Southwestern Commentator

Issue date: 1/1/01 Section: Southwestern Community

January 2008

    One norm in the law student community is progressing to your final year of school and becoming pre-occupied with the impending doom known as the California Bar Examination. Another norm is looking at the most recent Bar passage rates and wondering if you’ll be in the passing percentage.
    According to SW Professor Ira Shafiroff, who lectures for BarBri, a student who graduates from an ABA accredited law school should pass their state’s Bar exam.
    The statistics support his statement, as three out of four first time examinees (76 percent) from ABA accredited
schools within California passed the July 2007 California Bar  The rate for ABA accredited schools outside of California was 67 percent.
    SW students as a whole, however, did not meet the state average, scoring 64 percent in July 2007, 64 percent in July 2006, and 66 percent in July 2005.
This three-year string was actually an improvement over July 2004, when a mere 57 percent of SW students passed the Bar.
    This past December, The Commentator asked SW students: “Do you think that SW is preparing you to pass the Bar?”
    An overwhelming majority, 77.9 percent, answered affirmatively.
    3L Karine Mkrtchyan thinks that SW is doing what it should in terms of  Bar Passage.
    “The courses that are going to be on the Bar are offered at (our) school and students are either required or highly encouraged to take them. I think success on the Bar depends on how much time you put into your studies.”
    When students were asked whether SW could do more to assist them in passing the Bar, however, 86.2 percent of respondents also responded affirmatively.
    A 3L student speaking on the condition of anonymity pointed to SW professors that teach Bar courses.
    “Some (SW) professors that are teaching Bar classes have no passing for teaching that subject, and are just going through the motions.”
    This student continued by saying that some SW professors are passionate about the material and do a fantastic job. These professors “know which areas of the subject are important and need to be covered, they know what’s practical and what’s not, and they organize the material in a way that’s
knowable for students and can be remembered for exams and the Bar.”
    Two other students also spoke anonymously. A
2L student suggested that analytical skills should be stresses more in classes and on exams, while a 3L student thinks that multiple choice questions should be required on exams for all Bar classes because they are excellent Bar practice.
    Professor Austen Parrish, who is helping to develop programs to assist students with Bar performance, says that SW is focusing on both academic and non-academic areas. SW is creating a 3L invitation-only course called Selected Topics in American Law, which is designed to facilitate Bar performance for students most at risk.
    Additionally, SW is partnering with BarBri to develop lectures on campus for the student body at large. According to Parrish, SW faculty and staff are also  working to “assist students with the intangibles,” such as child care responsibilities and excessive employment, which take students’ time and concentration away from Bar prep.
    Shafiroff emphasized that most students who fail the Bar do so by only a few points, and ascribes such shortcomings to “gaps in knowledge.”
    Rather than waiting for a Bar prep course to finalize your preparation, students who score less than a C+ in any multi-state bar course take it upon themselves to review treatises, nutshells, or hornbooks during semester breaks.
    Students who have heard Professor Shafiroff’s famous Bar exam line - “It’s a great experience to do once, it really is” – should invest now to ensure they only experience it once.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools