Law Blog - WSJ.com : Law-School Curricula & Passing the Bar:

Do the classes law students take have any correlation to bar passage rates?

No, according to a new study highlighted on the NYT Freakonomics blog, run by ersthwhile lawyer and Opinionistas blogger Melissa Lafsky (who has quite the Wikipedia entry).

Douglas Rush, assistant dean at St. Louis Law, has co-written the paper scheduled for publication in the upcoming Journal of Legal Education and entitled “Does Law School Curriculum Affect Bar Examination Passage?” The authors documented every student’s courseload for five different graduating classes at St. Louis Law, analyzing the number of bar topic courses taken against bar passage rates for first-time takers. There was virtually no correlation between law school courseloads and the bar passage rates.

It's always a hot topic. People are fanatical about it, and there's often little middle ground. One camp believes bar electives are near mandatory; the other -- where I have been -- believes they're a waste of time given the breadth of the bar exam coverage and the time we will all be spending in BarBri. Right now, I'm considering only one bar elective, and I occasionally even have second thoughts about it.

People can return to this post and laugh if I don't pass.