If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times (thank you for that one Mom), the primary obligation of a law school is to get you to pass the bar exam. Forget all of the ranking crap, if you do not pass the bar exam, you have an expensive piece of paper, and almost nothing else, with your diploma. Yet, many (if not most) law schools ignore the most crucial element. Too many law school now play lip service to this fact, but look at how almost all fail to inculcate this objective into every aspect of the law school.
Whittier Law School has had some well document scrapes with the ABA over bar results. It does not help that the law school is based in California where it seems even the best students have trouble reaching a passing grade on the state's bar exam.
According to the Orange County Register, the Costa Mesa law school is now offering its students a final push of motivation with t-shirts, but do not let this distract you from the real and systematic efforts of the law school to build practice ready lawyers.
Now, when students from Whittier Law sit for the California bar exam, some wear the school's T-shirt, which read -- "Do it once. Do it right. Never do it again." The T-shirts are handed out to all students and the slogan attempts to summarize for them publicly the law school's goal to get their graduates to succeed at passing the bar so they may be ready to actually practice law.
The goal is apparently placed everywhere at the law school. It is on binders and pencils among most places. So, why not place it on the bar exam takers themselves?
Whittier is obviously serious about improving its test scores, but the overall goal seems to be to produce practice ready lawyers, which is an admirable goal and one neglected by most law schools. A practice ready lawyer must first pass the bar. To help, Whittier reduced the number of students it accepts from an entering class of 220 to 160, limiting the class size to those most likely to actually pass the exam and become practicing lawyers. When faculty members departed as a result, the school used the savings to hire faculty whose sole purpose was to help students learn to think and write like lawyers. Instead of just concentrating solely on teaching about the law, Whittier began to focus more on turning out graduates who have the practical preparation to go to work immediately as attorneys.
One way the school is now preparing practice ready lawyers to take the exam is it has its students research and write weekly essays on legal topics before taking the bar exam – practicing the kind of legal writing that is on the exam and that they will use every day as lawyers.
Also, the law school created an academic support team to teach students to assume they will succeed in passing the bar on their first try, beginning from the first orientation they attend until the moment they take the bar. This includes special classes divided into small groups, personal counseling and a drop-in center available six days a week.
Further still, after graduation graduates generally take a commercial course designed to help them cram for the bar exam, during which they study eight to 12 hours a day before taking the test in July. The law school also offers additionally even more services to those students who wish to have the help, including more practice essays that are graded within 72 hours and sent back for feedback.
Then lastly, graduates are provided and are encouraged to wear at the bar exam their Whittier T-shirts so they can recognize each other.
And, all of the attention and effort is paying off. Whittier graduates achieved an astonishing an 84.3% bar pass rate on what is considered by most to the hardest bar exam in the country.
Whittier might well be my new favorite law school because, for whatever reason, it has decided to focus on growing practice ready lawyers, and is actually following through on this goals in real, practical and achievable ways.
California has the "hardest" bar exam? Questionable, at best. California allows, for good or ill, non-ABA accredited law schools to proliferate and some of these, um, bottom feeders do not produce a lot of graduates who are well-prepared to pass the bar.
Of course, passing the bar and practicing law effectively are two very different things. Just because you passed the bar does not mean you know how, in a practical sense, to be a lawyer, nor does failing the bar mean that you do NOT know how to practice law. Passing the bar means that you did sufficiently well to overcome a barrier to entry in the profession. It seemingly has little to do with success as a lawyer.
Posted by: Brian Davis | December 28, 2008 at 11:50 AM
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Posted by: how to write a good dissertation | January 19, 2009 at 04:15 AM
Chuck, I found this online magazine article that I thought you might be interested in: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/cypress/prelaw-winter-09/
On page 16, there's a article about the decline in attrition at Whittier (interview with the dean).
Posted by: Patrick | May 23, 2009 at 10:16 PM