Bar Exams

Is Not Getting Your Grades A Big Deal? The Georgia Bar Thinks So

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Yesterday, we brought you a story about the plight of UGA Law students who were still jonesing for their grades. After having received a number of comments, emails, tweets, and Facebook messages, it seems like the moral of the story for rising 2Ls and 3Ls at UGA Law (and at every other law school) is this: “Quit bitching, gunners.”

I guess everyone will get their grades sooner or later, but to be honest, it will probably be later.

But, in particular, we noted that graduates from the school’s class of 2011 had not yet received their transcripts. The transcripts in question were due to the Georgia Bar yesterday, but as commenters and tipsters alike responded, this really, really isn’t a big deal. Really.

Apparently, UGA Law has some sort of secret agreement with the Georgia Bar that negates the deadline in question…

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Did Uga Eat The Grades At UGA Law?

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Uga, did you eat the grades?

Well, it’s the middle of June, and it seems that some law students are still waiting for their grades. As we know from past discussion of the issue, this is a fairly common practice. The only problem with it is that it keeps law students fiending for their last grade like a crack addict searching frantically for his last rock.

The worst part of this situation is the fact that the grade delay may be keeping these law students from becoming gainfully employed. The legal job market may allegedly be on the rise, but when law students can’t do more than offer two-fifths of their updated transcripts to prospective employers, you can take a wild guess as to where their résumés will be headed.

So, while the professors are taking their sweet time grading their exams and possibly costing you a job, your classmates are banding together to try to figure out how to resolve the problem. First, they go to the Student Bar Assocation. Then, when they don’t like the answer they get from the SBA (“there’s a grading deadline, I’m sure we’ll get our grades soon”), they go straight to the source, the administration. Finally, when the administration’s response isn’t good enough (“it’ll be okay, you’ll get your grades when you get your grades”), they come to Above the Law. And we’re happy to help.

Hey, University of Georgia School of Law, we’re looking at you. Where are your grades?

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Bar Review Diaries: Making Law From Fire Logs

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I’m not sure how to say this, but I think some of our columnists are starting to get a little unhinged.

This week on the Bar Review Diaries, we’ll start off with some wood-piling hallucinations and imaginary Kiwi exchange students.

Let’s join Mariah in Vermont, a.k.a. the 1860s, after the jump…

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Bar Review Diaries: How Do We Deal With Stress?

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We have a definite theme for this week’s installment of the Bar Review Diaries: stress!

Big surprise, right? What’s not stressful about a multi-day test that culminates three years of study and kind of determines your entire future?

Our columnists are in the thick of their review, and by the looks of it, anxiety is starting to creep in….

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Courtship Connection: Very Public Displays of Affection

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I spent last week with a bunch of journos working from a beach house in the Outer Banks. I set my computer up in the house’s crow nest, blogging with a view of the ocean and a cool sea breeze. “Lunch hour” was spent playing in the waves. At night, we would make frozen drinks (summer cocktail recommendation: Jameson M&M milkshakes) and sit beneath the stars debating whether or not Anthony Weiner was cocky enough to send out that Twitter pic. This is perfect, I thought to myself.

But then late Tuesday night, it got even better, as I got to throw a little vicarious pleasure into the mix. At 10:10 p.m., my Droid buzzed with an email from a Courtship Connection couple I had sent to the Black Rooster pub earlier that night: “Full recap from us tomorrow but we have been making out all over Dupont!”

As regular readers know, that’s a rarity in this series. So what was it about this pairing that awakened the lawyers’ libidos?

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When Did The Bar Exam Become The Kobayashi Maru?

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Sorry, we can’t help you with registering for the New York Bar Exam.

Yeah, for those who haven’t been paying attention to some of my prior coverage, the New York Board of Law Examiners occasionally has problems. Today they’ve got a big one. People were supposed to be able to figure out where they’d be taking the bar exam this summer, but things have not gone smoothly. A tipster reports:

the email with a link to the sign up for NY Bar locations for out-of-state test takers went out today at 2:36. The site crashed at 2:41. I think that the Bar Association could at least pretend to give a s*** and make an effort to make sure their equipment works.

Service has been spotty to non-existent since then. That’s okay, out-of-state test takers. I hear Albany is lovely in the middle of the summer. (/Sarcasm off.)

We can’t make registering for the bar any faster, but perhaps we can make studying for the bar a lot faster for everybody taking BAR/BRI this year…

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Bar Review Diaries: Discipline, Rural Peepers and Urban Jogging

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Memorial Day has come and gone. Hopefully those of you studying for the bar exam took a little time out for hamburgers and baseball. It’ll be awhile until you have such a good excuse for slacking relaxing. Graduation festivities are receding into the past, and the specter of the bar exam looms a little larger with every passing day.

