The Science of Passing the Bar Exam

I came across this interesting (and relieving) article today in my web-travels: The Science of Passing the Bar Exam.

The results of this study by Dean Douglas Rush and Hisako Matsuo reveal little relationship between taking classes in law school that cover bar material and bar passage rates. Good enough for me!

"To test this theory, Rush and Matsuo documented every student’s courseload for five different graduating classes at the St. Louis Law School, analyzing the number of bar topic courses taken against bar passage rates the first time the students sat for the exam. Their results were unequivocal: no relationship existed between law school courseloads and the passage rate of students ranked in the first, second or fourth quarters of their law school class, while only a weak relationship existed for students who ranked in the third quarter. Overall, Rush writes, “students in the upper two quartiles passed the exam at an extremely high rate and those in the fourth quartile failed at a high rate, regardless of which classes they took in law school.” The researchers repeated the test in 2007 using data from the Hofstra University School of Law, with identical results (which do not appear in the study)."