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California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

nytimes.com

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Re: California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

#31

Post by blatherard »

matt4077 wrote: post #18
blatherard wrote: post #8

I was surprised that this article doesn't mention that California is one of the few states that allow graduates of unaccredited law schools to sit for the bar exam. My understanding is that the bar passage rate for graduates of these programs was much lower than that of ABA-accredited institutions. Edit: I found an article with some numbers: http://abovethelaw.com/2016/11/californias-bar-exam-passage-... The breakout…

The article itself says: "Last year, just 62 percent of first-time test takers passed the California bar exam, compared with 83 percent in New York." The 83% are also in your data if you focus on the ABA schools only. That means failure rates are 17% and 38%, respectively, or a factor of 2.2x. The student populations of NY and CA are probably comparable, and in any case, as the article points out, the tests are large…

Sorry, I looked just at the February numbers. You're right.

Re: California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

#32

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

faccacta wrote: post #14

Bar passage rates are falling because law schools have become increasingly theoretical. Many law professors have never had actual clients who pay them for legal work, or have worked as lawyers in the real world for less than five years. These profs are producing interesting academic scholarship but they are increasingly isolated from the legal profession. Law school classes, perhaps as result, tend not to teach what…

No,law schools have massively expanded and lowered standards in order to keep up enrollment. As a consequence fewer students pass the bar.

Re: California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

#33

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

simonsarris wrote: post #17

Because the schools are passing/producing more bad grads than ever, probably, regardless of total enrollment numbers. There are two rough ways to take this: A. The bar is needlessly high, its just gatekeeping credentialism B. The median school output (the median grad) is increasingly worse. I think the actual issue is B. I think its worse than most people want to admit. It stuck out to me when I was doing a little re…

Yes it's B, read law school scam blogs to get the full impact.

Re: California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

#34

Post by rhino369 »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #12

Coming from a lawyer who passed Illinois in 2004 and took California's bar in 2014, I can say that for my CA test, the passage rate for attorneys barred in other states was around 20% (if I recall). California has differences in its laws that make it naturally harder than the "collective norm." Further, part of that low passage rate is because of two factors: 1) most attorneys already barred work full time, thus stud…

The biggest reason is the minimum passage score is just higher in California. When you normalize the scores between States, California is basically a standard deviation harder than NYC or Illinois.

Re: California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

#36

Post by cylinder »

faccacta wrote: post #14

Bar passage rates are falling because law schools have become increasingly theoretical. Many law professors have never had actual clients who pay them for legal work, or have worked as lawyers in the real world for less than five years. These profs are producing interesting academic scholarship but they are increasingly isolated from the legal profession. Law school classes, perhaps as result, tend not to teach what…

Lol, no, the bar exam is theory too. Average LSAT scores for applicants have dropped because smarter people caught on and realized law school is one of the biggest scams out there today.

Re: California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

#37

Post by NTDF9 »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #12

Coming from a lawyer who passed Illinois in 2004 and took California's bar in 2014, I can say that for my CA test, the passage rate for attorneys barred in other states was around 20% (if I recall). California has differences in its laws that make it naturally harder than the "collective norm." Further, part of that low passage rate is because of two factors: 1) most attorneys already barred work full time, thus stud…

Sounds like tech coding interview process.

Re: California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

#38

Post by gaius »

ryandrake wrote: post #20
faccacta wrote: post #14

Bar passage rates are falling because law schools have become increasingly theoretical. Many law professors have never had actual clients who pay them for legal work, or have worked as lawyers in the real world for less than five years. These profs are producing interesting academic scholarship but they are increasingly isolated from the legal profession. Law school classes, perhaps as result, tend not to teach what…

I wonder how many Computer Science professors out there used to be real "in-the-weeds" practicing software engineers.

Or English professors are successful novelists or journalists...

Re: California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

#39

Post by rhino369 »

IncRnd wrote: post #11

> The move follows a sometimes furious debate in California legal circles over whether the state’s passing score, or “cut score” — 144 — was unrealistic. If the passing score were unrealistic, there would be no lawyers in CA. Since there are lawyers in CA, the passing score is both realistic and achievable. I'm not an attorney in CA, but I imagine the score measures both intelligence and knowledge in the field. Why s…

My calc 3 professor once said that he could make a test where everyone got a 100% or where everyone got a 0%, but neither test would tell him anything about the classes skill.

The bar exam isn't designed for people to get 100%. They pick 10-20 different topics and test you on them. Virtually nobody knows all the answers. And nobody needs to know all the answers. Most attorneys will use maybe 1-3 of those topics on a daily basis. And you don't operate without reference materials in the real world. At one point I memorized what the requirements for a legal cheque, but I'd look it up in a book if I needed to know now.

If you actually made of test of basic legal principles that all lawyers should know, it would probably be an easier test. The hardest part of the bar exam is the scope of the material.

I think a high barrier for becoming a lawyer is a good thing. But the bar exam is the wrong time to make the cut. The person already spent 3 years and maybe hundreds of thousand of dollars.

If California wants to make sure their lawyers are smart, they should just require an LSAT score of 155+ to get barred. There is a very high LSAT / Bar exam correlation and you weed people out before they waste 7% of their career.

Re: California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass

#40

Post by praneshp »

ende wrote: post #26
larrik wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer Science isn't Software Engineering...

Not sure why you're getting down-voted, you're absoluteley right.

In my opinion, it's just a low hanging fruit some people like to hit. It's pretty clear what the GP comment meant. Comments like that make HN worse (IMO) than the pun threads on the Juicero article earlier today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14771084).
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