The statistics for the July California Bar exam are now posted at www.calbar.ca.gov under "bar exam". It was carnage; overall pass rate dipped below 50%. As usual, the state UC schools, USC, and Stanford University did very well. Calbar accredited non ABA schools in general had much lower pass rates than ABA schools with the unsurprising exception of LaVern who batted 80 something percent. (LaVern is a good school with a solid reputation and tuition to match.) NWCU, Concord and Oak Brook did the best among correspondence schools but even Oak Brook turned out a much poorer performance than we're accustomed to seeing. The big surprise to me was that Concord out scored Oak Brook. We haven't seen that before, I don't think. NWCU did best of all among correspondence schools with significant numbers of exam takers. The Attorney's Exam dragged the over all pass rate below 50%; overall pass rate for the general exam was significantly hgher. Moral? Attorney applicants should opt for the general exam including the MBE.
There's a lateral at my firm that took the attorney's exam and failed -- he reapplied to take the full exam in February, hoping that the MBE will help if the essays don't go so well again...
The MBE is worth something like 35% overall so you need to write good essays in any event. Which bar prep course did he use?
