Does law school curriculum affect bar examination passage? An empirical analysis of factors related to bar examination passage during the years 2001 through 2006 at a midwestern law school

Journal of Legal Education

Volumn 57, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 224-236

  Rush, Douglas K ^a   Matsuo, Hisako ^a  

^a SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 38349046999     PISSN: 00222208     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. 2005 Statistics, The Bar Examiner, May 2006, at 23, 32.
2. Id.
3. Id. at 24.
4. Id.
5. Joan Howarth, Teaching in the Shadow of the Bar, 31 U.S.F. L. Rev. 927 (1997).
6. See Association of American Law Schools, Committee on Bar Admission and Lawyer Performance and Richard A. White, AALS Survey of Law Schools on Programs and Courses Designed to Enhance Bar Examination Performance (2001), which catalogs such programs at many ABA accredited law schools.
7. See ABA, Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, Standards for Approval of Law Schools, at Standard 302(3) and Interpretation 302-7, available at (last visited Oct. 17, 2007), which provides that accredited law schools may give academic credit for bar examination preparatory programs as long as the credit is to meet law school graduation credit hour requirements which exceed the 83 credit hour minimum mandated by the ABA for graduation from law school.
8. Christian C. Day, Law Schools Can Solve the "Bar Pass Problem"-"Do the Work!," 40 Cal. W. L. Rev. 321, 343 (2004).
9. See Saint Louis University School of Law Student Handbook 29, 79, available at (last visited Oct. 17, 2007), which mandates enrollment in bar examination subject-matter courses for all students with a cumulative grade point average between 2.00 and 2.25. This encompasses, roughly, students who rank in the bottom 10 percent of their class.
10. University of Oklahoma College of Law, Student Bulletin 15 (2006). Students must take six of the following upper division courses: Administrative Law, Bankruptcy, Income Taxation, Conflicts of Law, Corporations, Family Law, Federal Courts, First Amendment, Commercial Law, Real Estate Transactions, Remedies, and Wills and Trusts.
11. ABA, Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, A Survey of Law School Curricula, 1992-3002, at 18 (Chicago, 2004). For example, Florida Coastal School of Law requires that upper division students take Constitutional Law I and II, Business Associations, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, Family Law, and Sales, all topics tested on the bar examination. Florida Coastal School of Law, Student Handbook 28, available at (last visited Oct. 17, 2007). The Ave Maria School of Law requires that upper division students take the following bar examination subject-matter courses: Business Organizations, Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence. Ave Maria School of Law, First, Second, and Third Year Courses, available at (last visited Oct. 15, 2007).
12. Linda F. Wightman, Research Reports Series, LSAC National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study viii, 23-24, 28-29 (1998), available at Law School Admissions Council Members Only website, .
13. ABA, Standards for Approval of Law Schools, supra note 7, at Standard 301(a), which states, "a law school shall maintain an educational program that prepares its students for admission to the bar and responsible participation in the profession," but does not mandate that specific subjects be taught.
14. ABA, A Survey of Law School Curricula, supra note II, at 13.
15. Id. at 13-16.
16. Id. at 23-27.
17. See National Conference of Bar Examiners, The MBE 2007 Information Booklet, available at , and The MEE 2007 Information Booklet, available at (last visited Oct. 17, 2007).
18. Missouri Supreme Court Rule 8.08, available at (last visited Sept. 12, 2007).
19. Day, Law Schools Can Solve the "Bar Pass Problem," supra note 8, at 343; Kristin Booth Glen, When and Where We Enter: Rethinking Admission to the Legal Profession, 102 Colum. L. Rev. 1696, 1711 (2002). Glen criticized the overemphasis on teaching bar examination subject matter courses to the detriment of lawyering skills courses.
20. Day, Law Schools Can Solve the "Bar Pass Problem," supra note 8, at 343.
21. Id. at 343.
22. Id. at 343.
23. See Table 2 and Day, Law Schools Can Solve the "Bar Pass Problem," supra note 8, at 329.
24. Saint Louis University School of Law is a private, Catholic, Jesuit institution which traces its roots to the Saint Louis Law Institute founded in 1843. It has been ABA-accredited since 1924 and has an approximate total annual enrollment of 625 students in its full-time and 240 students in its part-time programs. The School of Law graduates students in January, May, and August of each year. All graduates in calendar years 2001-2005, including, J.D. and dual degree (i.e., J.D./M.B.A.) students were included in the study provided that the Missouri bar examination was the first bar examination taken after graduation. The Missouri bar examination consists of two parts, the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) and the Essay Examinadon (EE). The EE consists of a Missouri Essay (ME) component, the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE) and the Multistate Performance Test (MPT). Applicants are also required to pass the the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE) and a character and fitness investigation to gain admission to the Missouri bar. This study only analyzes whether students "passed" or "failed" the Missouri bar examination which consisted of the MBE, EE, ME, MEE, and MPT. The Missouri bar examination is administered by the Missouri Board of Law Examiners which is appointed and authorized by the Missouri Supreme Court to determine the qualifications and fitness of applicants for admission to the Missouri bar. Approximately 75 percent of Saint Louis University School of Law graduates took the Missouri bar examination as their first bar examination during die study period. The Board of Law Examiners reports the identities of students who pass and fail each bar examination to the School of Law. This study does not include graduates who took the bar examination in other states as their first bar examination and does not include graduates who retake the examination after failing the bar examination on their first attempt.
