Oak Brook College of Law

Complete statistics are out for the July 2001
california bar examination. OBC students passing rate was 80% for first time takers!! This is impressive, to say the least.

 

http://www.calbar.org/admissions/stats/0701stat.pdf

Oak Brook was 4/5 (80%). Taft was 2/11 (18%).

 

Is the pass rate reflective of the school's instructional methods or of the class of students that is being admitted?

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Howard Rodgers

 

Of well-known schools, Pepperdine was 74%, Santa Clara and USC were 83%. The only institutions to do notably better were schools in the UC system and Stanford.

 

Ah, there's the rub. A bit of both, I suspect. Oak Brook requires all its students attend a 5-day entry seminar. (This tends to clear out the suckers.)

Also, it has a very heavy Christian bent; I suspect people who go there are highly motivated to do so. That motivation may very well translate into survival and success.

Rich Douglas

 

A couple of other interesting observations:

1. Oakbrook was better than any of the Cal Bar approved schools.

2. the best perfermance was from an out od state school U of Washington 15/15 (100%).

3. Oakbrook would have been in the top half of ABA approved schools.

4. Oakbrook beat all Cal ABA schools.

Quite good for a "correspondance" school

Last note - it appears that you can still do it the old fashioned way by studying with a judge/lawyer.

 

Did OBCL apply for DETC accreditation?

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Jonathan Liu
http://www.geocities.com/liu_jonathan/distance.html

 

Concord? Where is Concord?

The one that interests me the most -- I cannot find it on that site. Have I just missed it? It seems inconceivable that the biggest online one of all would not have had any takers or repeaters. What's up?

 

no, it beat all cal approved non ABA schools. The U-Cs (davis, ucb, ucla, hastings), stanford, usc and a number of others did better (although in the case of USC, not by much--although to be fair 5 people is not a large enough sample to really generalize)

 

Takers and/or repeaters for the Bar Exam? Do they have any graduates yet? Didn't they have their first Baby Bar takers in 1999?

Rich Douglas

 

I do not believe Concord has been in operation long enough to graduate a student.

CA bar qualifying correspondence law study is four years in length.

Christopher

 

Oak Brook and its students have reason to be *very* pleased about the early returns on the school's success with the Cal. bar. But let's withhold judgment until more numbers come through. Five takers is not a reliable sample. Encouraging, yes; reliable, no.

I do think the residency period is an important part of the promising start. Also, because the school does have a pronounced religious mission, it may be getting a higher caliber of students who find it's philosophy to be right for them. Zealous religious commitment, regardless of whether one shares it, must be acknowledged as an extra motivator in educational settings and can be a source of community in a DL context.

 

In California parlance ther are ABA (national) approved schools (UC, hastinfs, etc.)from which you can go and take the bar exam in almost any jurisdiction and Cal Bar approved schools (JFK etc.) and then non-approved. Difference being wether you have to take the "baby bar" after year one. Cal ABA schols can not take exams in other states until they have practice for a few years, but do not take the "baby bar". Non-"cal aba" school students must take the baby bar.

 

We should agree on some terms: Using "cal aba" to indicate schools that are Cal approved but not ABA approved makes no sense ("cal approved" would, but why mention "aba" if they are not "aba" approved--maybe "cal bar", but ABA=AMERICAN bar Assoc.).

Those schools that are california approved but not accredited by the ABA (logically abreviated "Cal non-ABA") are the ones that dont take the baby bar. The non cal approved schools need to take the baby bar.

As for Cal ABA schools, a Stanford, Berkeley or UCLA grad can take the bar in any state they want without any time in practice.


-me

ps. The stats do illustrate the incredible variability of ABA schools [or perhaps just the jobs they are getting--where Stanford grads get BarBri paid for and Western State Students don't]. Stanford and the UCs (excepting Hastings) are all 90% or above, while Western State (also ABA approved) has a 34% pass rate, Golden Gate a 60%, and Cal Western a 66% [not to mention the out-of-state U. Chicago with 29/30 passing and Gonzaga with 1/10 (and a retaker at that).

This is the same Westerns State, BTW, that was being sued by a student who failed out because she claims they admitted her for the $$$ when they knew she couldn't do the work.

So what does the ABA stamp really mean?

 

cbkent correctly points out: I do not believe Concord has been in operation long enough to graduate a student.
-------------------------

I cannot find First Year exam ("Baby Bar") results on the Cal Bar site. I called them, and after a bit of grilling (who are you, and why do you want to know?) they seem to have agreed to mail the information to me.

 

There are actually four levels of CA law schools whose graduates are eligible to sit for the CA Bar:

1. Schools approved by the American Bar association (ABA).
2. Schools accredited by the CA Committee of Bar Examiners, but not approved by the ABA.
3. Schools approved by the CA Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education, but not approved by the ABA or CA Committee of Bar Examiners.
4. Correspondence schools in CA which are registered with the CA Committee of Bar Examiners.

Students from schools in 1 and 2 are not req

 

EGAD! Your server comandeered my computer and posted my incomplete reply automatically!

The rest of the message:

Students of schools in Categories 1 & 2 are not required to take the Baby Bar.

Students from schools in Categories 3 & 4 are required to take and pass the Baby Bar.

Christopher

 

I selected a few Oakbrook faculty pages at random. It seems to me that Oakbrook has a relatively large faculty for a correspondence outfit, suggesting that their professors are specialists in one or two fields of law. It also seems to me that the faculty have solid, traditional law school and professional experience backgrounds in their particular fields.
Maybe Oakbrook is succeeding because it is offering a superior legal education?
Nosborne

 

I think that Oakbrook does illustrate one thing.

If they got an 80% pass rate on the bar exam, they fall well within the range achieved by on-campus ABA-accredited programs.

So that seems to prove that law school delivered by distance education can succeed, at least as measured by success in passing the bar exam. Of course, it still remains to be seen whether that translates into real ability to practice as an attorney.

This seems to be a pretty good rejoinder to those in the legal world that simply dismiss the DL medium itself, a-priori.

 

Performance in law school doesn't seem to have much to do with success in the practice of law. Actually, performance in law school doesn't seem to have much to do with Bar performance either. One of the things about the ABA that irritates me is that no ABA law school may offer instruction for credit that is designed to prepare students for the Bar. Virtually all law students must take, and pay for, a separate Bar review course.
Why in the world should this be so? If law school doesn't really prepare the student to practice, and it doesn't really prepare the student for the Bar exam, just what the heck IS it good for?
Nosborne (who took a Bar review course in 1986)