PassTheBarExam.com

One would think that it’s tough to pass the California Bar exam, a three day torture/hazing.

Well, it is!

But for California examinees, you’re more than twice as likely to pass the California exam as you are to pass the Philippines Bar examination. The overall pass rate for the last July’s California Bar was 55.3%.

Here’s a sample question from the Philippines Bar Exam in 2007:

The City Mayor issues an Executive Order declaring that the city promotes responsible parenthood and upholds natural family planning. He prohibits all hospitals operated by the city from prescribing the use of artificial methods of contraception, including condoms, pills, intrauterine devices and surgical sterilization. As a result, poor women in his city lost their access to affordable family planning programs. Private clinics, however, continue to render family planning counsel and devices to paying clients.

(a) Is the Executive Order in any way constitutionally infirm? Explain.

(b) Is the Philippines in breach of any obligation under international law? Explain.

(c) May the Commission on Human Rights order the Mayor to stop the implementation of the Executive Order? Explain.

For more mind-twisting questions from the Philippines Bar Exam, visit THIS LINK.

The next time someone reminds you that it’s okay to have failed the Bar Exam because (insert, here, the name of a successful person who failed the bar) did too, you can tell them that they missed one.

He may have failed the NY bar, but now he can do more to influence the creation and administration of justice in New York. He is David Paterson, and he’s going to be the next former lieutenant governor of New York.

New York Lt. Gov. David Paterson failed the New York State Bar Exam, and he’s about to have new business cards printed without the “Lt.� qualifier. That has to be some kind of record for making lemonade when life hands you a case of lemons.

Of course, if you’re trying to compare yourself favorably to other unsuccessful candidates, Paterson might not be the best persons to use as your benchmark. You might come up short.

As proof that nobody truly fails until they stop trying, consider these things: He was born legally blind. When Paterson’s parents were told by the New York City Public School System that David couldn’t attend regular school with the sighted kids, they decided to move the family to Hempstead, where the school district had no such ‘nearsighted’ restriction. As a result, he graduated from Hempstead High School in 1971 with the rest of his sighted classmates. He then went on to graduate from Columbia University in 1977, and from Hofstra Law School in 1983.

After law school, he went to work for the Queens District Attorney’s Office. We were unable to locate any information as to what position he held in the DA’s office but, because he did not pass the New York State Bar Exam, we know that his responsibilities did not include those of an attorney.

Paterson was elected to the New York Senate in 1985 at age 31. He made history in November 2002 when he was elected Senate Minority Leader, becoming the first non-white legislative leader in New York State history, as well as the first visually-impaired senior member of New York’s state government.

After Paterson was elevated to Senate Minority Leader, he continued his commitment to solve problems for his local constituents and expanded his focus to include problems plaguing the entire state of New York. Having joined a Senate Reform Task Force in 1991, his new position as Minority Leader allowed him to bring reform to center stage. He called for reforms of the state lobbying laws, of state procurement procedures, and of campaign finance rules.

Paterson is nationally recognized as a leading advocate for the visually and physically impaired. He was elected as a member of the American Foundation for the Blind, and also serves as a board member of the Achilles Track Club, having completed the New York City Marathon in 1999. In September 2006, Paterson was honored by the New York Institute for Special Education.

New York’s Bar Exam is considered to be the second most difficult in the nation, surpassed only by California in the percentage of students who are told “better luck next time� (even though each time you take and fail the California Bar, your chances of passing to down).

So the next time you’re inclined to complain about the difficulty of passing the Bar Exam, just imagine how much more difficult it would be if you could barely read the fact pattern. David Paterson might not have passed the NY Bar, but he certainly it raising the bar for all New Yorkers.
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Brian Johnston contributed to this article

Why?

Because twice each year the State Bar hands them a gift in the form of an immensely powerful marketing tool. This marketing tool is easily adapted by each Bar Prep program to fit its own unique style and teaching method, and it comes with an iron-clad, time-tested, guarantee of effectiveness.

What is this Most Powerful Marketing Tool, you ask? Well, rather than tell you, I’ll show you. Click here for the answer.

Yes friends, the answer is the means by which the State Bar inflicted great mental anguish on most of the students just two short weeks ago. Two Weeks Ago! That has to be a record for the quickest release of test questions ever. I wonder if they’re going to publish the “released� high scoring student answers on the same accelerated schedule. I seem to recall that they didn’t post the released answers for the February 2007 exam until after the July exam was over.

But I digress…

The Bar Prep folks must be very happy to see these questions so soon. I can imagine that at this very moment they’re parsing every word and sentence, finding all of the issues ranging from large to small to imaginary, assigning each and every fact or part thereof to one or more of the issues, then building the most comprehensive outline they possibly can.

Or, perhaps they’re just reading the released questions once to get a good feel for the problem, then again for the issues, and then one more time to make sure they’ve found all the pertinent facts. I wonder which it is. Hmmm… probably the former.

