atifii

Why did a top legal professional fail? Does legal experience actually hurt you then helping you when it comes to taking the bar exam?

heelate

legal experience hinders one's bar exam taking skill

I fall under both categories -- "repeater" and "prior legal experience" -- having worked in the legal field for 20 years before taking the bar exam, first as a legal secretary and then as a paralegal, and in the process working with some excellent legal writers and becoming very familiar with what a good legal writing style looks like. While still in law school I received very high praise from an associate justice on the California Court of Appeal for my legal writing skills (I externed for him during my second summer).
And yet I finally managed to learn the simplistic writing style need to pass the exam, so it can be done.

Some also ask how someone could have raw MBE scores in the 143-156 range and not pass. (Again, I've been there -- in February 2006 I had a raw MBE score of 148, yet did not pass.) The reason is that the MBE tests for a different legal skill than does the essay portion. The MBE tests your ability to apply the minute distinctions in a rule to a given set of facts, which is why there are always two answers that are arguably correct. Both ARE technically correct, but one is the "better" answer. (Personally I did not always agree with what was supposed to be the correct answer, but as I understood that I was working with "released" MBE questions, and my understanding is that actual MBE questions are only released because they are flawed (i.e., the bar examiners realize there is an ambiguity in the fact pattern that really does make two of the answers correct and therefore the question no longer usable for their purposes), I concentrated on learning the minute distinction the question was trying to teach me and set aside any frustration over the "correct" answer being wrong in my view.)

In contrast, the essay portion does not test the applicant's ability to apply minute distinctions, but instead tests his or her ability to (1) spot issues, (2) state the proper rule (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), (3) apply the given facts to the rule, and reach a conclusion -- all at a dead run. So it is quite possible for someone to excel in the skill tested on the MBE, yet fail one of the four skills tested on the essay portion, because that was my situation in February 2006. (BTW, I don't know whether it is mathematically possible to fail all of the essays, get a perfect score on the MBEs and still pass the exam, but I strongly doubt it, as the essays are weighted more heavily than the MBEs.)

I STRONGLY empathize with your frustration, and also strongly agree with your statements that "writing like an attorney will fail you every time," and "great answers written by incredibly bright attorneys fail consistently. " That is exactly why you do NOT want to write like an attorney on the exam, nor do you want to write a "great" answer. The bar graders do not have the time to carefully read a "great" essay to determine whether the above-mentioned four skills are displayed. (More likely they will not take the time even if they have it, given that they are paid $2-$3 for grading each essay and taking longer to grade a particular essay is not economically feasible.) In fact, asking the bar graders to rank "great" essays more highly would make the process even more subjective. What is great writing to one person may be only average writing to another.

I do think your strong feelings about the unfairness of the bar exam may be keeping you from accepting the fact that in order to pass this particular bar exam you will have to learn a writing style that is useless in real life -- there is no way around it. I know it was a huge struggle for me -- I was angry about the situation all through law school (the style of writing most highly rewarded by law school professors is similarly useless in the real world) and for a good deal of the time I was studying for the bar exam. What helped me was viewing it as a challenge. The best way to get me to do something is to tell me I can't do it, because then I will really set my mind to figuring out some way of doing it (a trait that annoys the hell out of my supervisors). And that is what happened with the bar exam. The bar graders said "no, we are not going to let you pass," and I said, "yes, you will." I figured out what it would take to make them let me pass, and it worked.

Source: westlahere

yuenkung

My guess is that there are two main reasons for that:

One reason is that they write their essays and PTs as attorneys in real world would do. When I write a legal brief, I am not going to include a weak argument. On a bar exam, I put everything argument I could think of. If one of the arguments is weak, I would then say "but, a party will likely lose this argument because the other side will argue that ..." and I'd do the same with a strong argument, reaching the opposite conclusion. (It may or may not be a good strategy, although it worked for me.) In other words, those with some legal experience must keep in mind that they have to write as recent graduates would do and forget about the real world.

Another reason may be a lack of preparation -- who would dare to suggest that a scholar such a Dean would have to study for the California bar exam? The reality is that the more experienced you are, the more you become specialized. While a Dean might have written an excellent essay on Con law (which might have also taken away time from other essays), without studying, how much law would she remember about other areas of law which she did not practice, teach or write about?

However, I still don't understand people like Hillary Clinton... Why would she fail?

Source:greatmorton and me