Bar is hard Forum

[cheeseee]

I didn't think it would be this hard. I don't understand how they expect us to memorize all these materials. 60% seems impossible right now.

[b290]

I didn't think it would be this hard. I don't understand how they expect us to memorize all these materials. 60% seems impossible right now.

Not much you can do now, other than:

1. Go over your game plan for exam day.
2. Shore up your weaknesses.
3. Practice writing (really for (#1)).

If you can survive law school, you should be able to pass.

My $.02

[rcharter1978]

I didn't think it would be this hard. I don't understand how they expect us to memorize all these materials. 60% seems impossible right now.

If it's any consolation, most of it should be somewhere in your brain anyways. A professor of mine once said it's like retrieving boxes you put in storage. If you were at least trying in law school the information is there...stored away in boxes in your mind. Bar prep should mostly be to assist with retrieval of the information. But the information should be there.

Also, remember you don't have to do perfect you just have to pass. You have multiple essays, multiple choice questions and some sort of performance testing. And you don't even have to do all that well in any of them.

[DodgerBlues1991]

I didn't think it would be this hard. I don't understand how they expect us to memorize all these materials. 60% seems impossible right now.

If it's any consolation, most of it should be somewhere in your brain anyways. A professor of mine once said it's like retrieving boxes you put in storage. If you were at least trying in law school the information is there...stored away in boxes in your mind. Bar prep should mostly be to assist with retrieval of the information. But the information should be there.

Also, remember you don't have to do perfect you just have to pass. You have multiple essays, multiple choice questions and some sort of performance testing. And you don't even have to do all that well in any of them.

unfortunately im in CA and we do have to do perfect

[rcharter1978]

I didn't think it would be this hard. I don't understand how they expect us to memorize all these materials. 60% seems impossible right now.

If it's any consolation, most of it should be somewhere in your brain anyways. A professor of mine once said it's like retrieving boxes you put in storage. If you were at least trying in law school the information is there...stored away in boxes in your mind. Bar prep should mostly be to assist with retrieval of the information. But the information should be there.

Also, remember you don't have to do perfect you just have to pass. You have multiple essays, multiple choice questions and some sort of performance testing. And you don't even have to do all that well in any of them.

unfortunately im in CA and we do have to do perfect

I'm in CA too, and you really don't.

I don't mean that in an asshole way, I just think that people tend to get psyched out and freaked out that they have to do perfect. Especially if they are with a big test prep company.

When I passed, I had a tutor who was a former bar grader and by far the best service he gave me was to grade my essays like he would a normal essay he got. He would go over the grading with me so I could see just how many issues I could miss and still get a passing score. Missing a big issue is a big deal because then you almost automatically miss smaller issues. But missing small and even relatively medium issues could still get you a passing score.

And in Cali now you have 1/2 the exam that is mbe and 1/2 writing. That's a big change in favor of the test taker, IMO since I found MBEs to be much easier, and much less subjective. And there are like 100s of questions so you can get a lot wrong and still do well.

And even with the 1/2 that is based on the writing that includes a PT, which is pretty much a gimme because you don't need to have anything memorized for that. It's why everyone should practice PTs. Unless the bar is fucking with you, it's probably going to be a PT that really isn't that bad. Like a memo or something.

Again, this isn't meant in an asshole way, it's meant to make you realize that this test, while hard, isn't insurmountable. At all.

[Bingo_Bongo]

Also keep in mind that the only reason why California has a 40% pass rate is because we let a whole bunch of people take the bar who would not be allowed to in other jurisdictions. Heck, you don’t even have to go to law school. Every sitting there’s like 40 or so applicants who went the apprenticeship route, and inevitably every single one of them fails. We also have a whole bunch of unaccredited scammy online and correspondence schools that accept anyone who has completed 60 units of community college.

When you take all those people away, our pass rate jumps to like 65%, which is still comparatively low, but not as crazy as 40%.

