Do current law students need different preparation and remedial study for the outer bar?

The short answers are: it depends; and probably. Why? Because the students, the circumstances and the results of the bars have changed in the last decade.

Traditionally, due to the general difficulty of the state bar exams, most law school graduates had opted to take some type of outside bar preparation course. Despite the rigors of law school and the emphasis on legal analysis, culminating in writing essay exams, the state bar exams were found to be difficult to pass.

Within the traditional setting, law schools had emphasized IRAC (Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion) precepts and thus concentrated their classes on these precepts to culminate in training students to be highly skilled in dealing with , analyze and write essay exams. For those who took the bar exam, this left a void: the dreaded multiple-choice questions called MBEs.

As a result, business firms targeted law graduates with bar preparation courses. Although most companies advertised general bar preparation courses, the courses emphasized how students could approach and answer MBE questions. Obviously, this was the logical extension for these bar prep courses, since those students were already well into essay writing from their three years in law school.

In terms of teaching how to master the MBE, some of these companies were good and some not so good. However, due to these courses, many students were able to successfully navigate the morass of those dreaded MBE questions. To date, those companies that continue to offer external barre preparation courses have stayed true to their original academic/business plan. Therefore, the emphasis of his course remains with the MBE questions.

During the last decade, circumstances have changed. First, as has been widely reported in such publications as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the ABA Journal, and others, law school enrollment has been steadily declining. As a result, many law schools have lower entrance requirements. This change, along with other academic and social changes, has helped create a different environment for today’s law student.

As a consequence, bar pass rates in many states (for example, California, New York, and several others) have been steadily declining. As reported in the JD Journal in October 2015, “Law schools have lowered their admission standards. Fewer people are applying to law school. To maintain enrollment numbers, schools are admitting students with low grades on the LSAT that they previously would have refused. In 2014, the schools saw the result of their action: bar pass rates were the lowest in decades.”

The trend of lower pass rates continues, and law school deans are concerned for a couple of reasons. First, a high posted pass rate is a marketing incentive to attract new students to your school, and if it’s declining, students will look elsewhere. Additionally, for those schools accredited by the ABA, there is a proposal to increase accreditation standards for a school to maintain a 75 percent passing rate, a rate not many schools currently enjoy.

In California, the second-largest state in terms of bar examinees, law school deans have a solution. They have come together and proposed to the State Bar to lower the California bar pass cutoff line from its current 1440 to anywhere between 1350 and 1390. This proposal has created a great deal of controversy and consequently the State Bar Association commissioned several studies and conducted opinion polls of lawyers. , students and the general public.

A detailed report was produced and recently submitted to the State Supreme Court for decision. In the report, the State Bar recommends keeping the court step line at 1440 and commissioning more study, while the law school deans’ committee recommends lowering the court step line. Looking at public opinion polls, more than 80 percent of current lawyers support keeping the current cut-off line or raising it, while nearly 55 percent of the general public agree, and only about 20 percent of current law students want to keep the current court line. cutting line.

In addition, the Board of Trustees of the California State Bar has recently declared “public protection” as one of the most important missions of the State Bar, and “public protection” was also at the forefront of the discussion on lowering the cut-off line to pass the bar exam. . Given the “public protection” issue, coupled with the State Bar recommendation and public opinion polls, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that the California Supreme Court will not lower the cutoff line.

However, an interesting fact emerged from all this analysis: in general, the decrease in the passing rate of the bar is not due to lower scores on the MBE. In fact, the pass rate for MBE questions alone has remained relatively constant over the last twenty years. The lower bar pass rates were determined to be due to a higher rate of failure on essay questions.

This revelation started the blame game. As discussed in recently published journals, some authors attribute poor essay writing to lower standards in law schools. Others point fingers at the general knowledge and writing skills of “those Millennials.” And others say it is a combination of both.

Frankly, I don’t see any positive results in spending energy on pointing fingers. It would be better to spend the time finding a solution. From my point of view, the best solution would be one that solves the problem of the lower passing rate of the bar and preserves the “public protection”.

Examining the problem a little more closely, what has emerged are four factors that are causing the lower essay grades: students are having a hard time following the call of the question; they do not detect a sufficient number of problems in fact patterns; they find it difficult to apply the law to the facts and analyze them; and his grammar and spelling is not up to par.

The last factor, some call it the “millennial” factor. This is because today text messages, tweets, Instagram apps, and emails are the main form of writing. As a result, good composition writing is fast becoming a lost art, especially the ability to logically and critically express what is at stake. As for the first three factors, they are skills that are traditionally developed in law school.

The merging of these events has shown the need for remedial law school tutorials, but more importantly, better and different prep courses for the law that stand on their own, separate from the academic work of law school and provide all the skills necessary to pass the college exam. This is a solution that would satisfy both the lower approval rate and the public protection aspects of the problem.

As a result, a new company has recently emerged to address these new problems. The company, Side-Bar, has introduced both a law school remedial program and a new principal-based bar exam preparation program never before offered to the law student. Each of the programs is independent and all-inclusive. They are 100% online, at your own pace and contain no lectures to attend or listen to.

According to the company, its programs include new methods of learning and retaining the law, while teaching new methods of how to master: essay writing; performance reviews; and MBE multiple choice questions, including never-before-published tips.

Their bar preparation course, in addition to having a comprehensive MBE program, delves into the art of essay writing and guides students through a step-by-step process broken down by topic, giving them the skills needed to write quality essays. and finally approve. the bar exam.