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bar_passage
The National Law Journal reports that the ABA is likely to approve the interpretation changes to rule 301(a) I previously wrote about:
Amid pressure from the U.S. Department of Education, the American Bar Association is poised to tighten a rule that requires law schools to show that they are graduating students who can pass the bar exam.
The ABA is expected to approve the controversial measure at its meeting in Los Angeles from Feb. 6 through Feb. 12, when its House of Delegates will consider a recommendation from the ABA's legal education section.
There have been no changes to the proposed interpretation, so far as I can tell. As a result, I post now only to update the table with 2007 numbers. Not much that is news here, other than to note Golden Gate University spent the year out of the danger zone.
| School | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
| CalWestern | 63.58% | 66.17% | 54.77% | 61.25% | 68.51% | 69.20% |
| Chapman | 64.58% | 58.82% | 62.22% | 60.48% | 60.13% | 69.94% |
| GGU | 51.61% | 39.00% | 30.34% | 43.50% | 55.17% | 68.40% |
| Hastings | 76.55% | 77.51% | 78.45% | 83.69% | 83.38% | 80.00% |
| Loyola | 67.62% | 68.87% | 66.21% | 72.32% | 73.73% | 77.63% |
| McGeorge | 67.63% | 67.91% | 68.16% | 63.36% | 73.12% | 72.76% |
| Pepperdine | 59.14% | 69.94% | 73.61% | 72.94% | 83.96% | 77.42% |
| SCU | 67.80% | 67.29% | 63.37% | 65.26% | 78.11% | 75.10% |
| Southwestern | 67.82% | 56.25% | 56.19% | 66.55% | 65.77% | 63.37% |
| Stanford | 85.44% | 92.00% | 89.80% | 88.51% | 87.85% | 94.44% |
| TJSL | 46.15% | 47.47% | 40.00% | 36.99% | 50.00% | 57.79% |
| UCB | 85.09% | 90.45% | 86.17% | 84.77% | 84.91% | 82.38% |
| UCD | 74.51% | 80.52% | 74.42% | 73.81% | 74.71% | 83.33% |
| UCLA | 91.82% | 89.08% | 86.41% | 87.45% | 85.66% | 85.11% |
| USC | 80.23% | 80.65% | 78.61% | 81.91% | 85.42% | 87.73% |
| USD | 72.94% | 81.10% | 68.12% | 79.92% | 78.20% | 76.79% |
| USF | 64.24% | 64.94% | 64.40% | 73.71% | 72.90% | 82.98% |
| Whittier | 41.18% | 29.65% | 38.13% | 38.89% | 55.51% | 50.85% |
| WSU | 43.33% | 44.34% | 45.54% | 26.32% | 28.87% | 37.78% |
| ABA Rate | 67.94% | 68.19% | 66.24% | 67.45% | 70.31% | 71.15% |
I've updated the bar passage by quintile table.
Curious detail. According to the CalBar statistics, there were 188 first-time takers from USF in 2007 (22 February and 166 July). There are only 165 in the table. Did 23 members of earlier classes wait to take the bar exam? In 2006, there were 214 (15 February and 199 July) first-time takers, and the school listed only 200. Are they only counting July takers?
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.
Update: 2007 numbers here.
One of the most critical things law schools face, should a school choose to face it, is the American Bar Association's accreditation process. There are 196 ABA-approved law schools in the country. In order to gain approval, law schools must meet a number of standards. Some of these standards address number of class hours, full-time faculty, etc. Others address student quality, or, perhaps more accurately, the level of quality of the law school education based on student metrics. A huge metric is Standard 301(a):
(a) A law school shall maintain an educational program that prepares its students for admission to the bar, and effective and responsible participation in the legal profession.
On June 19, 2007, the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar introduced a new, much tougher, interpretation of standard 301(a). After considerable back-and-forth, the current ratified recommendation could have substantial impact on law schools in California.
This is not a complete description of the new requirements; that can be found in the documents. Some of this information is not readily available. However, the primary metric, bar passage rate, is made available by the California State Bar. And so, for current, fully approved schools, the new interpretation would roughly require the following for continued approval:
- Over the preceding five years of bar exam administrations, the first-time bar exam pass rate of each law school must meet a state-based rate for at least 3 of those years.
- The principal state-based rate is the bar passage rate of first-time bar exam takers who have graduated from ABA-approved law schools minus 10%. That is, schools must have a bar passage rate no more than 10 percentage points below the state average in 3 of the preceding 5 years.
I began wondering about what impact would this have on current ABA-accredited schools in California. More importantly, I wondered how bad the ripple effect of schools dropping out of the approved list could be moving up the chain.
