Why not just get down to business and get it done. I could not believe the complacency of some people, and my buddy and I picked out quite a few of our classmates for failure, and were right on the money.
Of those who failed their first time, I would throw most into one of these categories:
- fairly low LSAT scores
- susceptible to panic
- unwilling to work hard enough.
The first category maybe shouldn't have been in LS in the first place. The second often seem to be able to overcome their panic the second time around. But the third category bother me. They have spent 3 years getting through LS, and can't find the six weeks or so necessary to get through the bar prep. Worked with a guy like that until last week, who had passed the patent bar, but had failed the state bar twice. Instead of dedicating six weeks of hard work, he kept failing and blaming everything around him for his failure, except for his own lack of effort.
It does seem to get progressively worse trying to pass a state bar, as you put more time between you and LS. I am facing right now a strong suggestion that I take a third state bar almost twenty years after graduation from LS. Last one a decade ago was bad enough. One problem being that you get rusty on the silly essay question format. Real live clients just don't want to see all the low level possibilities that you have rejected out of hand that are so valuable for essay questions, whether in LS or on the bar exam. Another problem is that you have to sandwich the bar prep in your actual law practice, family life, etc.
Just a factoid. I'm not suggesting that YLS is a CalBar prep course, merely noting that there are various factors at play. And that I've been a law fan-boy for a long time.
I second that. I had to take the Bar twice. I missed it by single digits the first time. The only difference was that the first time I was scattered in my studying, and didn't follow Bar Bri's schedule or instructions exclusively, and the second time I hyperfocused on doing exactly what Bar Bri said to do.
I would even add that the first time I studied for the bar, I actually referred to my law school class notes. That was a foolish mistake, because there are too many contradictions (sometimes subtle)between the law learned in class and the law used on the bar. It's better just to learn "the law of Bar Bri," including their definitions. And instead of creating your own work to do, just do their assignments religiously. It's not fun, but it works. (No, I'm not paid by Bar Bri. This was just my own experience.)
Contracts: The names of lots of Kinky Friedman songs.
Real Property: That stuff from that YouTube video.
Criminal Law: Burglary can only happen at night.
Torts: It is "slander per se" to accuse someone of having a "loathsome disease."
Evidence: The "dying declaration" exception to the hearsay rule
Constitutional Law: The Bar Exam manages to squeeze all of the interesting parts out of Con. Law. You don't remember anything.
I have to disagree partially with your comment that the bar exam does not test what one learns (or was exposed to) in law school. I went to Penn (which doesn't "teach to the bar exam") and thought that there was significant overlap between the material on the bar exam and information presented in my first year classes - property, con law, crim law, torts and contracts. I also thought classes in evidence and constitutional crim. proced. helped with the multi-state portion. It's not that one could not learn this stuff from the BarBri books (or whatever prep material one chooses), but in my case it made preparing for the bar exam easier because I had already been exposed to the material before. Maybe I am an outlier here?
I think this is true to some extent, but what does an exceptionally high individual score mean? Does it simply mean you are good at 'fantasy law?'
California doesn't require graduation from law school to become a lawyer. Why'd you flock to law school for 3 years with the rest of those students when you could have simply studied for the bar on your own? That's just part of your herd mentality, man . . .
It's true that you don't have to graduate from law school, but you can't just take the bar after studying for it - you have to do a four-year apprenticeship with a lawyer or judge, and pass the Baby Bar, and keep records of training to qualify for taking the bar without law school.
I have little doubt that a bright graduating high school senior could pass the bar with one summer of prep. If I could have just taken the bar, I would have (though I enjoyed law school.)
On a non-threadjack note, I do believe bar passage rates are relevant to the evaluation of a school.
--JRM
California analyzes the passage rate for each bar exam umpteen different ways. For example, while Asian-Americans fail the bar the first time more often than whites, they have the best percentage as repeaters.
UCBerkeley/Boalt Hall's pass rate last summer was 82% and they're in state.
Quick note: the people I know who failed the bar exam typically underworked until the last two weeks, and tried to cram. That's not how most people's memory systems work. Bar/Bri is a massive, flawed institution, but if you follow its rough schedule, and read the materials, and don't freak out, you'll pass.