In his post about interviewing for the Florida Coastal deanship, and his later post on preparing at-risk students for the bar at Western State, David Frakt has raised interesting and important points worthy of further discussion. In Frakt's (reasonable) view, any student who achieved a 149 or lower on the LSAT is at high risk of failing the bar exam. Obviously, this is going to vary by state, and many students with a 149 might not truly be at risk (just as many students who score a 151 are at risk) - but it's a fair starting assumption.
Jerry Organ noted that, for the entering class of 2013, 32 law schools had a median of below 150. But a notable 68 law schools - basically, a third of all programs - have a 25th percentile LSAT below 150. And for those of you feeling relief about your school's 25% percentile of 150 or 151 - there are 26 more schools in that category - you might want to dig a bit to see how many of that bottom quartile are in fact below 150. It's likely you have a good number of high risk students as well.
The point is that figuring out how to help high risk students pass the bar is an important, and probably urgent issue at over 45% of all law schools. That's bracing. But faculties and administrations must confront the issue.
To be sure, they have uncomfortably high 1L academic attrition rates - around 25% reported in 2011, 17.5% reported in 2012, and 15% reported in 2013. In 2011 and 2012, the school reported a 25% percentile LSAT of 149,and in 2013 it reported a 148, so those attrition numbers might reflect substantial filtering of the highest risk 1L's. Still, it seems to me that they must be doing something other than failing out weak students.
I spoke with Allen Easley, who is the current dean at Western State, to discuss their bar prep strategies in more depth. In addition to the usual bar prep tactics - academic support and bar prep classes - the law school is using two other methods to bolster the odds of at-risk students passing the bar. The first one, Foundation Law Points, requires students to hit a minimum target grade of 2.5 in 8 core courses. (Western State grades on 0-4 scale, in gradations of 0.1, which may actually be a part of their strategy. They are keen on moving the 2.3 student into being a 2.5 student, something that may actually be easier than moving a C+ student to a B- and, perhaps more importantly, may be perceived by students as more achievable.) Students can get these points in 1L classes and the school isn't so worried about those who do so; they're already most likely to pass the bar. But weak students who haven't earned their 8 FLP's as 1L's will have to keep up the effort beyond 1L year in order to graduate.
Easley - like Frakt - believes that the key here is training students to maintain focused work for three years. The weakest students cannot afford to learn that they can slack off and still survive. In his view, it isn't the school's (fairly extensive) mandatory upper level course requirement that matters; it's that at-risk students never let down their effort. He thinks that it makes the transition to the bar prep intensity easier and more familiar.
The school's fourth strategy is also interesting. They have a bar pass incentive program that provides: a) if a student takes a 3L bar prep class either from Western State or BARBI; b) if a student takes either a BARBRI or PMBR bar review course; and c) if the overall first time taker class passes at a rate of 70% or higher...every passing student gets $3000. The goal is thus to motivate individual and communal action.
I'm curious what other schools are doing to meet this emerging challenge. Are they requiring more upper level courses? Creating new 1L and 2L academic interventions? Paying for bar review? Motivating bar prep?
I will moderate comments to limit them to the terms of this discussion - how law schools can maximize the odds that high risk students will pass the bar. Debates about whether such students should be admitted, or the virtues and vices of particular schools, aren't germane.
Serious question: past standing with the ABA, to what degree is bar passage an appropriate indicator of success for a lower ranked school?
With sufficient time and effort, I could train the average 11 year old to pass the bar in all but NY and California (that would require a 14 year old).
Have I succeeded as a legal educator?
Posted by: terry malloy | August 25, 2014 at 09:46 AM
I'm seconding Terry's question. If you took the average bachelor's degree holder, and just trained them on the bar exam for several months, what would the passage rate be?
Another way to put it is what is this law school's 'value above bar course'?
Posted by: Barry | August 25, 2014 at 10:17 AM
Topic: how law schools can maximize the odds that high risk students will pass the bar.
Options:
1. Give Credit for Bar Prep Classes. Integrate bar prep classes into 3L curriculum. Make them electives for performing students. Make them mandatory for poorly performing students. These classes can be treated like any other class for the purpose of awarding credit hours.
2. Financial Incentives for Bar Prep. If a student takes certain pre-approved bar prep classes (BARBRI, etc.) and can prove attendance/benchmarks satisfactory to the school, then the school will rebate tuition, pay for the bar prep class, cut a check to the student, etc.
3. Establish Bar Exam Related Course GPA. Require all students to take and achieve a specified GPA in an identified set of classes known to be heavily tested on the bar exam of the state where the school is located. 1L's who do poorly as a 1L in these identified classes will either be made to repeat them or have it made clear to them that in order to continue as 3L's they must achieve very high grades as 2L's to bring their GPA's up to an acceptable level.
4. Coaching/Tutoring of the At Risk. Identify potential or actual low performing students. Provide additional academic support for those students either by added group or individual coaching or tutoring classes.
Of course, all of these options cost money. Tuition will have to be raised or other expenses will have to be cut in order to offer these options.
Posted by: confused by your post | August 25, 2014 at 10:26 AM
What percentage of students at Western take Barbri, Themis, Pieper, or other bar prep classes?
The best thing that a law school could do would be to offer a mandatory bar prep semester and prepare sufficient materials and study schedules to move students through to the bar. At elite law schools a significant portion of the class has their bar prep courses and living expenses subsidized by their law firms.
Posted by: BoredJD | August 25, 2014 at 10:48 AM
Want to add to the list: Work on changing the bar to better reflect the skill-set of a 21st century attorney.
The reason that LSAT scores correlates with bar passage has more to do with how we test than what an entry level lawyer needs to be able to do.
There will always be some students who are at-risk of failing the bar, but if the bar actually came closer to measuring what lawyers do, then it would eliminate the tension between focusing on bar passage vs. preparing people to become lawyers.
Change the bar exam and then it will redefine what "at-risk" even means. Maybe more students will be able to pass and demonstrate that they ought to be attorneys. Maybe even more students will fail, and it will indicate failures in law school admissions and/or curricular content.
Posted by: Anon Prof | August 25, 2014 at 12:41 PM
Honestly, as a practicing lawyer I think that while the bar exam does not comprehensively measure what lawyers do, it's not as far off as a lot of critics claim. It's certainly far more representative of the practice of law than the law school curriculum.
Posted by: twbb | August 25, 2014 at 12:49 PM
Twbb, your point is a good one but there is very little incentive to reform the curriculum to better conform to the practice of law since many instructors lack the requisite experience.
Posted by: Jsp | August 26, 2014 at 02:11 AM
@twbb
So long as the bar exam continues to operate in a closed world environment of memorization instead of testing the ability to quickly and competently use books, online research tools, and other materials, I'll stand by my prior comment that it isn't sufficiently representative of the practice of law.
Posted by: Anon Prof | August 26, 2014 at 05:59 PM