Thomas jefferson school of law has 33% bar passage july 2011 Forum

[phialphadelta]

I don't think the bar passage means they're bad at teaching law by itself. That's like saying a tutor who brings students from 169s to a 170 is better than one who brings them from a 120 to a 150 only because their students did better. Who are they teaching? Honestly, the fact 33 percent of the people at TJSL passed the hardest state bar is pretty impressive. If you meet some of the people at these places, hear them speak and track their work ethic, you'd be amazed so many pass.

Thomas Jefferson school of law accepts the same type of low performing student that California Western does...yet TJSL has a 33% passage rate and Cal western law school in neighboring downtown san diego has a 80% bar passage rate.

the reason why? TJSL's make money first approach to teaching law school.

[Lawl Shcool]

Professor's at TJSL like Eniola Akinemowo, the tenured contracts professor, who barely understands contracts let alone teach it.

You def had Akinemowo, got a low grade, and are now just being a sour puss about it.

The school stopped allowing Barbri to come on campus and will not let the Barbri reps make announcements in classes. They instead charge their own Thomas Jefferson law school students another $4,000 to take their "Bar Secrets" course to pass the bar.

If true, this does seem like a legit problem.

I assume from your name "PhiAlphaDelta" that you were / are a member of PAD (the law school fraternity on campus)?

[BadActor]

Get your facts straight - She's a Ph.D. Sour puss is right. Akindemowo is no dummy, quite the contrary, honestly. She might not be able to teach a 1L K class very well, but that doesn't put her in the unintelligent category. I'm not defending her style, just saying.

As to the BarBri thing - that's simply untrue. They are allowed to make announcements, but because it is a competing program, BarBri can't host events on campus and the school won't advertise for them. Nothing wrong with that in my book - just policy and competition.

phialphadelta wrote:
Professor's at TJSL like Eniola Akinemowo, the tenured contracts professor, who barely understands contracts let alone teach it.


You def had Akinemowo, got a low grade, and are now just being a sour puss about it.

phialphadelta wrote:
The school stopped allowing Barbri to come on campus and will not let the Barbri reps make announcements in classes. They instead charge their own Thomas Jefferson law school students another $4,000 to take their "Bar Secrets" course to pass the bar.


If true, this does seem like a legit problem.

I assume from your name "PhiAlphaDelta" that you were / are a member of PAD (the law school fraternity on campus)?

[sunynp]

Get your facts straight - She's a Ph.D. Sour puss is right. Akindemowo is no dummy, quite the contrary, honestly. She might not be able to teach a 1L K class very well, but that doesn't put her in the unintelligent category. I'm not defending her style, just saying.

As to the BarBri thing - that's simply untrue. They are allowed to make announcements, but because it is a competing program, BarBri can't host events on campus and the school won't advertise for them. Nothing wrong with that in my book - just policy and competition.

phialphadelta wrote:
Professor's at TJSL like Eniola Akinemowo, the tenured contracts professor, who barely understands contracts let alone teach it.


You def had Akinemowo, got a low grade, and are now just being a sour puss about it.

phialphadelta wrote:
The school stopped allowing Barbri to come on campus and will not let the Barbri reps make announcements in classes. They instead charge their own Thomas Jefferson law school students another $4,000 to take their "Bar Secrets" course to pass the bar.


If true, this does seem like a legit problem.

I assume from your name "PhiAlphaDelta" that you were / are a member of PAD (the law school fraternity on campus)?

Well, I think the point of the thread is that there is a major problem with the school's bar passage rate. It sounds as if at least part of the problem is the evidently quite useless bar review course they offer. If you are a student there, well, good luck to you.

[tdluxon]

I'm a 2012 TJSL grad and am happy to say that I passed the July CA bar. I'm also bummed to hear that so few of my classmates did also. Here's my take on what I think happened...

First off, it's no secret that TJSL is a lower tier school with a lot of students having lower LSAT scores. While people like to argue that LSAT scores don't mean anything or show how good of an attorney you will be, they do indicate how well you do at taking tests and working under pressure/stress. Low LSAT scores = poor test takers = low bar scores... You don't have to be a genius to figure that out, or to realize that if you struggled on previous tests, you'll struggle on the hardest, most pressure packed test that you'll probably ever take, the CA bar.

Next, I'll say that I paid out of my pocket to take the full barbri program separate from school after May graduation. In my opinion, this was crucial, and my passing the bar has as much to do with that as anything I did at school. The bar is a whole beast unto itself and you should study as such.

