Earlier this week, we brought you news about the February 2016 administration of the Arizona bar exam. At about 49 percent, the pass rate for the exam was horrendous; in fact, it was the worst Arizona had seen for more than 10 years (and possibly even longer).
Today, we have the school-by-school breakdown of the February 2016 passage rates in Arizona, and as everyone suspected, one law school’s incredibly subpar results dragged down the state’s entire pass rate, much like what we saw in the results of the July 2015 administration of the exam.
To be frank, it’s amazing how much damage one law school can do to the results of an entire state’s bar exam passage rate. Take a look at this breakdown of results by in-state law schools, courtesy of the State of Arizona Committee on Examinations:
Context Windows In Legal AI And Why Content Still Determines Quality
Legal teams ask a practical question. If large language models are so capable, why does legal AI still depend on curated content, and why does surfacing that content matter so much?
Arizona Summit is a law school that pleaded with its low-performing graduates to defer taking the July 2015 bar exam and wait until February 2016 to sit for the test. Arizona Summit is a law school that offered $5,000 stipends to all graduates who waited to take the exam and instead enrolled in their “Unlock Potential” program, a bar prep program that would “extend[] [their] bar preparation from the usual 10-week program to more of a four-month program.” Arizona Summit is a law school whose dean called graduates the day before the July 2015 exam and begged them to accept $10,000 deferral stipends instead of sitting for the bar exam the next day. With an overall pass rate of 28.4 percent, Arizona Summit is a law school whose teaching methods are clearly not working.
These are the entering class profiles for Arizona Summit, from 2010 to 2015, courtesy of Law School Transparency. This for-profit law school is taking advantage of students who may not know or be able to understand that they’re being taken advantage of.
(Chart via Law School Transparency)
How LexisNexis State Net Uses Gen AI To Tame Gov’t Data
Its new features transform how you can track and analyze the more than 200,000 bills, regulations, and other measures set to be introduced this year.
Arizona Summit may purport to offer opportunities to students that no other law schools would accept, but it seems that those “opportunities” include a lifetime of debt and an inability to pass the bar exam. This is shameful. This is disgusting. This is sad.
Please, please do extensive research before investing in a law school education, because you might be able to uncover facts like these that will make you change your mind.
Earlier: Arizona’s Friday The 13th Bar Exam Results Were The Worst In More Than 10 Years
Despite All Efforts, Law School Posts Worst Bar Exam Performance Ever
Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.