MBE average score at 33-year low Forum

[ReachTheBar79]

I don't think the bar is at all relevant to someone's practice ability, but it is weird to tell someone who's practiced for 8 years that they're not in a position to know what clients want.

No one said that someone who practiced for 8 years doesn't know what clients want. All that was said is that just because someone has practiced for 8 years doesn't mean that he knows more about what clients want than anyone else.

Then I'll clarify that it seemed weird for someone who hasn't practiced to be challenging someone who has.

I'm not saying RM wasn't being a dick in other ways but I think he was getting antagonized.

Yeah a guy who says that he could pass any bar exam was being antagonized. Sounds about right. Haha.

Someone who has practiced law can be challenged. No one is on a pedestal here.

All I'm saying is that he didn't go down that road until you dismissed his experience, and the passage someone bolded earlier did come across as a slam on his intelligence.

Again, he was being a jerk, but not without any provocation.

I didn't dismiss his experience, but his experience has nothing to do with what has been said in this thread. His experience as an attorney does not make him more or less qualified to know what clients want. Sure, he may know what clients want because he is an attorney, but paralegals and nonlawyers may know what clients want also (and they're not attorneys). Even if he does know what clients want, that has nothing to do with what is being said here. He was putting people down by saying that the bar exam is not that difficult and that clients don't want an attorney who cries "boo hoo" when things get difficult.

The bottom line is that the MBE is difficult and everyone knows that clients do not care if an attorney can complete 200 multiple choice questions in 6 hours. Sure, the MEE and MPT measure the ability to apply law, etc., but the time restraints imposed on students during the test is unreasonable because attorneys do not actually do what is tested on the MBE. "Reasonable" Man was saying that clients want to win (duh) and that no client wants someone who complains (no shit). But his experience with clients as an attorney has NOTHING to do with the pointlessness of the MBE. The MBE is a rite of passage and way for companies and states to make money off people who just spent $200,000 in law school. It is a way to weed out the people in the profession.

And even if I were to dismiss his experience, so what? He said that because he is an attorney that he knows clients better than nonattorneys, which is not necessarily true. "Reasonable" Man was comparing apples to oranges (as a poster said above).

[jrass]

I saw others hinted at this, but despite Cooley being around for years, it wasn't that well known outside of the legal industry how dire the situation had become until around 2010 or 2011 so there may be something to the argument that those who went to these schools despite the data may have had slightly weaker judgment on average. Even despite the 33 year low, we're talking about a difference of about 5% over the last 5 years. A few factors having a minor impact could easily total 5%.

[not guilty]

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/07/12/wur ... has-to-go/

[StaceyS]

Reasonable Man is NOT the victim here. This is his modus operandi. He goes around the forum making outrageous, offensive posts and brags on his own so-called accomplishments incessantly. Who is to say what he claims is accurate...but we can damn sure judge it as classless.

Check out his former posts on TLS...fight after fight. As someone said...a Trump parody. I'm the best. I always win. Everyone else is a loser.

Whatever.

As someone on a previous thread said:

Reasonable man never not turning the conversation into a dick measuring contest

[amk110]

I won't listen to anyone who toots their own horn this much.

[reasonable_man]

You're right! That MBE is just too hard and too unfair. Here ya go champ:

[Tanicius]

I think Reasonable Man is the true special flake here. This thread is full of people who passed the bar on the first try, myself included, who also argue the exam is too difficult and arbitrary. He's the one saying he's special with his ability to pass the bar tomorrow if asked.

[MTBike]

I think Reasonable Man is the true special flake here. This thread is full of people who passed the bar on the first try, myself included, who also argue the exam is too difficult and arbitrary. He's the one saying he's special with his ability to pass the bar tomorrow if asked.

This. Anyone who took the bar before July 2015 has no idea how difficult the test is now.

The old adage of "just do what your bar prep says and you'll be fine" doesn't apply anymore.

[StaceyS]

I think Reasonable Man is the true special flake here. This thread is full of people who passed the bar on the first try, myself included, who also argue the exam is too difficult and arbitrary. He's the one saying he's special with his ability to pass the bar tomorrow if asked.

