Cal Bar Fail -- How can anyone do this over??? Forum

[waxecstatic]

"Come from a good school, but near bottom of the class."

Exactly. There's a good bit of research out there that suggests that class standing is the single best predictor of first-time Bar exam success. What school you went to matters much less and what classes you took after the first year may not matter at all. Bottom quarter of the class spells trouble on the Bar almost no matter what.

You are not alone of course. In California especially, a large fraction of first-time takers fail.

What to do? Well, I don't know of much good research on that but law school grades are largely determined by how well you issue-spot, analyze, and express your analysis in writing. This makes sense because it's much of what lawyers actually do.

I would suggest a writing tutor. You need to write and write and write and write between now and your next attempt. "Mediocre" MBE scores suggest that you already know enough law.

This is going to be expensive and time-consuming but once you pass, you are done with it and can go on to a successful and rewarding career in the law having learned better writing skills in the process. You can do this. It just won't come as easily to you as it might to another.

Good luck!

I think you're forgetting that he's looking for advice and not a regurgitation of something we've heard 8,000 times. Yes, class standing correlates with how you do on the Bar. Don't think anyone ever questioned this statistic. I know you gave out some generic advice at the end, probably unintentionally condescendingly with the whole "it doesn't come as easy to you", but for real, telling someone they fit in with statistics is pretty fucking stupid.

[BeautifulSW]

Yeah, maybe you're right.

Would be better to advise 1Ls doing poorly to reconsider their career choices.

[abcdee]

I just contacted Multistate Edge because I thought they had close to 2900 mbe questions. However it appears they changed this back in October and now only have 500 released NCBE questions. What the hell are they good for now? I'm hoping they are wrong however when I log in, I only see roughly 500. F this program should have just gotten adaptibar.

[narfkarta]

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