For the second installment of The Bar Review Diaries, our esteemed contributors, Michael, Mariah and Christopher, report back as they settle into their surprisingly dissimilar summer routines.

Keep reading to see how meditation, jogging through Chinatown and Vermont peepers all prevent the Summertime Bar Blues….

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Perverted Bar Prep Example of the Day: If You’ve Ever Been 15, You’ll Get It

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Dick intentionally spits on Prudence while she is asleep. Several weeks later, Prudence learns of Dick’s act. Dick is liable for battery.

– hypothetical in a bar exam review outline for Torts. A reader posits: “I truly do not think the writer of this example, with an infinite number of possible battery examples at his or her disposal, had an innocent mind at the time of the example’s writing.”

Bar Review Diaries: Of Sunshine and Studying

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June is just around the corner, the sun is shining, and many of our readers are hopefully enjoying their shiny new law degrees. Mazel tov! Unfortunately, the thousands of dollars you spent on three years of law school didn’t quite cover everything you need to pass that pesky bar exam.

The ink on your JD is still drying, but it’s already time to crack open the books again and sign up for bar review classes.

For the next two-odd months, three recent law school alumni will share their experiences with law school graduation, studying for the bar exam, and life in general. Welcome to Above the Law’s newest feature: The Bar Review Diaries.

Our illustrious contributors were chosen by Themis Bar Review. For their efforts, Themis has given them free tuition.

Let’s meet the trio of bar review diarists….

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Signing Up For, Or Objecting To, The BAR/BRI Class Action Settlement

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Did you take a BAR/BRI bar exam review course sometime in the past five years? Or are you taking BAR/BRI now, having paid for it prior to March 21? If so, keep reading.

As we recently mentioned, the deadline for joining or objecting to the proposed class action settlement in Stetson v. West Publishing Corp. is fast approaching (May 30). The lawsuit, alleging antitrust violations, was filed against West Publishing, which owns (but is selling) BAR/BRI, and Kaplan, the test prep company owned by the Washington Post. The class is defined as “[a]ll persons and entities who paid for a BAR/BRI full-service bar-review course from August 1, 2006, through and including March 21, 2011.”

Are you a class member? Let’s review your options….

UPDATE (5:30 PM): Please note the updates added to the end of this post.

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BAR/BRI Class Actions: Open Thread

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As we reported last month, it looks like Leeds Equity Partners will be acquiring BAR/BRI, the well-known bar exam preparation business, from West Publishing / Thomson Reuters. If you’ve taken a bar exam prep course, odds are that you took BAR/BRI — although there are alternatives, such as BarMax and Themis (disclosure: ATL advertisers, whom we thank for their support).

If the deal goes through, Leeds will get its hands on what would seem to be a very good business. BAR/BRI courses aren’t cheap, at a few thousand a pop (often paid by law firms, which aren’t very price-sensitive). And since BAR/BRI has had its bar-prep infrastructure in place for a long time — curricula, instructors, etc. — its marginal costs for each new teaching cycle aren’t that high. In short, BAR/BRI seems like a money-making machine.

(Note: This analysis about the economics of BAR/BRI is somewhat speculative. Please correct us, by email or in the comments, if we’re wrong.)

But Leeds will also inherit complaints about BAR/BRI. Some are of the consumer variety — e.g., the website going down when people were trying to pick their course locations, the date by which books must be returned in order to get deposits back being set too early, unfair late fees, etc.

And some complaints are of the legal variety, in the form of antitrust class actions alleging collusion between (1) West Publishing, the owner of BAR/BRI, and (2) Kaplan Inc., the test prep company owned by the Washington Post Company that is known in the legal community for its LSAT courses. One of the lawsuits alleges “that BAR/BRI agreed not to compete in the LSAT business and that Kaplan agreed not to compete in the bar review business, thereby allocating to BAR/BRI the market for full-service bar review courses in the United States.” (Now, of course, Kaplan has its own full-service bar review course.)

To the legal complaints we now turn. You should follow along, since there might be some money in it for you….

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Recent Bar Exam Results: California

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California bar exam results will be made available to applicants tonight, at 6 PM (PDT). The pass list will be made public on Sunday at 6 AM (PDT). Congratulations to all of you who passed, and better luck next time — and next time, and next time — to those of you who failed.

Here’s an open thread for discussion. And here’s an earlier post looking at which CA law schools had the highest bar passage rates (for the July 2010 administration of the exam).

New lawyers! California, here they come….

February 2011 California Bar Examination Pass List [State Bar of California]

Earlier: California Bar Exam Results By Law School: Open Thread
The Bar Exam: If At First You Don’t Succeed…