[Tony48]

Also keep in mind that the only reason why California has a 40% pass rate is because we let a whole bunch of people take the bar who would not be allowed to in other jurisdictions. Heck, you don’t even have to go to law school. Every sitting there’s like 40 or so applicants who went the apprenticeship route, and inevitably every single one of them fails. We also have a whole bunch of unaccredited scammy online and correspondence schools that accept anyone who has completed 60 units of community college.

When you take all those people away, our pass rate jumps to like 65%, which is still comparatively low, but not as crazy as 40%.

Interesting. Did not know this.

[Vianco]

"My bars passed the bar exam no law school" -Lil Wayne

[CardozoLaw09]

"My bars passed the bar exam no law school" -Lil Wayne

I googled verified this lyric and it is not a real Lil Wayne lyric.

[Vianco]

"My bars passed the bar exam no law school" -Lil Wayne

I googled verified this lyric and it is not a real Lil Wayne lyric.

Yeah it is. It's from "IANAHB" - The first song on Weezy's album I Am Not a Human Being II. It has Eric Lewis on the piano. Good song.

[CardozoLaw09]

"My bars passed the bar exam no law school" -Lil Wayne

I googled verified this lyric and it is not a real Lil Wayne lyric.

Yeah it is. It's from "IANAHB" - The first song on Weezy's album I Am Not a Human Being II. It has Eric Lewis on the piano. Good song.

Lettin' all these hoes ride my dick, car pool
My bars passed the bar exam, no law school

[Vianco]

"My bars passed the bar exam no law school" -Lil Wayne

I googled verified this lyric and it is not a real Lil Wayne lyric.

Yeah it is. It's from "IANAHB" - The first song on Weezy's album I Am Not a Human Being II. It has Eric Lewis on the piano. Good song.

Lettin' all these hoes ride my dick, car pool
My bars passed the bar exam, no law school

Yeah, the wordplay throughout that song is pretty good. One of my favorite songs. I learned how to play the piano part too.

[Bingo_Bongo]

Also keep in mind that the only reason why California has a 40% pass rate is because we let a whole bunch of people take the bar who would not be allowed to in other jurisdictions. Heck, you don’t even have to go to law school. Every sitting there’s like 40 or so applicants who went the apprenticeship route, and inevitably every single one of them fails. We also have a whole bunch of unaccredited scammy online and correspondence schools that accept anyone who has completed 60 units of community college.

When you take all those people away, our pass rate jumps to like 65%, which is still comparatively low, but not as crazy as 40%.

Interesting. Did not know this.

Yeah, it's one of the reasons I'm firmly opposed to lowering California's bar exam requirements, unless California first requires that candidates have graduated an ABA approved law school before sitting for the bar. In a lot of states, graduating from a reputable ABA approved law school with standards is the gate to the legal profession, ending with a bar exam testing minimum competency. The thinking is the law school experience taught you to think like a lawyer, and vetted the students. The bar exam of minimum competency is just making sure you didn't slip through the cracks.

In California, you can be an idiot with a GED, have messed around in community college for a few semesters getting Ds in art classes, have a 1.5 GPA, not even graduate community college, then go "apprentice" with just about any licensed ambulance chaser (who also might not have attended an ABA law school), then sit for the California Bar right next to the students who graduated from UCLA, Berkeley, and Stanford.

In July 2018, 36 candidates for the California Bar did not attend ANY law school (MOST don't even have bachelor degrees, and some didn't even graduate from community college), but "apprenticed" with an attorney before sitting for the bar. Of the 36 who apprenticed, only 1 passed, making their pass rate 2.8%.

Then 777 candidates attending non-ABA accredited law schools that the State of California accredited under their own system that is much laxer than ABA accreditation (these schools also don't need bachelor degrees for admittance, and I think you only need 60 units of community college credit, meaning technically you don't even have to graduate from a program). Only 11% of them passed.

