Bar Exams, Law School Deans, Law Schools

Law School Dean Allegedly Begged Graduates Not To Take The Bar Exam -- On The Day Before The Test

Why on earth would a law school dean do such a thing?

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Back in June, we spoke at length about what happens when bar exam time rolls around at law schools where passage rates for first-time takers have been notoriously low. At the time, we wondered: “[W]hat if there were a way to ensure that students who were struggling academically would stay far, far away from the bar exam, thus enhancing your law school’s chances of posting less embarrassing passage statistics?”

Pleadings in Lorona v. Arizona Summit Law School suggest that while there is a way to keep law school graduates away from the bar exam, not everyone is happy about it. In that suit, plaintiff Paula Lorona, an alumnus and former assistant director of financial aid at Arizona Summit Law, alleges that out of fear of losing accreditation, deans at all three of InfiLaw’s schools — Arizona Summit, Charlotte, and Florida Coastal — began offering $5,000 payoffs to students who were unlikely to pass the bar exam.

Dean Shirley Mays of Arizona Summit Law later defended those payoffs as stipends that were part of the school’s Unlock Potential (U.P.) program, which “extends the bar preparation from the usual 10-week program to more of a four-month program.”

How has the Unlock Potential program been working out for Arizona Summit? Not well:

Since February 2014, 95 Arizona Summit graduates have participated in the program, Mays said. That constitutes more than 14 percent of the school’s graduates during that time.

According to a memo Mays sent to Arizona Summit employees last week, the initial cohort of U.P. graduates scored a 56 percent first-time pass rate, while the second had a 50 percent pass rate.

“Looking at these pass rates, they are not stellar. I have to acknowledge that,” Mays said in an interview with Karen Sloan of the National Law Journal. “However, to the extent that these students have enhanced their bar pass opportunity by participating in the U.P. program, then the program has assisted them in becoming attorneys.”

Hardly improved pass rates aside, it looks like Dean Mays wanted to “enhance” other graduates’ “bar pass opportunity,” because yesterday, the day before the July 2015 administration of the bar exam, she was busy calling Arizona Summit Law alumni at the eleventh hour and trying to convince them to defer their taking of the test.

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If a law school has that little faith in its graduates’ abilities, doesn’t that speak more to the quality of the education received (or lack thereof) than the graduates’ test-taking abilities?

There’s nothing like a last-second call from the dean of your law school telling you that you’re about to fail the bar exam to boost your confidence. These are the reports that started pouring in last night from various sources at Arizona Summit Law:

The dean of ASLS is calling several bar sitters trying to talk them out of sitting for the bar exam tomorrow. I do not know if any accepted the offer. I spoke with an acquaintance that received a call from Dean Mays at 5:40 p.m. last night. The bar sitter was so upset by the call that she couldn’t clear her mind and hardly slept.

Another tipster told us that the bar exam deferral stipend being offered by Dean Mays was $10,000 — in case you haven’t been paying attention, that’s the same amount Arizona Summit pays to its repeated bar failures as some sort of a consolation prize.

We reached out to Arizona Summit for comment. Dean Mays responded by discussing the school’s “Unlock Potential” program, which seeks to “identify graduates who may need more than the traditional two months to prepare for the bar examination and enables them to make the most informed judgment possible about their readiness to take and pass the bar examination.” Here’s the pertinent part of her statement (emphasis ours; her full statement is available on the next page):

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Participation in the [Unlock Potential] program is not mandatory, but we encourage some graduates to do so. Those whose pre-test results compiled during the weeks prior to the bar exam week indicated that they would benefit from the program previously were contacted by their coaches and invited to participate in the program. Not sharing this information would have caused them to miss the opportunity for making an informed judgment. Some bar sitters felt they were not ready to take the bar exam, so they were contacted again to let them know they still could participate in UP if they desired to do so. Many of the students who were provided this information expressed their appreciation for our efforts and engagement with them.

In a follow-up email, Dean Mays explained that her call to graduates yesterday was merely meant to explain that the U.P. program was still an option that was available for them:

No, I did not reach out to any bar examinees the day before the start of the July 2015 Arizona bar exam to convince them not to take the test the next day. As I indicate[d previously], I reached out to some of the bar sitters yesterday to let them know they still could participate in UP. This was not the first time we had discussed UP participation with them. During the weeks preceding the bar exam, their coaches previously had talked with them about the UP program and many of them had expressed an interest in participating. My follow-up call was to let them know they still had the option to defer if they desired to do so.

Recent graduates, we sincerely hope that your law school is more confident in your bar exam abilities than Arizona Summit Law School is of its graduates’ knowledge.

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