This. Anyone who took the bar before July 2015 has no idea how difficult the test is now.

The old adage of "just do what your bar prep says and you'll be fine" doesn't apply anymore.

You are both so right. I was lucky enough to pass the Feb bar..but, I have nothing but compassion for those who didn't. And, I don't think I'm smarter or better than those who failed.

Doing good or bad on the bar is not an indication someone will make a good lawyer. It for sure won't necessarily make you a caring, compassionate one.

[StaceyS]

And I definitely won't be on here in 8 years putting down people who recently failed the bar...that's just pathetic.

[THE_U]

And I definitely won't be on here in 8 years putting down people who recently failed the bar...that's just pathetic.

What a miserable person reasonableman is

[reasonable_man]

And I definitely won't be on here in 8 years putting down people who recently failed the bar...that's just pathetic.

What a miserable person reasonableman is

Is that you Yoda?

[Johann]

All law schools have lower pass rates than 5 years ago. Law students are just dumber than they've ever been top to bottom as evidenced by the fact they choose to go to law school which is a very suspect decision for anyone who can do basic math.

[reasonable_man]

All law schools have lower pass rates than 5 years ago. Law students are just dumber than they've ever been top to bottom as evidenced by the fact they choose to go to law school which is a very suspect decision for anyone who can do basic math.

Exactly.

[FinallyPassedTheBar]

I wonder what Justice Cardozo would say about the NCBE's position. After all, he failed it 5 times.

Look at my screen name.

CA bar. Graduated from NYLS 2001. Just trying to get this monkey off my back once and for all.

[JazzOne]

Ok - Sorry - but let's look at this...

The law school admissions test is an exam about what? About nothing to do with law. The LSAT does NOT predict how you will do in law school.

Law school does not predict how you will do on the bar.

Actually, the studies consistently show that law school GPA is the best predictor of bar passage, and LSAT scores also correlate significantly with bar passage rate.

[seancris]

Ok - Sorry - but let's look at this...

The law school admissions test is an exam about what? About nothing to do with law. The LSAT does NOT predict how you will do in law school.

Law school does not predict how you will do on the bar.

Actually, the studies consistently show that law school GPA is the best predictor of bar passage, and LSAT scores also correlate significantly with bar passage rate.

Source?

[JazzOne]

Moeser can blame lower admission standards all she wants-- even if she's right... if someone with subpar UGPA and LSAT credentials makes it through 3 years and graduates, you can't really blame that stuff anymore. Law graduates are different from first-semester 1Ls, significantly. If anything, law schools are to blame for not doing a good enough job teaching bar subjects.

I agree with this completely. I'm shocked that people will still pay for law school knowing that the school will not prepare them for the licensure exam. In that regard, medical education is light years ahead of legal education in America. Sadly, the bar review companies are not doing a particularly good job either.

[JazzOne]

Ok - Sorry - but let's look at this...

The law school admissions test is an exam about what? About nothing to do with law. The LSAT does NOT predict how you will do in law school.

Law school does not predict how you will do on the bar.

Actually, the studies consistently show that law school GPA is the best predictor of bar passage, and LSAT scores also correlate significantly with bar passage rate.

Source?

I found these two quickly on SSRN.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=2308341

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... _id=976059

Look through the footnotes for more references.

[BVest]

Source?

Not OP, but:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... wnload=yes
GPA is most important. LSAT is also pretty good.

but see
http://lawschooltransparency.com/reform ... /NLBPS.pdf
GPA and LSAT are most important predictors (note, study by LSAC, who owns the LSAT)

e: partly scooped

[JazzOne]

While the decline in scores from '14 to '15 might be attributable to a change in the test format, the decline from February '15 to February '16 would not be. Moreover, if the right material is not currently being taught by bar preparation courses, that would explain a decrease in scores from prior periods, but would not account for the continual year over year decline seen in recent years. The material being tested in the MBE has not changed every single year.

