Bar Exams

Quote of the Day: Sorry, Dean, Those Bar Results Are ‘For Real’

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Dean Don LeDuc

I cannot speak for the other Michigan law school deans, but for myself I cannot accept that the 2012 results validly assessed our graduates. In short, these results are not for real.

– Don LeDuc, president and dean of Thomas M. Cooley Law School, commenting on his school’s abysmal results on the July 2012 administration of the Michigan bar examination.

(If you recall, we previously discussed this summer’s Michigan bar exam results, but what other amusing things does Dean LeDuc have to say about them?)

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Gradenfreude: I Passed the Bar Exam, But I Still Mop the Floors at My Crappy Job

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Ed. note: Gradenfreude is a new series chronicling a recent law school graduate’s life after attending an unranked school. Feel free to email the author at TristanTaylorThomas@gmail.com, and he’ll respond ASAP. After all, it’s not like he has anything better to do.

I know that I complain about my job a lot, but when you have the experiences that I’ve got under my belt since graduating from law school, I think I have the right to complain. Personally, when I’m at work and thinking about how much I hate the job, I’ll sometimes wonder, “What could possibly make this worse?”

Last week, I found out.

I walked up to my boss as he was speaking to a coworker about the lack of intelligence required to do our job, and he said, “It’s not like we have a bunch of lawyers walking around here.” And my coworker responded, “Actually, now we do have one.” It was then that my boss grabbed a mop and said, “Tristan, just because you passed the bar exam doesn’t mean that you can’t clean the floor.”

Wow. I didn’t realize that it was possible, but my boss actually made me hate my job even more….

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Mr. Bar Exam: Did This Guy Pass the Bar Exam, Or What?

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Staci here. It’s been a few months since we last spoke about our man Sam E. Goldberg’s travails with the New York bar exam. From working hard to hardly working, he brought us the blow-by-blow experience of a first-time test taker in graphic detail this past summer.

Well, the results finally came in last week, but we know that our readers have been dying to know whether Mr. Bar Exam passed the test, perhaps for the schadenfreude. What’s the likelihood that a dude who took a trip to Vegas in the middle of studying passed the test?

Hold on to your hats, because we’re about to find out….

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New York Bar Exam Results Are Out; Congratulations To Everyone Who Passed!

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Well, isn’t this a nice surprise! The results of the July 2012 administration of the New York bar exam have been released — ahead of schedule, as it turns out. And this time it appears to be an intentional rather than accidental release.

The New York State Board of Law Examiners previously stated that it would announce the results tomorrow, Friday, November 2. But NY BOLE went ahead and made results available to applicants tonight, at around 10 p.m. or so.

Keep reading, for a link to the results page and commentary from Above the Law readers….

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Quote of the Day: Bar Takers Are A Jumpy Bunch
(Texas and D.C. are here; New York is coming soon.)

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ny bar exam results tomorrow. collective productivity of 1st-yr associates just dipped into negative numbers

– @dehodges, via Twitter, commenting on the impending news from NY BOLE — which, yes, we will cover.

(A lot of nervous bar takers have turned to Twitter to express their anxiety. Check out a couple of our favorite tweets after the jump. We’ve also got some responses to the Texas and D.C. results, which came out today.)

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(Texas and D.C. are here; New York is coming soon.)“

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Test Takers Tank On The July 2012 Michigan Bar Exam

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Was one of the essay questions “design an American truck that runs on candy and rainbows but still has enough power to make a Texan feel better about his small penis”? Because that would be a hard question. And it would explain the abysmal bar passage rate achieved by test takers on the July 2012 Michigan bar exam.

The people who took the Michigan bar exam passed at a rate as if all of them went to Cooley. Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but it was still pretty bad. The bar passage rate for the state was 55 percent. Tipsters and commenters contend that those ridiculous numbers are due to a change in scoring the essays, but the Michigan Bar hasn’t released an official reason for the low rates.

Hell, maybe they want it this way. One way of slowing the saturation of the legal market is to make it a harder market to enter.

Let’s take a look at a school-by-school breakdown…

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Morning Docket: 10.23.12

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Not one single ‘F’ from the Class of 2012.

