How would an average citizen do taking a bar exam?

In My Humble Opinion
1

And by average citizen I mean us dopers who have read dozens of legal threads and watched “My Cousin Vinny” 6 times. I realize the bar is a really tough exam and that only about 40% of takers pass.

As a graduate engineer I have experience with others taking their Professional Engineering exam and have some idea of how hard it is. But that is lots of math and physics (and law). The average person isn’t going to know how to calculate the bending stress in a beam with a row of filing cabinets on it and a guy on a Pogo stick jumping in the middle. But we can and a PE can certify the results.

So how would I do? Is life experience and common sense any help?

2

I don’t know how these tests are designed, but as someone who has designed thousands of college-level tests, the one guiding principle in all of them was “What would someone guess at who has NOT done the reading, and what would someone guess at who HAS done the reading,” if it were the sort of exam that required comprehension of some text.

3

Really badly. But not too bad if you took a test prep class.

As I recall it (37 yrs ago in IL), the first day was several essay questions, and the next a whole bunch of multiple choice.

My wife and I took the Barbri prep class. I went to the classes, but didn’t really do much studying. As I recall, for the essays questions you needed to average a certain score, and you could get that score pretty much through organization. Correctly identify the subject area the question is asking about, spout off the basic principles of that subject area, apply them to the facts… That sort of thing.

The multichoice was complete BS. As I recall there were a large number in the morning and the same number in the afternoon. I forget how many. 75? 100? You know how when doing a multiple choice test, when you read a question, you know what it is asking, you realize you know the answer, and you look down the list and see the correct answer among the choices? Of the morning’s questions, exactly THREE were like that for me.

So for the afternoon, I just did the damn thing as quickly as I could, skimming the questions, and picking my first impression. Obviously worked, as I passed. No idea if by a little or a lot.

Another weird thing - we were crammed into a room very close to each other (with machines tearing up the road outside the window!) They made a big deal about how the test books were different, so of course I had to check my wife’s book (sitting next to me - alphabetically). The questions were in 2 side-by-side columns on each page, and hers were just the reverse of mine. But the kicker was, when I checked her answers against mine, they were all over the map. So I figured that way lay madness, and looked like one or the other of us would fail. Didn’t happen.

So after I whipped through the afternoon’s questions in record time, they wouldn’t let us leave. So I sat there doing a crossword. She still occasionally gives me shit about that.

I thought then and think now that it is an entirely BS fraternal hazing ritual, serving primarily to put money in the pockets of the test-prep providers.

4

I believe Washington allowed recent bar grads get admitted without taking the test in the first year of COVID. There was some controversy about that, but I agree with you that the test, while hard, is not a good measure of someone’s ability to practice law. I know good lawyers who failed in once or more, and bad lawyers who passed it the first time.

To the OP, I agree with Dinsdale, a reasonably good test taker, who prepared, could pass the test at about the same rate as a law graduate (law school doesn’t really prepare you for the bar exam). Just know general law stuff and being smart would not be enough. I would expect a 95% fail rate for non-law school graduates who didn’t take the prep course or otherwise prepare diligently.

5

And passage rates vary widely. As I recall, CA and NY were notoriously tough. No idea about IL. Can’t be too tough (he says looking in the mirror!). And I believe WI admitted you if you graduated from certain WI law schools. Strikes me as sensible. If passing law school does not qualify you, then what is the deal with accreditation?

The funny thing is, I’ve often said/heard - no lawyer knows as much about as many areas of the law as someone who just took the bar. Makes it hard for a practicing atty to even discuss it intelligently. Hell, I never practiced commercial paper, stiffs and gifts, property law, and can only parrot generalities about “holder in due course” and “the rule against perpetuities.” But to have ANY chance of passage, you have to at least be familiar w/ various concepts/vocabulary.

(I have LONG thought law school should be abbreviated, with maybe 1 year of basic concepts/vocab, and 2 yrs of clinical/apprenticeship. But, if a school relies too heavily on clinical training, it may lose its accreditation! So it graduates lawyers who learn how to practice on their clients’ dime!)

6

Wait. What? To turn this around and ask a different way, do you mean the bar exam is not based on what you are supposed to have learned in law school? Then what is it based on? What does prepare you? Is the only way to pass the bar to take a prep course, even if you got a JD?

7

Law school trains you to “think like a lawyer,” but doesn’t generally teach you “black letter law.” One frustration thing for new law students is being given two cases that analyze the same issue and come to different results. You want to know which is “right,” but that’s not the point. There is some overlap, of course. And the general concepts do help you learn what you need to know on the exam.

I think the big issue is that the bar exam has many more topics than you’d usually be exposed to in law school. You may have never taken a course in family law, or commercial paper, but the bar exam will have questions about those topics, and about 30 more. In Washington, we got questions about the Shoreline Management Act, which I never would have learned in my law school on the East Coast. Same could be water rights, in Colorado, or mineral rights in Montana. Even things like Property, Torts, and Civil Procedure that were classes in the first year of law school, you’ll need a refresher course three years later. (you don’t actually need to sit through the bar prep class, but the materials are invaluable.)

The idea, I guess, is that after three years of learning to think like a lawyer, learning the black letter law should be much easier.

I took two additional bar exams in other states a few years out of law school. The topics related to what I had been doing every day were much easier (in my case, criminal law, evidence, torts) but other topics were still quite difficult.

To repeat my earlier point, the bar exam tests your ability to study, memorize, and to some extent, apply what you learned. It’s a hurdle the profession puts between law school and licensing. I’m not sure it’s necessary.

