American Bar Association And The Bar Exam - Is It Too Hard To Pass?

You can study (and get diploma) engineering and many other subjects online (many reputed universities has BS/MS programs, or at least parts of it). What exactly is the problem studying law online? who learn anything in the class room.

This is just because this "old boys cigar club" aka ABA is run by control freaks and morons... and states are lazy to come up with their own standards so they blindly follow ABA guidelines.

• From: "George"
• To: California Bar Exam Primer @ yahoogroups.com>
• Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 12:54 PM
• Subject: Bar pass rate under scrutiny

http://www.calbar.ca.gov/state/calbar/calbar_cbj.jsp?sCategoryPath=/Home/Attorney%20Resources/California%20Bar%20Journal/April2006&sCatHtmlPath=cbj/2006-04_TH_01_Pass-rates-scrutiny.html&sCatHtmlTitle=Top%20Headlines

Responses to Bar pass rate under scrutiny

The problem is that the CA bar may be difficult because of the correspondance law schools. However, by making the bar standards higher, more ABA law school students also fail the bar.

Their solution is to eliminate the non ABA law schools and then lower the bar exam standards a bit. ABA lawyers are having to take a tougher bar because the correspondance law schools and they don't like that.

dreamingstream wrote: What do they really mean here? They want more people to pass or less people to pass? Excuse me the stupid question, because I think that only matters to us.

However, think about it, if 90% of candidates can pass the california bar exam, attorneys, you will find that the only client you will get is yourself, maybe the second one is your spouse provided he/she is not within that 90%.

=:)

George Wrote:

Alas, the American Way! Let's find a way to lower the standards rather than come up with a truly effective means of determining whether one can be a qualified lawyer. If the ABA's are so superior, then why are they constantly crying over the bar exam and then once they pass they can't find a job? I know a lot of "correspondence/internet" law students who passed the first try. Schools like Concord and Oak Brook had 76% first time pass rate their first bar exam. Success depends upon the individual. If you really want to hear a lot of first tier, ABA top ten whining, then go to jdjive. You will also see why many of them can't get hired with their noticeably missing moral compass.

I live in another state and I say BRAVO for Caleeeforniaaa......(Sorry Arnold) Why do you see all the big colleges now with those once dreaded "distance learning programs" ?? M O N E Y...30 years ago, CA had non-accredited schools for undergrad degrees and now every school including Harvard has jumped on the bandwagon with distance programs. California has it right and has for many years. Sure you have some bumps along the way and schools like Saratoga hurt the effort, but that is a very insignificant portion of the effort as a whole. Anyone who failed to check out Saratoga or any other school sufficiently has some blame on their own.

The statistics do not remotely suggest that the bar exam is made more difficult to rule out correspondence students.

1. There were appx. 5,000 ABA applicants on the July 05 bar and only 78 correspondence students. Only 17 correspondence students actually passed, so I doubt that the bar examiners need to consciously make the exam more difficult to keep out a host of substandard attorneys. We're talking about a State with a population of 35 million people and only 78 correspondence students who took the bar.

2. Only 196 applicants took the attorney's exam: of those only 67 passed. So, there appears not much of a threat of California being overrun by attorneys who want to move to what is arguably the most expensive place to live and work in the U.S.

3. Of the 200,000 attorneys on the Bar's role, only about half are actually active. This represents about 2.8 attorneys per 1,000 state residents. By contrast, Oregon has about 2.8 attorneys per 10,000 residents.

So, statistically, I suggest that the the California Bar is more difficult because (a) California has 10 times as many attorneys per capita than less populous States, and (b) California simply has a lot more money floating around in its economy, and a lot more litigation. Practicing law in California is more complex and more is generally at stake.

Example: there are thousands more appellate court decisions in the CA Reporters than in the Oregon Reporters, and CA's Code fills several times the number of volumes found in the Oregon Revised Statutes.

In fact, Oregon is such a small place in terms of litigation, that none of the major legal publishers produce any books specific to Oregon law, so the Oregon Bar has chosen to produce its own practice manuals, written by local attorneys who are proficient in the various legal areas.

No, the CA bar is harder, because CA is a prefferred venue for attorneys and the market demands better minimum quality standards.

And, the only question in my mind is whether or not Senator Dunn's proposed bill addresses any of this. I don't really think so, but it's hard to say, because we don't have any proposal from the State Bar as to what it would do differently if it were in charge of monitoring unaccredited schools.

I wonder why that is?

:)

Travis wrote:

Wow, very interesting article. I think this paragraph is very interesting statistically:

• [Gayle Murphy] pointed to a 2003 study that broke down eventual pass rates, over three attempts: 90 percent of graduates of ABA-approved law schools eventually pass, compared to 68 percent who attend California accredited schools and 58 percent for graduates of unaccredited schools.