rakhi

Jay Wiseman put these words in the public for all of us bar takers to think about. Hope you found it as helpful as I did:

Hi all,

Just as a comment about the various pass rates of the various law
schools, a while ago on this list I made a post in which I identified
six factors that were material in determining whether or not a given
candidate was likely to pass the bar. All of these six factors play
a major role, and this makes it difficult to meaningfully isolate any
particular one of them in terms of predicting passing the exam.

The six factors are:

1. The candidate's overall aptitude for the academic study of law --
as reflected by such things as their undergrad GPA, their LSAT score,
their law school GPA, and suchlike.

2. The overall quality of education they receive in law school from
the program itself. (Add in 2a. -- additional legal education they
receive during law school from supplemental study aids such as
emanuel's flashcards, Flemings/Westgroup/ PBMR tapes/cds, and so
forth.)

3. The quality of their in-house bar review class.

4. The quality of their post-grad (out-house? <G>) bar review class.

5. The amount of time the candidate has to devote themselves to law
school study and to bar prep. (Job, relationship, kids, general life
issues.)

6. How much of that time the candidate actually uses effectively to
prepare themselves for the exam (study skills and level of
motivation).

I suggest that ReallyGood student could graduate from ReallyBad law
school and still pass the bar exam rather handily on their first try
by being strong in factors 1, 2a, 4, 5, and 6.

I further suggest that factor 6 is the most important. (To this end,
I have a message that I frequently repeat to my students -- for
every "good hour" of active learing that you put in, figure you will
add one point to your bar exam score. Put in another hour; add
another point. Put in yet another hour; add yet another point.
After a while, they add up.)

Cost isn't a major factor in bar prep. You can buy everything you
truly need to prepare for the bar exam for about $200.00. (For
example: Adachi "Bar Breaker" books for essays, Finz's book or
Fleming's books for the MBEs, and a basic PT guidebook for the PTs --
Tyler's is pretty good.)

Let me add on final thought. While quality of education at a law
school matters, IMO in the final analysis the student prepares
_themselves_ for the bar exam. For example, let's say that
ReallyPrestigious law school routinely gets 2000 applications for 125
1-L spots. Of these applications, 950 are from Highly
Motiviated "Uber-Geniuses" who could self-study law for about a year
and then pass the bar exam without breaking a sweat. These people
don't _need_ to go to law school to learn the law. In fact, doing so
arguably slows them down.

Put another way, if ReallyPrestigious law school can cherry-pick to a
very high degree among its applicants then _of_course_ it's going to
have a high bar pass rate. This being the case (and it is), the
school's pass rate does _not_ in and of itself reflect the quality of
education at ReallyPrestigious.

Plus, the Highly Motivated Uber-Genius grads of ReallyPrestigious
tend to take the WellKnown bar prep program, thus leading to a "high
pass rate" among those who take WellKnown. Raise your hand if you
think that this high pass rate leads inescabably to the conclusion
that WellKnown's program is therefore the best bet.

Taking the bar exam is not a team sport. It's not the candidate and
their law school against the bar, it's not the candidate and their
study group against the bar, and it's not the candidate and their bar
prep course against the bar.

In the end, in almost every case, it comes down to the question of
how well did the individual applicant prepare _themselves_ .

The bar exam is something that, in the end, each applicant faces
alone.

Best regards to all,

Jay Wiseman, JD