The end result: As many as five current ABA-approved law schools could lose their accreditations. Four schools (Golden Gate University School of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Whittier Law School, and Western State University College of Law) would immediately fail to meet this standard:
| School | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 |
| CalWestern | 63.58% | 66.17% | 54.77% | 61.25% | 68.51% |
| Chapman | 64.58% | 58.82% | 62.22% | 60.48% | 60.13% |
| GGU | 51.61% | 39.00% | 30.34% | 43.50% | 55.17% |
| Hastings | 76.55% | 77.51% | 78.45% | 83.69% | 83.38% |
| Loyola | 67.62% | 68.87% | 66.21% | 72.32% | 73.73% |
| McGeorge | 67.63% | 67.91% | 68.16% | 63.36% | 73.12% |
| Pepperdine | 59.14% | 69.94% | 73.61% | 72.94% | 83.96% |
| SCU | 67.80% | 67.29% | 63.37% | 65.26% | 78.11% |
| Southwestern | 67.82% | 56.25% | 56.19% | 66.55% | 65.77% |
| Stanford | 85.44% | 92.00% | 89.80% | 88.51% | 87.85% |
| TJSL | 46.15% | 47.47% | 40.00% | 36.99% | 50.00% |
| UCB | 85.09% | 90.45% | 86.17% | 84.77% | 84.91% |
| UCD | 74.51% | 80.52% | 74.42% | 73.81% | 74.71% |
| UCLA | 91.82% | 89.08% | 86.41% | 87.45% | 85.66% |
| USC | 80.23% | 80.65% | 78.61% | 81.91% | 85.42% |
| USD | 72.94% | 81.10% | 68.12% | 79.92% | 78.20% |
| USF | 64.24% | 64.94% | 64.40% | 73.71% | 72.90% |
| Whittier | 41.18% | 29.65% | 38.13% | 38.89% | 55.51% |
| WSU | 43.33% | 44.34% | 45.54% | 26.32% | 28.87% |
| ABA Rate | 67.94% | 68.19% | 66.24% | 67.45% | 70.31% |
But the fallout may be greater. The loss of those schools bumps the ABA passage rate up, which causes some collateral damage, taking out Chapman University School of Law:
| School | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 |
| CalWestern | 63.58% | 66.17% | 54.77% | 61.25% | 68.51% |
| Chapman | 64.58% | 58.82% | 62.22% | 60.48% | 60.13% |
| GGU | 51.61% | 39.00% | 30.34% | 43.50% | 55.17% |
| Hastings | 76.55% | 77.51% | 78.45% | 83.69% | 83.38% |
| Loyola | 67.62% | 68.87% | 66.21% | 72.32% | 73.73% |
| McGeorge | 67.63% | 67.91% | 68.16% | 63.36% | 73.12% |
| Pepperdine | 59.14% | 69.94% | 73.61% | 72.94% | 83.96% |
| SCU | 67.80% | 67.29% | 63.37% | 65.26% | 78.11% |
| Southwestern | 67.82% | 56.25% | 56.19% | 66.55% | 65.77% |
| Stanford | 85.44% | 92.00% | 89.80% | 88.51% | 87.85% |
| TJSL | 46.15% | 47.47% | 40.00% | 36.99% | 50.00% |
| UCB | 85.09% | 90.45% | 86.17% | 84.77% | 84.91% |
| UCD | 74.51% | 80.52% | 74.42% | 73.81% | 74.71% |
| UCLA | 91.82% | 89.08% | 86.41% | 87.45% | 85.66% |
| USC | 80.23% | 80.65% | 78.61% | 81.91% | 85.42% |
| USD | 72.94% | 81.10% | 68.12% | 79.92% | 78.20% |
| USF | 64.24% | 64.94% | 64.40% | 73.71% | 72.90% |
| Whittier | 41.18% | 29.65% | 38.13% | 38.89% | 55.51% |
| WSU | 43.33% | 44.34% | 45.54% | 26.32% | 28.87% |
| ABA Rate | 70.28% | 71.31% | 69.40% | 70.96% | 73.37% |
It's not hard to imagine a series of upcoming lawsuits, as well as some of these schools turning into clones of the non-ABA-approved law schools in California, which tend to focus largely on teaching to the bar exam. Things could get very messy.
I've posted the GPA distributions by percentile as of the end of the Fall 2006 semester. The numbers were a lot lower than I expected. That's good news! I slid into the top 10%, while a buddy of mine jumped into the top 5%, helped along by his straight-A semester.
In addition, I've updated the USF bar passage by quintile to include class of 2006. Their performance was not quite up to the class of 2005. Hopefully, the classes of 2007 -- many of whom I started with -- and 2008 will crush them all!
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