Some Thoughts on the California Bar Exam

The July 2016 California Bar Examination results by law school were recently released. See the story here  and more granular data here. 

The overall performance of the the 21 (!) ABA law schools in California was dismal.  The average first time pass rate for graduates of ABA accredited schools was just 62%.  

Reviewing the results, I have a few observations:

1.  Law school Deans in California are up in arms, with many complaining bitterly about how unreasonably difficult the California bar exam has become. I think they have a valid point.  It appears to me that the California Bar is unjustifiably difficult to pass.  Large numbers of students with very good LSAT scores and very good grades from very good law schools are failing the exam, and that is not necessary to protect consumers from incompetent attorneys.  I believe the cut line should be set so at least 8-10% more takers pass the exam.  This would still make California one of the more difficult bar exams in the country.    By comparison, 83% of ABA law school grads passed the New York bar on their first attempt this July, a 21% higher rate.   New York has a very similar range of law schools as California so the groups taking the bar exam had virtually identical aptitude.  But tougher grading by the bar does not account for the significant drop in the California pass rate in recent years.  Rather, the majority of the decrease in performance comes from the dramatically lowered admissions standards at California law schools which started in 2011, accelerated in 2012, and reached record lows in 2013, when most of the students who took the bar this summer entered law school (unfortunately, this trend continued in 2014 and 2015; no word yet on the entering class of 2016, but it is unlikely to be much better).   The drop in performance on the bar was entirely predictable, and, in fact, I predicted a significant state-wide drop in California’s pass rate in a presentation I gave to the National Conference of Bar Examiners last spring because so many  schools there had dramatically lowered their admissions standards in 2013.

2.  LSAT scores matter – if you look at the pass rates, with a couple of notable exceptions, they track the selectivity of the school in terms of LSAT scores and UGPA of the entering class of 2013.  In the chart below, I compare the LSAT profiles of the entering class of 2013 with the pass rate on the July 16 bar.

Law School	July 16 FT Pass Rate	Bar Pass Rank	LSAT 25/50/75	LSAT Rank
Stanford	91	1	173/171/169	1
USC	88	2	167/166/163	3
UC Berkeley	84	3	169/167/163	2
UCLA	82	4	169/167/162	4
UC Irvine	81	5	166/164/162	5
Loyola	72	Tie 6-7	161/159/156	Tie 7-8
UC Davis	72	Tie 6-7	164/162/159	6
USD	71	8	161/159/156	Tie 7-8
Pepperdine	70	9	162/160/154	Tie 11-12
Santa Clara	66	10	160/157/155	Tie 11-12
Cal Western	61	Tie 11-12	154/151/148	16
McGeorge	61	Tie 11-12	159/154/151	13
Chapman	57	13	160/158/155	10
UC Hastings	51	14	163/159/155	9
Western State	42	15	152/150/148	17
Southwestern	38	16	155/152/150	15
San Francisco	36	17	158/153/151	14
Golden Gate	31	Tie 18-20	153/150/147	18
La Verne	31	Tie 18-20	152/147/146	19
T. Jefferson	31	Tie 18-20	149/146/144	21
Whittier	22	21	152/149/145	20

As you can see, bar pass rates closely track the ranking of the school by LSAT rank.  In fact, 17 of 21 schools had a bar pass ranking within 2 places of their LSAT rank.   Only one school noticeably outperformed its predictors, Cal Western, which outperformed four law schools with higher LSAT scores.  Three law schools noticeably underperformed, UC Hastings, which was surpassed by five law schools with students with weaker entrance credentials, and San Francisco and Chapman which were outperformed by three schools with lower LSATs.

3. These results place a number of school in jeopardy of failing to meet the proposed new ABA standard of 75% of graduates passing the bar within two years of graduation.  Law School Transparency estimates that a school will need above a 60% first time pass rate to be reasonably assured of hitting 75% within two years.  Given the quality of their students, Chapman, at 57%, has a good shot of making it, if they can maintain their repeater passing rate of 52%. UC Hastings, at 51%, also could still make it. With the quality of students they admitted, they should be able to sustain their repeater pass rate of 48%.  However, the math does not favor the bottom seven schools making it to 75% within 2 years, at least in California, assuming California maintains the current level of difficulty on the exam.

4. Schools in California should not admit large groups of students with LSATs at 147 or lower, and should be very selective with the 148s and 149s they admit, ensuring that they have above average grades. All five schools with a median LSAT of 150 or lower (meaning up to 49% could be below 150) had a pass rate at 42% or below.