Then 325 candidates took the test from schools that weren't accredited by any reputable organization whatsoever. 9.8% of them passed (which actually isn't much worse than CA accredited schools, which goes to show how little their accreditation means).

But then, when you go to first time takers from ABA schools, the number jumps to a 63.8% pass rate.

When it comes to reputable ABA accredited law schools (excluding the MANY third/fourth tier and unranked ABA schools in CA) you're looking at around a 75% pass rate.

You get the picture. It's a bi-modal distribution. Non-ABA accredited schools and apprenticeships are all clustered close to 10%, everyone else is well past the 50% mark.

In California, it's the test itself that is making sure complete incompetents don't get bar cards. That's why I'm hesitant to lower standards. Enough idiots already manage to slip through the cracks. California doesn't need any more incompetent attorneys.

The answer to California's bar passage problem is first to simply not allow the people who can't pass the bar get scammed by going to shady law schools and "apprenticing" with ambulance chasers. THEN, and only then, we can consider relaxing standards a bit.

[rcharter1978]

I thought you had to apprentice for like 10 years or some ridiculous amount of time. It just sucks because frankly, the bar really isn't testing whether or not you'll be a good attorney, it's testing for all the law that you learn in a classroom setting. Which is fine, but unless your apprenticeship is for a series of professors in a law school setting you're not going to learn what you need to pass the bar exam.

[b290]

Also keep in mind that the only reason why California has a 40% pass rate is because we let a whole bunch of people take the bar who would not be allowed to in other jurisdictions. Heck, you don’t even have to go to law school. Every sitting there’s like 40 or so applicants who went the apprenticeship route, and inevitably every single one of them fails. We also have a whole bunch of unaccredited scammy online and correspondence schools that accept anyone who has completed 60 units of community college.

When you take all those people away, our pass rate jumps to like 65%, which is still comparatively low, but not as crazy as 40%.

Interesting. Did not know this.

Yeah, it's one of the reasons I'm firmly opposed to lowering California's bar exam requirements, unless California first requires that candidates have graduated an ABA approved law school before sitting for the bar. In a lot of states, graduating from a reputable ABA approved law school with standards is the gate to the legal profession, ending with a bar exam testing minimum competency. The thinking is the law school experience taught you to think like a lawyer, and vetted the students. The bar exam of minimum competency is just making sure you didn't slip through the cracks.

In California, you can be an idiot with a GED, have messed around in community college for a few semesters getting Ds in art classes, have a 1.5 GPA, not even graduate community college, then go "apprentice" with just about any licensed ambulance chaser (who also might not have attended an ABA law school), then sit for the California Bar right next to the students who graduated from UCLA, Berkeley, and Stanford.

In July 2018, 36 candidates for the California Bar did not attend ANY law school (MOST don't even have bachelor degrees, and some didn't even graduate from community college), but "apprenticed" with an attorney before sitting for the bar. Of the 36 who apprenticed, only 1 passed, making their pass rate 2.8%.

Then 777 candidates attending non-ABA accredited law schools that the State of California accredited under their own system that is much laxer than ABA accreditation (these schools also don't need bachelor degrees for admittance, and I think you only need 60 units of community college credit, meaning technically you don't even have to graduate from a program). Only 11% of them passed.

Then 325 candidates took the test from schools that weren't accredited by any reputable organization whatsoever. 9.8% of them passed (which actually isn't much worse than CA accredited schools, which goes to show how little their accreditation means).

But then, when you go to first time takers from ABA schools, the number jumps to a 63.8% pass rate.

When it comes to reputable ABA accredited law schools (excluding the MANY third/fourth tier and unranked ABA schools in CA) you're looking at around a 75% pass rate.

You get the picture. It's a bi-modal distribution. Non-ABA accredited schools and apprenticeships are all clustered close to 10%, everyone else is well past the 50% mark.