TJSL has its own bar prep program, called "Bar Secrets" which is based on materials from Themis, and taught by "Prof's" Johnson and Sacuzzo. It took this program during my last semester to prep for Barbri. It is a TOTAL JOKE!!!! The books/materials you get aren't even a tenth of what you get with barbri (granted barbri gives you more than you could ever use) and Johnson and Suck-uzzo are the two worst teachers I have seen since elementary school. They're pep talks and BS totally remind me of the old "Spartan Cheer" skits that Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri used to do on SNL. They are not real professors, they teach a no credit 1L class called SUMMIT that is basically like a welcome to law school thing for new students (and they suck at that). I have no idea why they got put in charge of the Bar prep program but it is a terrible idea. The rest of my professors and classes were great, but I would never rely on these professor rejects to prepare me for the bar.

So anyways, I guess my point is that going to TJSL is not going to prevent you from passing the bar. If you are smart and determined enough to pass it, you'll get there regardless of the school you go to. That said, definitely DO NOT rely on only taking the "Bar Secrets" program, it doesn't even scratch the surface of what you need to do. Suck it up and take Barbri... I know it is expensive (I just paid for it) but after 3 years of busting your ass and $100k+ in tuition, etc., there is no point in skimping on the last $3500 bucks. That is called being penny-wise and pound-foolish. It would have been nice if TJSL paid for barbri like Cal Western does but if you want it you can get it.

Also, for the record, I took a class at Cal Western and also interned there for a full year while I was at TJSL... It is nothing special either, and now that TJSL has moved to the new campus it isn't nearly as nice.

Finally, I will say that I smoked weed (medicinal and in compliance with CA law) several times a day during my entire bar prep, and each of the nights of the bar. I'd blaze up and do flashcards in the evening after class. People always think I am lying but it is 100% true, so maybe that is the real "bar secret." One thing is for sure, I wasn't stressed out.

[tdluxon]

Get your facts straight - She's a Ph.D. Sour puss is right. Akindemowo is no dummy, quite the contrary, honestly. She might not be able to teach a 1L K class very well, but that doesn't put her in the unintelligent category. I'm not defending her style, just saying.

As to the BarBri thing - that's simply untrue. They are allowed to make announcements, but because it is a competing program, BarBri can't host events on campus and the school won't advertise for them. Nothing wrong with that in my book - just policy and competition.

phialphadelta wrote:
Professor's at TJSL like Eniola Akinemowo, the tenured contracts professor, who barely understands contracts let alone teach it.


You def had Akinemowo, got a low grade, and are now just being a sour puss about it.

phialphadelta wrote:
The school stopped allowing Barbri to come on campus and will not let the Barbri reps make announcements in classes. They instead charge their own Thomas Jefferson law school students another $4,000 to take their "Bar Secrets" course to pass the bar.


If true, this does seem like a legit problem.

I assume from your name "PhiAlphaDelta" that you were / are a member of PAD (the law school fraternity on campus)?

Well, I think the point of the thread is that there is a major problem with the school's bar passage rate. It sounds as if at least part of the problem is the evidently quite useless bar review course they offer. If you are a student there, well, good luck to you.

I agree... I had Prof Akindemowo, and a lot of students don't like her because she is foreign and speaks with a bit of an accent, and because she is really tough, but she is not stupid, or even a bad professor. Contracts is a tough class/subject anyways and not particularly exciting to talk about but she gets it done in my opinion.

I think the people who didn't like her were just too dumb to understand.

[tdluxon]

[/quote]To be fair, that is for the state of California, which has a notoriously difficult bar that (according to this thread) has a fairly california-centric tone. TJ is located in CA, Y and NU are not. If you look at the states in which these schools are located, it is much closer to 100 percent.[/quote]

Doesn't that point more towards a theory that the Cali bar is just fucking difficult and there's nothing TJSL can do about it but keep plugging away?[/quote]

CA is already flooded with attorneys... What are they supposed to do, make it easier?

[romothesavior]

Sweet necro.

TJSL might be the worst law school in the country in terms of factors like cost, job prospects, bar passage, and reputation. It's in the conversation with schools like Cooley and Ave. Such a total scam and a dump. I don't know how people who work there can sleep at night.

[smelltheglove]

This is news?

[smelltheglove]

I'm a 2012 TJSL grad

Stopped reading when I saw this.

[bruss]

I thank god I found tls when coming across info like this. Like wtf is wrong with TJSL, do they even fucking teach law. Seriously I'm fucking appalled, 33%, how the hell do you manage that. You have to deliberately teach them false information.

[vanwinkle]

I thank god I found tls when coming across info like this. Like wtf is wrong with TJSL, do they even fucking teach law. Seriously I'm fucking appalled, 33%, how the hell do you manage that. You have to deliberately teach them false information.