* “Whether or not the law is dictating it right now, the people are dictating it.” In light of First and Second Circuit DOMA decisions, in-house counsel are considering benefits for same-sex spouses and domestic partners. [Corporate Counsel]

* “I’m a woman of integrity. My emotions got the best of me.” A Dish Network executive had to publicly apologize for accosting a Gibson Dunn litigation partner’s elderly father outside of a courtroom after the Cablevision trial. [Am Law Daily]

* A potential farewell to the typical liberal bias in education: at the end of the day, Teresa Wagner’s political bias case against Iowa Law could alter hiring nationwide in higher education. [Iowa City Press-Citizen]

* Not prepared for the bar exam, and currently without a law job? Let’s give that school a “B” rating. The results of this survey pretty much conclude that recent law school graduates are out of their minds. [WSJ Law Blog]

* A soon-to-be high school graduate wants to know if he can “go into a creative career” with a law degree. You silly little boy, the law is where creativity goes to die. Hope that helps! [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

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Recent Bar Exam Results: Open Thread
Virginia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania — any others?

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As the days roll on, more and more bar exam results from the July 2012 administration of the test are being released. Knowing that you’ll soon be admitted to the bar must be of some comfort (but not much) to those who are desperately searching for employment.

We’ve actually reached the point where just about every state in the country has unleashed its exam results except for the big ones (California, New York, and Texas). Those folks still have some time to wait on pins and needles, but for now, we’ve got confirmed news about results from states that came out at the end of last week, just in time for the weekend — and let’s face it, in the true spirit of the profession, whether you passed or you failed, there was likely some drinking to be done.

So it’s time for a round-up of all of the results that went live last Thursday and Friday, including Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington. Here’s an open thread for discussion of those outcomes, as well as results from any other states that have already been announced….

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Virginia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania — any others?“

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New York’s Pro Bono Requirement Unlikely To Close The ‘Justice Gap’

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In May, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman of the New York Court of Appeals announced that a new bar admission hurdle would be foisted upon the state’s would-be lawyers in the form of a 50-hour pro bono requirement. Last month, we found out that the new rule was “much better than it could have been,” since it allowed for the mandatory pro bono hours to be completed anywhere and at any time, including during bar admittees’ law school years.

That really doesn’t sound as bad as everyone thought it was going to be. The “justice gap” will be closed, the importance of public interest work will be stressed to new lawyers (even though existing lawyers will continue to maintain only an aspirational call to perform pro bono work), and everyone will hold hands, sing “Kumbaya,” and call it a day. At least that’s how Lippman envisioned it.

But now that everyone’s gotten used to the fact that New York’s pro bono rule is here to stay, some additional analysis has been performed by law schools statewide. Oh, you thought that the state’s “justice gap” was going to just disappear? Yeeeaaahhh, about that….

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Non-Sequiturs: 10.11.12

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*James Henderson, former senior counsel at the American Center for Law & Justice, is no longer with the ACLJ — and there are interesting theories as to why. [Metro Weekly]

* Part one of an epic story about a Texan’s wrongful murder conviction, written by Pamela Colloff, one of the best investigative reporters in the state, if not the country. Get a drink and a comfy chair; you won’t want to get up for a while. [Texas Monthly]

* Chief Judge Alex Kozinski is going to be in pictures — or a picture, at least. Check out Atlas Shrugged: Part II, which hits theaters tomorrow. [Atlas Shrugged]

* Our tipster provided a nifty blurb for this article: “This has everything. Bumbling Frenchmen dependent on a heroic (albeit opportunistic) American to save the day? Check. Twenty-first century application of 19th century maritime law? Check. Overblown invocation of piracy? Check.” [San Francisco Chronicle]

* San Franciscans, come see David Lat speak at U.C. Hastings on Monday. It’s free and open to the public! Heck, I’ll probably go too. [Legally Speaking]

* You gotta admit, trying to get rich off claims about the death of an imaginary cat (and/or parrot) is a pretty imaginative way to commit insurance fraud. [Seattle Weekly]

* Colorado Bar Exam results are out. Congratulations to those who passed. [Colorado Supreme Court]

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