It appears that the average MBE score is determined each year using a process called "equating." There is subset of questions in each MBE test that has been tested in prior exams. When the NCBE states that people taking the test have been doing worse than in prior years, I suspect that they are basing this statement on the fact that people taking the same set of common questions, which have been tested for multiple years, have been doing worse than test takers of these common questions in prior years. Civil procedure questions were certainly not included in the set of common questions for the '15 test takers, because they were never included in prior years. Thus, the fact that people perhaps did relatively poorly on civil procedure questions compared to other topics for which the review companies "adequately" prepared test takers could not account for the fall in equated test scores in '15.

Using equalization, if the February '16 test takers did exactly as well on the set of common questions as the February 2000 test takers (for example), but the raw scores of the February '16 test takers were lower than the raw scores of the February 2000 test takers (perhaps because of the addition of civil procedure or because the questions have become lengthier and more complicated), the adjustment fact from raw to scaled scores should have been higher on the February '16 test, to make the mean score in '16 equal to the mean score in 2000. That apparently is not what happened.

In '15, it may not be surprising that scores went down as compared to '14. The addition of civil procedure forced people to spend less time studying the six subject matters that had been tested in prior years that made up the common questions used for equating scores. In fact, it may be surprising that scores did not go down more in '15 (based on some articles, perhaps this was because scores were abnormally suppressed in '14 due to examsoft problems).

But the test format did not change from Feb '15 to Feb '16, and test takers had to prepare for seven subjects in both tests. Thus, the decline in equated scores had to be due to some other factor than a change in test format. And that is why the NCBE appears to be so confident that the only factor that would account for the decline in equated scores is the changed make up of entering law school classes. And why they believe that the continuing decline in average LSAT scores will likely result in a continuing downward trend in MBE scores.

Do you know when BARBRI and Kaplan shifted to the online-only versions of their programs? The major prep companies provide their students with 50 pounds of books, access to some canned videos, and very superficial analysis of students' essays. I believe that the quality of these programs is in continual decline. I was working with a bar prep client last year, and I found a point of law in the BARBRI property materials that clearly contradicts my state's law. That particular law has not changed, so I am left wondering how many years students have been taught an erroneous property rule. That is not just an error of omission; it is tantamount to legal malpractice, except that there is no governing body for professional educators.

[A. Nony Mouse]

But the online version isn't really any different from the "live" version, right? I had a live class with actual lecturers in front of me but you couldn't really ask questions any more than you could online - you still just emailed the instructors. You got the exact same lecture they taped and put online. I'm not sure how watching the video in a classroom or even watching the lecturer in a classroom delivered any different an experience, education-wise.

[BVest]

But the online version isn't really any different from the "live" version, right? I had a live class with actual lecturers in front of me but you couldn't really ask questions any more than you could online - you still just emailed the instructors. You got the exact same lecture they taped and put online. I'm not sure how watching the video in a classroom or even watching the lecturer in a classroom delivered any different an experience, education-wise.

We could ask questions after the lecture or during breaks, and some did. But the main thing for me with the live lectures was that (1) I had to get out of bed and going at time certain, (2) I couldn't turn on the TV, surf, or do something else distracting while listening to the lectures, and (3) I didn't have to put all my other study materials out of the way or maintain a separate space for watching lectures. Plus it gave me the opportunity to see other people, which, during bar study, is nice... even if it's just a bunch of other co-neurotic fellow travelers.

e: But you're right. You get the exact same lecture.

In regard to the "canned" comment, at least for barbri, if you do the lecture immediately according to the schedule, it's "canned" in that it was from 6 months ago (actually 5 or 7... it turns out the two administrations are not 6 months apart). If you wait a couple days, the lectures are a recording of the live lecture from the day you were supposed to the lecture (assuming your schedule is the same as the live-lecture town's schedule, which is not always the case).

[A. Nony Mouse]

Yeah, I agree - I did the live class for those reasons. As far as content, though, I don't think you get any benefit, and I think the people who are going to do enough to pass will do so regardless of the format - it's not like anything required you to show up to the live class.

[ghramotron]

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