In California, it's the test itself that is making sure complete incompetents don't get bar cards. That's why I'm hesitant to lower standards. Enough idiots already manage to slip through the cracks. California doesn't need any more incompetent attorneys.

The answer to California's bar passage problem is first to simply not allow the people who can't pass the bar get scammed by going to shady law schools and "apprenticing" with ambulance chasers. THEN, and only then, we can consider relaxing standards a bit.

Point taken. But California isn't the only state that allows apprenticeships to take the bar exam:



All have better pass rates. So it's not the apprenticeship program.

Some states, like NY, have a lot of foreign applicants - they also have better pass rates. It's not the foreign test takers either.

Louisiana has a 3-day exam (like CA used to, but over a week) and it's exam was unique (meaning if you went to school out of there and were coming back home, you effectively had to relearn everything)- still better pass rates. SO it's not the uniqueness of the exam

Even with your "gold standard" (of ABA JD 1st-timers), California is the lowest by far. For July 2018, CA that group didn't crack a 64% pass rate. Virtually every state has that figure at about, or - as more likely - north of, 70% (many are between 75% and 80%). So, even among this group, there's a problem.

Also, Stanford's first time taker pass rate, for that exam, barely cracked 90% with UC Berkley's representation just above 80%. This is the supposed "crème de la crème" of test takers there, that should be at about 100% pass rates. Most of the ABA-accredited schools are lower than the 64% average in this group. Other states have equally scammy (ABA & non-ABA schools), and even they have better rates in their respective states. So it's not the schools either.

The stats for almost all states - pre-UBE adoption - weren't that much different either. So the "easiness" of the UBE isn't an excuse.

Even Delaware (that has a higher pass cutoff and is VERY protectionist) has higher pass rates.

By every measurable standard, CA is lowest in the country. There's no reason for it. California needs to do something.

My $.02

[Smiddywesson]

You appear to have bought into the idea that the test is all about memorization. It's not. Half the test is memorization, and the other half is about gamesmanship and reasoning. You seem to feel unarmed. Have you lost your reason or something? Have you paid attention to the tricks they played? If so, you are strong in 2/3rds of the test. That's worth more than someone who is very strong in memorization and weak in these other areas.

At this point, we are running out of time for memorization. No big deal, but this means you have to be clever. You can't afford to make the kinds of mistakes you made before. Make better use of time management, stay in the questions where it's a brain teaser, and just puzzle it out. More law always helps, but it sure didn't help me on all those practice questions I got wrong when I really did know the law. You are ready for 2/3rds of the test, maximize that them. Forget your outlines. Go back over the OPE and Study Aid materials, the NCBE says they are enough. There are only 600 questions. Pick up some law, but hone your bullshit meter, that's your edge against your competition. They think they know something, so they will run right past the tricks or chicken out on the really puzzing questions that take 3-4 minutes. For them, it's 1.8 minutes and they rabbit. On the other hand, you don't have any illusions about your big bad Black Letter Law Stick, so you will accept the fact that some questions take 3-4 minutes, and some take 30 seconds. That's your edge. Take all the OPE and Study Aids and manage your time so you finish WITH VERY LITTLE TIME LEFT. Extra time at the end is next to worthless. Just five extra seconds in the heat of battle is everything. Now memorize the ten question splits: 18, 36, 54, 72, 90, 108, 126, 144, 162, 180. Do not watch the clock except for your ten minute splits. Us as much time as you need in the beginning and adjust as necessary at ten question intervals. I strongly advise to read all the answers, I am still finishing too early and this would give me a lot of extra points. It works and it's easy.

How do I know this? This is how I went from 80% raw score to 89-94% raw score when I did the OPE Exams. It's nice to know the law, but this is a GAME. If all they were looking for was memorization this would be a fill in the blanks test.