Well, this was a stupid and pointless comment. Do people really believe the CA bar is so easy to pass that you'd need to actively teach bad information for people to fail it? Even UCLA is only at like 86%, and few people question the quality of education there.

The real problem with TJSL is that folks have this kind of mistaken idea as 0Ls. They think law school will be like undergrad and as long as they show up and study some they can do well. Even the bar is treated like just another standardized test. If you can't pass the bar, or get a job after graduation, that's your own fault, they think. These are the kind of people who go to TJSL, because people who understand the actual odds and costs will either go to a better school, or not go anywhere at all.

[arhmcpo]

I'm a 2012 TJSL grad and am happy to say that I passed the July CA bar. I'm also bummed to hear that so few of my classmates did also. Here's my take on what I think happened...

First off, it's no secret that TJSL is a lower tier school with a lot of students having lower LSAT scores. While people like to argue that LSAT scores don't mean anything or show how good of an attorney you will be, they do indicate how well you do at taking tests and working under pressure/stress. Low LSAT scores = poor test takers = low bar scores... You don't have to be a genius to figure that out, or to realize that if you struggled on previous tests, you'll struggle on the hardest, most pressure packed test that you'll probably ever take, the CA bar.

Next, I'll say that I paid out of my pocket to take the full barbri program separate from school after May graduation. In my opinion, this was crucial, and my passing the bar has as much to do with that as anything I did at school. The bar is a whole beast unto itself and you should study as such.

TJSL has its own bar prep program, called "Bar Secrets" which is based on materials from Themis, and taught by "Prof's" Johnson and Sacuzzo. It took this program during my last semester to prep for Barbri. It is a TOTAL JOKE!!!! The books/materials you get aren't even a tenth of what you get with barbri (granted barbri gives you more than you could ever use) and Johnson and Suck-uzzo are the two worst teachers I have seen since elementary school. They're pep talks and BS totally remind me of the old "Spartan Cheer" skits that Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri used to do on SNL. They are not real professors, they teach a no credit 1L class called SUMMIT that is basically like a welcome to law school thing for new students (and they suck at that). I have no idea why they got put in charge of the Bar prep program but it is a terrible idea. The rest of my professors and classes were great, but I would never rely on these professor rejects to prepare me for the bar.

So anyways, I guess my point is that going to TJSL is not going to prevent you from passing the bar. If you are smart and determined enough to pass it, you'll get there regardless of the school you go to. That said, definitely DO NOT rely on only taking the "Bar Secrets" program, it doesn't even scratch the surface of what you need to do. Suck it up and take Barbri... I know it is expensive (I just paid for it) but after 3 years of busting your ass and $100k+ in tuition, etc., there is no point in skimping on the last $3500 bucks. That is called being penny-wise and pound-foolish. It would have been nice if TJSL paid for barbri like Cal Western does but if you want it you can get it.

Also, for the record, I took a class at Cal Western and also interned there for a full year while I was at TJSL... It is nothing special either, and now that TJSL has moved to the new campus it isn't nearly as nice.

Finally, I will say that I smoked weed (medicinal and in compliance with CA law) several times a day during my entire bar prep, and each of the nights of the bar. I'd blaze up and do flashcards in the evening after class. People always think I am lying but it is 100% true, so maybe that is the real "bar secret." One thing is for sure, I wasn't stressed out.

That's the answer. end of discussion. TJSL has an abnormally bad passage rate even accounting for low quality incoming students and a hard CA bar. The answer: they discourage their students from using BARBRI and other traditional bar prep courses by requiring them to take the TJLS Bar course which the students have to pay for. The problem is the TJLS Bar course is not any good and because you require TJLS students to take it and pay for it, most students reasonably, will not want to pay thousands more to take a 2nd bar course, again, assuming reasonably but wrongly, that the quality of the TJLS Bar prep course is on par quality-wise with BARBRI.

Sounds like TJLS thought of a new way to increase its income at the expense of its students, through this mandatory bar course, but its backfired in their face because the quality of their bar course is so bad that a ridiculous % of their students are now failing the California Bar. I think tdluxon's experience is very revealing.

[fatduck]

This will certainly affect my decision of whether to go to TJSL.

Sh*t Nobody Says

[romothesavior]

Who cares about their passage. They are in bad shape either way. It seems like a silly thing to focus on, as if getting it up would make it a better choice. Its still one of the very worst law schools out there.