8

I found an online practice bar exam. A passing grade is 60%. I have answered the first 10 questions in the first test and 5 questions in the second test and am right at 60%. The ones I miss hinge on fine points of the law that I obviously don’t have knowledge in. But they don’t seem too hard if I had taken a prep course.

9

Even if you go in with a skull full of mush?

10

Yeah, Batman would do fine.

I’ve always interpreted this to mean “it trains you to see both sides of an argument”; it’s not some amazing skill that non-lawyers can’t have, although law school can improve or enhance it.
…
By the way, increasingly states are using a “multi state bar exam”, which focuses on more general principles of law instead of state specific stuff. As a result, I believe the bar exam (for the dozen or so states who now use the MBE), since it’s more cursory, is easier to pass.

11

I would think a person would be well ahead of the class if that were the case. :smiley:

There are something like 1.3 million lawyers in the United States (compared to 600,000 PEs). I wish they (television and movies in particular) would stop presenting lawyers as if being a lawyer or passing the bar exam were the height of intellectual achievement (at least relative to any other profession).

That said, I looked at a couple sample questions. It seems you would need to know some nuance of the law that you wouldn’t necessarily pick up from reruns of Law & Order. But I assume like any test, an average person could prepare enough to pass it.

12

I’ve always interpreted “think like a lawyer” to mean “act like a self-important douche”. :smiley:

Sorry. I used to work with a lot of lawyers.

I think what it means is to structure a logical argument based on evidence provided and applicable laws. Most non lawyers think like “oh, that’s not fair! This or that should happen to make it right!” A lawyer would think like “Based on your testimony, you said you did X. That is a violation of statute Y so according to State law my client deserves Z.”

13

Not sure. I would guess most would not do well. This is a guess too, I have no knowledge of the exams. However, I do have follow-up questions.

  1. Are bar exams in different countries or states and provinces perceived to be similar levels of difficulty?

  2. I would say over ninety percent of questions on medical exams are covered somewhere. There are occasional obscure topics, social and ethical questions and a few random things. What percentage of questions are purely “black letter law”? How could you get through law school without learning a moderate amount of this?

  3. Law varies from place to place. Often not by much, but the differences are relevant. As a ballpark guess, how similar are laws in various states with respect to tested topics. 80%?

14
15

I’d think that an average citizen who took a rigorous professional prep course and studied hard for a brief period would stand a decent chance of passing a certification exam (those with essay questions should be tougher).

Too bad they don’t have bar exams like in the old days. In Jerry Giesler’s autobiography (he was a famous/notorious trial lawyer in the 1930s-50s who represented people like Clarence Darrow, Charlie Chaplin and Bugsy Siegel) he describes being one of the last candidates called to face a bar exam panel in California. By the time they got to him, they apparently were thinking most of knocking off for the day, so his exam was limited to asking him what law books he had studied. That was it - he passed.*

*in those days you didn’t have to go to law school to qualify for the bar exam. People served apprenticeships with lawyers instead.

16

AFAICT, that’s still an option in some states.

17

What do you mean? If lawyers have to pass a freaking TEST to prove they can be lawyers, is it possible that 3 full years of expensive schooling isn’t NEEDED? Or conversely, if law school is all that, why do you need to take a test after? :smiley:

I think the “think like a lawyer” thing is often over-rated. I’m not sure thinking like a lawyer is all that different than what someone on a debate team would have earned. Add in a few government/PolSci classes, and you are a good way there. You learn to define terms specifically, read written material (statutes/regulations/contracts…) carefully, and then craft arguments based on that. You do need to learn some concepts such as venue, jurisdiction, negligence…, but that is basically covered in the standard 1st year classes.

What law school DOESN’T teach you is how to practice the type of law you may get hired to do, in the jurisdiction in which you practice. That you learn on the job.

Here’s one datapoint on what “thinking like a lawyer” means. I took a negotiations class. 32 students. Each week you divided into 2 person teams to negotiate something - like athlete’s agent negotiating a player’s contract w/ the team. Each side knew what their side valued most, but didn’t know the other side’s. Once you maximized your interest, you scored the max points.

So the issue came up - what do you do if you maximized your interests, and still have some things you could give the opponent AT NO COST TO YOUR SIDE? Out of 32 law students in this class (admittedly, a limited sample), how many do you think said, “Of course you give the other side something they want that costs you nothing!”

Answer - me alone. the class felt, 31-1, that you not only wanted to maximize your gains, but you wanted to also screw the other side as much as possible. No, no every lawyer is that much of an asshole in every situation, but IMO, that says something about what many lawyers think it means to “think like a lawyer”.

And don’t get me started on the trope you hear on TV/films of “loving the law.” I guess I hang with the wrong legal crowd, but I have NEVER heard a lawyer say anything so stupid.

18

As I have said before, preparing for the law school entrance exam does not prepare you for attending a law school class; preparing for a law school class does not prepare you for the exam at the end of the term; preparing for law school exams does not prepare you for the bar exam; preparing for the bar exam does not prepare you to practice law.

Each step is (arguably) necessary but none of them is sufficient. Each requires extensive extra preparation.

And a lay person could do well on the bar exam if that person prepares for it the same way a law school graduate did. It’s not something you can guess right on.

19

When I took the Washington bar, they tended to emphasize areas where Washington was different. Makes sense, I guess. So, the test would over represent the differences, which tend to be few and relatively minor. So, you’d get points for saying something like “Unlike the Federal Evidence Rules, Washington does not have a catch all exception to the hearsay rule.” They’ve changed the test several times since I took it (1987) so I don’t know how they do it now.

20

Isn’t it possible, generally, for there to be two distinct things necessary in order to qualify for something?