5. Even if schools are admitting students who have a reasonable likelihood of success, schools that lower their admission standards have to change the way they teach and prepare students for the bar. In 2011, USF had an LSAT of 159/157/155.  Their California bar pass rate in 2014 was 62%.   When they dropped to 158/153/151 in 2013, they dropped to 36%.  In 2011, Southwestern had an LSAT profile of 157/154/152. Their California bar pass rate in 2014 was 56%.  When they dropped to 155/152/150 in 2013, their bar pass rate dropped to 38%.  These results suggest to me that these schools failed to adjust for the lower aptitude of their students. Students below the median LSAT (between 151 and 152) must be made to work much harder and need a much more bar-focused curriculum.  As the results at Chapman and UC Hastings demonstrate, even students with a 155 LSAT are at some risk of failure if they are not properly prepared, or do not perform to their full potential.  

6. Once again, my LSAT score risk bands (reproduced below for your convenience) have been validated.

David Frakt’s LSAT Score Risk Bands 

156-180           Minimal Risk

153-155           Low Risk

150-152           Modest Risk

147-149           High Risk

145-146           Very High Risk

120-144           Extreme Risk

7.  Whittier is a total disaster. Some interesting facts:  Whittier had more repeat takers than first-time takers (174 to 112) and its repeat takers passed at a dismal but still higher rate than its first time takers.   Whittier’s pass rate could very easily get worse before it gets better, because their 2014 entering class credentials were significantly worse across the board than the 2013 group that just took the bar, at 150/146/143 compared to 152/149/145.  Whittier should immediately be placed on probation for violating ABA Standard 301 and 501, as the ABA recently did with Charlotte Law.  There was never a good faith basis to believe that students with that kind of aptitude had a reasonable likelihood of success on the bar exam, especially in California where the overwhelming majority of Whittier students have always taken the bar.   To put things in perspective, Whittier matriculated 169 full time students in 2013, and 31 part time students in 2012 with similarly weak credentials.  While a small handful may have transferred to other schools and passed the bar, if we assume the 112 first time takers and 25 passers from the July 2016 bar came from this cohort of 200, that means just 12.5% (or 1 in 8) of the students who started at Whittier completed their degree on time and passed the bar on their first attempt.  Whittier must not be allowed to get away with this. Although there is some evidence that Whittier has recognized the error of its ways and is voluntarily attempting to turn things around, they should nevertheless be sanctioned for their egregious violations of the recent past.   Incidentally, I also predicted Whittier’s horrific performance.

8.  Thomas Jefferson should also be sanctioned immediately.  

Comments

[David Frakt]

anon -

To the extent that I have any influence over the ABA, which is not much, I encourage them to enforce their standards rigorously with respect to Golden Gate, Whittier and any other law school that appears to be out of compliance with ABA standards. I'm not sure what else I can say or do.

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

Hello out there. Can any California shlepper solo attorney tell us if there are any billboards out there advertising $49.00 traffic ticket defense?

[PaulB]

Captain, I'm not in the category you asked for but am an avid reader of billboards out here as I creep along in traffic. I can not recall a single attorney billboard of any type out here. Of course it could be that tech has pushed up the cost of billboard advertising as well as housing here and that other than the occasional beer ad, no other industry can afford to use this medium.

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

Illinois is loaded with legal advertising billboards. So is Detroit. Especially PI, Bankruptcy, SSi Disability and Divorce. Maybe California is underserved and there is a law school gap? The ad rates for billboards are surprisingly affordable in Illinois; well within my Capital One credit limit.

[anon]

David

Your efforts are appreciated, and I do not say that sarcastically. I do think that focus on the inefficacy of prior probationary periods is essential, however, and perhaps your cognizance of recent history is now more rounded.

Golden Gate seems to show up on every list at the very bottomest bottom, and nothing seems to get thru to the faculty and administrators there. Will we hear anything but rationalizations from those who, by reason of abysmal bar pass and job placement rates, have truly performed so poorly as law school administrators and educators?

To be sure, Golden Gate is not unique in its institutional failure, but, most folks who rail against certain law schools seem to be oblivious to this particular failed institution's history of ABA involvement.

It is the failure of the ABA's weak and ineffectual prior attempts to remedy such failures that deserves attention now. It isn't just that the ABA is fiddling while students are subjected to failed law schools' attempts to provide a legal education, it is that the ABA, even now, lifts not a finger to do ANYTHING in the face of what you have accurately described above with respect to, e.g., Golden Gate.

It seems to me to be fair to single out a particularly poor performer (as any law school does every day with respect to academic disqualifications) and ask whether the rules are being enforced fairly and evenly, and whether prior enforcement attempts have proved only temporarily fruitful.

Golden Gate may be the school that will tell the tale. If the ABA doesn't act, then action should be taken to divest the regulatory authority of the ABA.