The gift part of this equation, computed twice each year, is that after having checked all of the blogs and discussion groups to see which parts of each of the essays freaked out the students, they can sit down in a calm and peaceful environment, with their favorite legal resource open in front of them, and with an adult beverage to the side, with none of the pressures related to time limits, and not tormented by the myriad faces of financial doom with which many bar takers are haunted, and knock out a masterpiece of an answer. They can then offer up this very competent rendering to potential students as an example of the way the students might write if they would only submit to their will and adopt their study methods and writing style.

…and, of course, after letting them swipe the student’s credit card.

For the bar prep course providers, it’s like opening the newspaper to the sports section to see when and where the Department of Fish and Game will be stocking the local lakes, creeks, and reservoirs. All one has to do is to go down to one of those locations at the designated place and time, wait for the fish to be released from the truck, then scoop them up. Of course, the Department of Fish and Game frowns on scooping or netting the fish right away because they add a sedative to the water so the fish stay mellow during the transfer to the tank on the truck then to the water, not to mention the ride to and fro. Netting the slow moving fish would be unsportsmanlike. It would…it would…it would! It would be like always aiming for the grannies with the walkers in a game of Death Race 2000.

But, again, I digress …

Back to my point … the calm, logical, organized answer that the Bar tutors write seems quite amazing compared to whatever it is we passers and losers (or losers then passers) can remember from our mad dash through the problem during the exam. This provides the prep courses with a huge fulcrum with which they can leverage the already angst ridden, insecurity laden non-passers into their programs.

These “sample� or “model� answers are the net with which the Bar Prep programs scoop us up. There’s no rod and reel and fumbling with the proper bait for them. The Bar hands them the net and the students jump in. They go willingly; gratefully, even.

Like in the movie “Field of Dreams�; we’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money we have and peace (and a license) we lack.

Yes, the State Bar has given the tutors quite a gift. And while I’m sure that the best tutors would continue to do quite well even if the Bar didn’t supply this valuable resource, there are others who would see their enrollment drop, in varying degrees, if the Bar didn’t make this twice-yearly gift to the industry. And make no mistake, it is an industry. It’s a very big industry. Based on my limited exposure as an “applicant�, and by simply counting heads in the classes in which I’ve sat, it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that there are a few individuals who easily earn seven figures in what is essentially a part-time job. Nationwide, I can easily see it as a billion dollar industry.

This is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

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Brian Johnston contributed to this article

This week in Los Angeles, the ABA House of Delegates at its mid-year meeting adopted a much-criticized rule requiring that 75 percent of graduates of an ABA law school pass the bar within 5 years on pain of having the law school lose accreditation.

This rule is yet another reason why the ABA’s control of the profession, and who may enter it, should fail under its own weight.

For a good overview of the problem, click here.

Los Angeles, CA 90067 February 6 2008

A new antitrust class action lawsuit against West Publishing Corporation, dba BAR/BRI, and Kaplan, Inc. was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles, Case No. CV 08-810 RSW(Ex). The lawsuit accuses the two companies of illegally dividing their highly lucrative LSAT and bar exam test preparation businesses. According to the complaint, [Read more →]

It appears that the ABA is about to adopt a rule that requires that the at least 75% of bar-takers from ABA accredited schools pass their bar exams, or the school may be at risk of losing accreditation.

The National Law Journal has a story about this issue in its February 4, 2008 edition. CLICK HERE for a link to the full story.

As a practical matter, the ABA’s plan is terrible. It presumes too much of too many students, and doesn’t realistically consider the differences in the difficulty level (or grading curve) of various state bars exams.

This is yet another reason why ABA accreditation as the key to taking bar exams is a bad idea. Let the states set their own standards for education, and let the state bar exams be the key to entering the practice of law.

Jonathan

Attention: February 2008 Laptop Registration

Laptop Registration will begin on January 9, 2008 and end on January 11, 2008. Click here for essential Technical Information you must comply with to register for the February 2008 Virginia Bar Exam laptop program.

NO LATE REGISTRATION WILL BE ALLOWED

Professor James D. Miller, of Smith College wrote an interesting piece on his blog (this link) about the California Bar exam. It begins,

Rather then forbidding these 43.9% from practicing law California should allow them to practice so long as they clearly tell their clients that they failed the bar exam. This way the legal marketplace, rather than the government of California, would judge whether passing the bar exam is relevant to legal skills.

The thread is worth reading, and I recommend you do.

Who?

Oh, yes, that 18 year old who just passed the California Bar Exam (on her first try). The woman who enrolled in college full time at age 11. The woman who went to law school at age 15.

Read more about Ms. Holtz in the L.A. Times. Click here.

The State Bar of California has posted on its website a summary of the pass rates for the July 2007 exam. This is an interesting slip in-and-of itself, however the pass rates are the star.

According to the report (see: http://calbar.ca.gov/calbar/pdfs/admissions/Pass_StatsSummary.pdf), the pass rates are:

General Examinees: 56.1%
Attorney Examinees: 37.3%

The pass rate for general examinees is the highest since July 2001. The pass rate for the attorney examinees is 10.3% LOWER than the February 2007 exam.

Quite interesting.

Good luck to all tonight at 6pm when the results are released to the examinees on a per-examinee basis. The results will be released to the general public via the website on Sunday morning.

Jonathan

Pass Statistics for California Bar July 2007 and Prior