Look at the competition: The cool kids think this is a test of memorization. They do this despite getting hundreds of answers wrong when they knew the law. While you are really preparing for a game, they are running around during the final hours trying to do even more memorization. You don't know all the law, but if you focus on the game, and just know most of the law on those 600 OPE and study aid exams, even the MBE says you are all set. You said you are at 60%? Using that percentage you need to learn 40% of 600 questions, or just 240. You have five days, or 48 laws to learn per day, is that too much to ask on the memorization side of the house?

You don't need to know everything, that's ridiculous. Trying to know everything is a crutch for narcissists to deal with stress. We've all heard about the people who didn't study and still passed. This is how they did it. They had no illusions, so they spent all their time on the questions they could puzzle out. They had courage because they figured they'd fail anyway, so they didn't chicken on the complex puzzles that were within reach but required time. We've also heard about those people who fail, and fail, and fail at the memorization game despite knowing the law cold, and eventually either pass or just give up. Don't go that route. Learn from your mistakes, study the OPE, spend your time on the test untying the knots you can untie.

You will leave the test convinced you failed, and then you will receive your pass in the mail. You passed because you didn't believe the bullshit the bar review courses are selling. When you get your pass, you will know why you passed.

[Bingo_Bongo]

Also keep in mind that the only reason why California has a 40% pass
Point taken. But California isn't the only state that allows apprenticeships to take the bar exam:

All have better pass rates. So it's not the apprenticeship program.

Some states, like NY, have a lot of foreign applicants - they also have better pass rates. It's not the foreign test takers either.

Louisiana has a 3-day exam (like CA used to, but over a week) and it's exam was unique (meaning if you went to school out of there and were coming back home, you effectively had to relearn everything)- still better pass rates. SO it's not the uniqueness of the exam

Even with your "gold standard" (of ABA JD 1st-timers), California is the lowest by far. For July 2018, CA that group didn't crack a 64% pass rate. Virtually every state has that figure at about, or - as more likely - north of, 70% (many are between 75% and 80%). So, even among this group, there's a problem.

Also, Stanford's first time taker pass rate, for that exam, barely cracked 90% with UC Berkley's representation just above 80%. This is the supposed "crème de la crème" of test takers there, that should be at about 100% pass rates. Most of the ABA-accredited schools are lower than the 64% average in this group. Other states have equally scammy (ABA & non-ABA schools), and even they have better rates in their respective states. So it's not the schools either.

The stats for almost all states - pre-UBE adoption - weren't that much different either. So the "easiness" of the UBE isn't an excuse.

Even Delaware (that has a higher pass cutoff and is VERY protectionist) has higher pass rates.

By every measurable standard, CA is lowest in the country. There's no reason for it. California needs to do something.

My $.02

I'm not saying California's apprentice program is THE major problem. In fact, it's quite negligible considering only about 30 or so candidates go that route each examination period. (Although considering it boasts a 0-2% pass rate, it probably should be abolished). And California is the only major jurisdiction that allows apprenticeships in lieu of law school (unless you want to count Washington state as a major jx). As your map points out the overwhelming vast majority of states don't allow it, and for good reason. You just don't get the breadth of knowledge you need by doing your legal training through apprenticing in a field. You'll probably get really good depth in whatever area of law you're apprenticing in, but a bar license is a license to be a general practitioner, not a license to practice one specific area of law.

California's main problem are the 1,100 candidates for the bar who graduated from non-ABA accredited law schools. They're the reason why California needs a tough test to help weed out the incompetents. Believe me, I've met plenty of people attending these schools. Most have absolutely no business in law. Some have zero aptitude for it, and others might have an aptitude for it, but they put in absolutely zero work to actually study, and would rather party or do drugs 24/7. Many have never even received a bachelor's degree or been to a university. Many are, to put it bluntly, a little weird.

