ATLANTA’S JOHN MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL — EMAIL FROM DEAN M. SCOTT BOONE — BAR PREP CLASSES NOW A GRADUATION REQUIREMENT
Greetings AJMLS Students,
The Law School spent considerable effort this summer retooling our bar courses and that effort has continued into the fall. The result is a two course, two semester, six credit sequence that we believe will give students the best leg up on their bar examination preparation.
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These two courses are Mastering Legal Principles and Mastering Legal Skills. Mastering Legal Principles covers four areas of law tested on the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE). Each area of law will be covered twice, once in the first half of the semester and once in the second half of the semester. Students will take and review in detail bar-type multiple choice questions during the semester. Mastering Legal Skills focuses on all the skills necessary to excel on the Multistate Performance Test (MPT). Students will take and review a large number of practice MPT questions throughout the semester. Together, these two courses address three quarters of the Georgia Bar Examination (and most other state bar examinations).
The Faculty, with the Dean’s recommendation, has adopted these course as part of the required JD curriculum.
Students graduating May 2018 or later must take both courses, one each in their last two regular semesters. Thus, a student graduating in May 2018 would take one course in the fall of 2017 and the other in the spring of 2018.
Students graduating in May 2017 are required to take Mastering Legal Principles this spring. Students may petition to have this requirement waived. Any such petitions should be submitted to me and should address the student’s individual circumstances creating the need to waive the requirement, the student’s other efforts to prepare for the bar examination, and any other potentially relevant reasons.
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Best,
Dean Boone
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.