Ask The Professor: Training To Pass The Bar Exam vs. Skills Building

What do you do if you don’t know the rule? There is a way (trick) to make it up, but you need to be trained on how to do it.

Many law students are currently involved in pre-bar exam programs offered by their law school. While well intentioned and expensive, the fact is these programs rarely work because schools do not understand the difference between skills building and training to pass the bar exam.

Many studies have shown that law students typically pass the bar exam in GPA order upon graduation. For instance, a law school with an 84% overall pass rate can expect to have the top quarter of their class pass at 95%, the 2nd quarter at 90%, the 3rd quarter at 85%, but the 4th quarter will be closer to a 65% pass rate or lower. For a school with a 75% overall bar pass rate, a student in the lowest quarter may pass the bar at a 50% rate. Unfortunately, pre-bar programs will not help, not because the students are lazy or unwilling, but because they are not being trained to pass the bar exam. They are merely being prepared. And there is a big difference.

I was the director of a skills program at a law school for 18 years. As a bar review instructor, I train people to pass the bar exam. There is a big difference between skills building and training to pass the bar exam.

I always like to mention how I raised the bar pass rate at that school from 57% to 72% in one administration and then, eventually, to 94% by switching the pre-bar program away from skills building and towards training to pass the bar. As soon as I left the school, the pass rate dropped 12% in one year. By the way, remember I am a lawyer and we lawyers are known to be self-laudatory. So don’t fault me for being proud of my accomplishments.

The reason I succeeded is because I train people to pass the bar instead of merely preparing them through simple skills building. So what is the difference? After the first year of law school, most schools segment poorly performing students into some form of academic support where they are taught the skills they did not learn. Some improve their skills, but many do not. Those students are likely to end up in the lower part of the class and, consequently, are more likely to fail the bar exam. So in their third year they take pre-bar-style classes where they are taught the skills they failed to learn in their first year and in academic support classes. If they did not understand what to do in two years of legal education, what makes the school think they will get it now?

Here is something to chew on: Have you recognized all the exam writing instruction you ever learned is based on a false premise? It presupposes you know the law. When did anyone in law school or in a pre-bar program teach you to write an essay when you did not know the law?

Herein lies the difference between training to pass the bar and skills building. It didn’t go over well when I informed the school where I taught that I would teach students how to make up the law and get points based on reverse engineering. But a 94% pass rate eventually did.

Bar essays and MBE questions are designed to elicit a specific answer. If you know the law, then you build your skills and maximize your points by applying the law to the facts. But if you do not know the law, there are methods. Some people like to call them “tricks,” which when correctly used can help a student reverse the law the bar examiners are seeking out of the facts.

Simple skill building requires you to know the law in order to answer an essay question. You cannot provide legal analysis without knowing the rules. So when you do not know the rules, you instead engage in legal “BS.”

Do you know the difference between poor legal reasoning and legal BS? Start your BS with a rule, then it is poor legal reasoning. Poor legal reasoning gets you points; BS does not. On some exams, one more point per essay using a trick can get you the equivalent of 20 or more MBE questions correct. What do you do if you don’t know the rule? There is a way (trick) to make it up. You need to be trained on how to do it.

This is how the student in the lower part of the class breaks the bar exam GPA order of passing. Bar exam training is not law school skills building. It is not mere preparation for the bar. Let your bar course prepare you for the bar, but you should consider adding a training component to your bar course to maximize your bar exam score.
Wishing you good luck on the bar exam!


Professor Joseph Marino has been a fixture in the world of legal education for the past 40 years. Whether you’re just starting law school, about to take the bar, or an attorney in need of CLE, he and Marino Legal Academy are here to help. He is the Director of Marino Bar Review and the Marino Institute for Continuing Legal Education. He writes a bimonthly column, Ask the Professor. Visit the Marino CLE page on ATL, connect with him on LinkedIn and Facebook, or email him via info@marinolegal.com.