To be fair, there are some capable students in these unaccredited schools for various reasons. Some work full-time in JD advantage jobs (like Risk Management), and need a JD for further advancement in their career, they don't even need to pass the bar, so 100% online classes appeal to them. They've crunched the numbers, done the cost-benefit analysis, and the cost of tuition will be made up by their increased salary. Others previously attended ABA accredited schools, dropped out for whatever reason, decided to return to law and finish their 3L year online. But the fact still remains that only around 10% of people attending these unaccredited schools can pass the bar (and from my personal experience, graduates from these schools who practice tend not to be very competent attorneys).

These schools simply don't exist in most jurisdictions, and California has a bunch of them, so there's a heightened interest in California to make sure these people sitting for the bar are actually competent to practice.

To put California's bar demographic in perspective, in July 2018:

1,404 candidates sitting for the bar DID NOT graduate from an ABA accredited law school. They did not spend three years in an institution with mandated rigorous standards for admissions, teaching, grading, and the like that we're all used to here.

3,099 candidates sitting for the bar DID graduate from an ABA accredited school.

That means of the 4,503 non-attorneys sitting for the California exam, over 31% of them never graduated from an ABA accredited law school. That's close to a third of the candidates. No other state comes remotely close to that.

I'm fine with California relaxing bar standards, but they first have to limit who can sit for the bar since in our state it's really the only line of defense against some people who definitely shouldn't be lawyers getting a bar card. Believe me, I know some of these people. Let's just say they're not "studying" the same way you and I studied in law school. Not even close to it.

Frank Abagnale, Jr. never attended law school, but forged some transcripts, sat for Louisana's bar, and passed after a few months of cramming. He got through using fraud, but in California, if you relaxed standards, you'd have a whole bunch of Frank Abagnales getting bar cards without committing any sort of crime at all. Just something to think about

[rcharter1978]

I'm of two minds. Yes, online non accredited law schools in California are super scammy and not the best option especially if you cannot get any aba accredited school to take you on with people getting into aba law schools with lsat scores under 150.

However, if you really believe in yourself and you are an adult then it's really up to you. The unaccredited law school model has been around for a while and so has Google. People know or should know the risks going in. And I'm sure some people pass and do well.

I don't know what else California can really do. They have shaved an entire day off the exam and made the MBE worth half. The exam should not, logically, be as hard to pass.

[Smiddywesson]

I'm of two minds. Yes, online non accredited law schools in California are super scammy and not the best option especially if you cannot get any aba accredited school to take you on with people getting into aba law schools with lsat scores under 150.

However, if you really believe in yourself and you are an adult then it's really up to you. The unaccredited law school model has been around for a while and so has Google. People know or should know the risks going in. And I'm sure some people pass and do well.

I don't know what else California can really do. They have shaved an entire day off the exam and made the MBE worth half. The exam should not, logically, be as hard to pass.

Yes, I totally agree, the MBE isn't what it used to be, the bar is doing what they can to help, but the grades keep falling. In the MBE, first they changed from the original format, it used to have a page long fact pattern with multiple questions based on that page. Then it went to the old questions we are all familiar with, which comprise the bulk of the released questions in services like Ameribar, etc. These were easier than the originals, but still not child's play in terms of complexity and time management. The new format, the ones represented by the Study Aids and OPE Exams, are a pale shadow of the former MBE. They are short and not very difficult. Some people say they are trickier, and maybe so, but that's not the point. It's a whole lot easier to spot the trick amonst half as many words, and the real threat of these tricks was spotting them, not solving them.

I also heard the MPT used to be upwards of 60 pages of materials. Today I'm seeing much less than 20, and most of that is just depositions.

I believe the subject matter is slowly moving away from the most difficult materials. I've noticed they don't test things like RAP as much, and made other changes to Property, moving away from testing difficult things like future interests and testing instead simple things like zoning and homeowner associations.

[Bingo_Bongo]

I believe the subject matter is slowly moving away from the most difficult materials. I've noticed they don't test things like RAP as much, and made other changes to Property, moving away from testing difficult things like future interests and testing instead simple things like zoning and homeowner associations.