[handsonthewheel]

Who cares about their passage. They are in bad shape either way. It seems like a silly thing to focus on, as if getting it up would make it a better choice. Its still one of the very worst law schools out there.

If you can't pass the bar, you can't be a lawyer.

Even if the school has terrible employment prospects, it's another thing if the majority of students couldn't even open their own law practice if they wanted to.

[bruss]

I thank god I found tls when coming across info like this. Like wtf is wrong with TJSL, do they even fucking teach law. Seriously I'm fucking appalled, 33%, how the hell do you manage that. You have to deliberately teach them false information.

Well, this was a stupid and pointless comment. Do people really believe the CA bar is so easy to pass that you'd need to actively teach bad information for people to fail it? Even UCLA is only at like 86%, and few people question the quality of education there.

The real problem with TJSL is that folks have this kind of mistaken idea as 0Ls. They think law school will be like undergrad and as long as they show up and study some they can do well. Even the bar is treated like just another standardized test. If you can't pass the bar, or get a job after graduation, that's your own fault, they think. These are the kind of people who go to TJSL, because people who understand the actual odds and costs will either go to a better school, or not go anywhere at all.

You are comparing a school of 86% passage to a school with 33% passage bar rate why? To make a point that I should scream foul about UCLA even though they have a higher passage rate then the state of California? As for your 0L comment, you must mean that the kids who go to Tjsl are just inherently dumber and the professors can't even help them. Don't you find it problematic that Tjsl allows minds to go unchanged from 1L to graduation.

This seems to tie into the a greater problem of people confusing personal troubles with social issues. When I use social issue in this context I'm speaking of TJSL as a community. TJLS and the people attacking the students need to understand that once you have more than 50% of the class failing the bar it ceases to be a personal trouble but more a social issue.

[vanwinkle]

You are comparing a school of 86% passage to a school with 33% passage bar rate why? To make a point that I should scream foul about UCLA even though they have a higher passage rate then the state of California?

No, to make the point that joining the legal profession is hard, even if you attend a "good" law school like UCLA. This was prompted by your statement that "have to deliberately teach [students] false information" for them to fail the bar. No you don't. At UCLA they're teaching good information, and teaching it to a pool of solid students, and some people still fail anyway. My point wasn't that you should be screaming about UCLA, it was that even at a good school like UCLA there's a significant number of people who can't pass the bar each year.

Your statement suggested that becoming a lawyer in CA is easy, by saying someone has to be malicious (deliberately teaching false information) to cause people to fail the bar. But mere incompetence (simply not teaching the material well enough) could also cause this, or failure to absorb the information (admitting a large number of students who are statistically unlikely to be able to pass the bar). If there's any malice, it's in the admissions process, by deliberately admitting students who shouldn't be in law school. Once you're already doing that, you don't need malice in education; they're likely to fail in large numbers either way.

This is a social issue. It's a social issue because your mistaken belief that it takes malice to interrupt someone's path from 0L enrollment to bar passage is a collective one, shared by many of the people who attend bottom-rung schools like TJSL. They don't understand that going to TJSL is a mistake, and that if this is the only kind of law school they should get into, they probably shouldn't go at all. TJSL as a community exists in the first place because of each individual decision to attend despite what a bad idea it was. In that sense, yes, this is very much a social problem. But the fact that it's a "social problem" doesn't absolve each individual who contributed to it of blame, and part of the problem here is the number of people who would rather attend bottom-rung diploma mills like TJSL than not go to law school at all.

[timbs4339]

I wonder what percentage of the UCLA students take bar subject classes during 2L/3L, and if the people who fail disproportionately took Law and Basket Weaving, International Law and Basket Weaving, and Advanced Law and Basket Weaving instead of Evidence, Corps, Crim Pro, etc. If UCLA taught to the bar for three years maybe their pass rate would be 95%+

[shepdawg]

I was talking to a TJ student the other day, and she said that the school released stats that everyone in the top 90% of the class passed. She was at the top, so she felt good. I wonder how the spring testers at TJ are feeling right now.

[splitbrain]

I was talking to a TJ student the other day, and she said that the school released stats that everyone in the top 90% of the class passed. She was at the top, so she felt good. I wonder how the spring testers at TJ are feeling right now.

Wait....what?

[romothesavior]

I was talking to a TJ student the other day, and she said that the school released stats that everyone in the top 90% of the class passed. She was at the top, so she felt good. I wonder how the spring testers at TJ are feeling right now.

Mathematically, that doesn't work.

[splitbrain]

I'm guessing they meant to say top 10%.

Even then, I hear that from people at TTT's and TTTT"s and am never sure what the significance is or what I am supposed to take out of that information.