I agree as a general matter, but to play devil’s advocate, what I heard about the last July exam that resulted in the notorious 40% pass rate, is that the Evidence essay tested the Bruton Rule and EC 1109 (the California only character evidence exception for prior acts of domestic violence that occurred 10 years ago or earlier) as major issues. If you practice criminal law, those things aren’t obscure at all, but if you’ve only had a Federal Evidence class and done CA Evidence Bar prep and skipped the half of page dedicated to those issues in the prep book, you pretty much failed the Evidence essay. How that it testing “minimum competency” is beyond me

[FinallyPassedTheBar]

Out-of-state attorneys who took the abbreviated 2018 attorney CBX had a 32% pass rate. That right there pretty much negates the "non-ABA" argument.

[Bingo_Bongo]

[*]

Out-of-state attorneys who took the abbreviated 2018 attorney CBX had a 32% pass rate. That right there pretty much negates the "non-ABA" argument.

Out of state attorneys walk in with a misplaced sense of confidence, not realizing that they actually need to study hard because it’s a hard test that examines material that they haven’t used at all in the years out of law school. I would probably flunk the SAT if I took it now without studying for it. Doesn’t mean the test is broken.

And I think you completely missed my point. I never once said CA’s test wasn’t harder than other bar exams (which is what your post is implying). My point was that our bar exam NEEDS to be harder because we have a lot more idiots sitting for our bar than other states do. 33% either didn’t go to law school, or graduated from a non-ABA school that accepts and passes anyone with money. Other states don’t allow those people to sit for the bar. Until that changes, our test needs to stay exactly how it is. California doesn’t need any more utterly incompetent attorneys running around giving the rest of us bad names

[rcharter1978]

Sadly, I think out of state attorneys may have a disadvantage. For one, even if they study they have two sets of legal knowledge....practical legal knowledge and theoretical "law school and Barbri" knowledge and I can't imagine that those two don't get mixed up from time to time. I mean when I was studying civ pro and evidence it was harder because the California rules were so similar in some areas or maybe just a little different and the overarching subject matter was the same.

Also, you probably have to retrain yourself to write for essays and the pts. There was an out of state attorney from Colorado who was convinced he had knocked the PT out of the park because the memo was about environmental law, which was a subject he practiced in Colorado. I think he probably just ended up using all his actual knowledge and didn't strictly use the information in the library.

[FinallyPassedTheBar]

[*]

Out-of-state attorneys who took the abbreviated 2018 attorney CBX had a 32% pass rate. That right there pretty much negates the "non-ABA" argument.

Out of state attorneys walk in with a misplaced sense of confidence, not realizing that they actually need to study hard because it’s a hard test that examines material that they haven’t used at all in the years out of law school. I would probably flunk the SAT if I took it now without studying for it. Doesn’t mean the test is broken.

And I think you completely missed my point. I never once said CA’s test wasn’t harder than other bar exams (which is what your post is implying). My point was that our bar exam NEEDS to be harder because we have a lot more idiots sitting for our bar than other states do. 33% either didn’t go to law school, or graduated from a non-ABA school that accepts and passes anyone with money. Other states don’t allow those people to sit for the bar. Until that changes, our test needs to stay exactly how it is. California doesn’t need any more utterly incompetent attorneys running around giving the rest of us bad names

That is not entirely accurate. Non-ABA law students must take and pass the "baby bar" after their 1L year. If they don't pass it, they are ineligible to continue law school.

[FinallyPassedTheBar]

Chapman: 60.3 percent
UC Hastings: 59.6 percent
Santa Clara: 58 percent
Southwestern: 53 percent
California Western: 52 percent
Western State: 51 percent
McGeorge: 50 percent
La Verne: 34 percent
Golden Gate: 33.9 percent
San Francisco: 33 percent
Whittier: 26 percent
Thomas Jefferson: 25 percent