25. The Missouri bar examination is given in February and July each year. This study includes graduates who took the Missouri bar examination between February 2001 and February 2006. Some January 2001 graduates took the February 2001 Missouri bar examination and some August 2005 graduates took the February 2006 Missouri bar examination as their first bar examination.
26. The School of Law admits students only in the fall semester each year. Between 235 and 245 full-time students and between 75 and 95 part-time students are admitted each year. Full-time and part-time students are allowed to transfer between the programs after their first two semesters and may change their status as full or part-time students in each semester thereafter, depending on the number of credit hours in which they enroll. Part-time students take between eight and eleven credit hours per semester. Full-time students take between twelve and seventeen credit hours per semester. Student categorization in this study is based on the incoming status of the student at initial enrollment.
27. Five categories were coded for the race variable in this study: Caucasian, Black/African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Mexican/Hispanic, and Other/Unknown. Mexican/Chicano/Chicana were combined with Hispanic because of the small number of graduates (10) in diose categories. Similarly, Native American/Alaskan Native were combined with the Other/Unknown due to the small number of graduates (12) in those categories.
28. The LSAC administers the LSAT. It states in its Interpretive Guide for LSAT Score Users (2006) that tests are graded on a 120-180 point scale. Score results are normally distributed and have the same meaning from one administration to another based on the statistical process of equating. Equated scores represent a comparable level of ability between test takers regardless of when the test was taken, even though the average ability of test takers on one test may exceed the average ability of those taking a different test. The LSAC reports that the LSAT is highly reliable, meaning that it would be reproducible for a given test taker regardless of the date the test is taken. The reliability coefficient, measured on a scale from 0-1, has consistently been at least .9. The larger the reliability coefficient, the more consistent a test taker's results should be. The LSAC reports that there were 113,713 test takers in June, October, and December 2005. The mean score was 151.27 with a standard deviation of 9.71. LSAC, Interpretive Guide for LSAT Score Users: June, October, and December 2005 LSAT Administrations, Forms 6LSN68, 5LSN65, and 5LSN66 (2006).
29. The requirement to report average LSAT scores to the ABA and LSAC was changed in December 2005. Law schools may now report the highest LSAT score when reporting data on their incoming class. See LSAC Report No. 2006-2, July 2006, at 2, available at (last visited Oct. 17, 2007). This study uses the average of the scores for multiple test takers for the purpose of uniformity in analysis.
30. The School of Law's LSAC index score is computed according to the following formula: Index Score = .033(LSAT) + 408(UGPA) + -3.594, which results in an index score between 1.2 and 4.1. This formula weights LSAT score at 51.71 percent and UGPA at 48.29 percent. Conversation with Saint Louis University School of Law Assistant Dean and Director of Admission Mike Kolnik.
31. Students in the School of Law are initially categorized by the number of hours in which they enroll when they matriculate. Full-time students initially enroll in two fifteen-hour semesters and take classes in the day. Part-time students initially enroll in three ten-hour semesters in the evenings. During the period of this study, students were allowed to transfer between the part-time and full-time programs, and vice versa, after they had completed the initial core diirty-hour required curriculum.
32. This variable was coded based on the graduate's final LGPA. All School of Law graduates during a calendar year are ranked together based on their LGPA regardless of whether they graduate in January, May, or August. Graduates whose final LGPA placed them in the 1st to 25th percentile of their graduating class were assigned to the "First Quartile;" graduates whose final LGPA placed them in the 26th to 5oth percentile were assigned to the "Second Quartile;" graduates whose final LGPA placed them in the 5151 to 75th percentile were assigned to the "Third Quartile;" and graduates whose final LGPA placed them in the 76th to tooth percentile were assigned the "Fourth Quartile."
33. Graduates were assigned to the "Bottom Ten Percent-Yes" category if their final LGPA placed them between the gist and 100th percentile of their graduating class. They were assigned to the "Bottom Ten Percent-No" category if their final LGPA placed them in the 1st to 90th percentile of their graduating class. It should be noted that graduates who are coded as "Bottom Ten Percent-Yes" also appear in the "Fourth Quartile" category as "Bottom Ten Percent-Yes" as a subset of the "Fourth Quartile."
34. All School of Law graduates (except LL.M. students) are required to take the core thirty-hour, first-year curriculum which consists of Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law, Federal Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law I, Property, and Legal Research and Writing. All of these subjects, except for Legal Research and Writing, are tested on the Missouri bar examination. School of Law graduates may also elect to take the following upper division courses whose subject matter is also tested on the Missouri bar examination: Administrative Law, Business Associations, Commercial Transactions, Conflicts of Law, Constitutional Law II, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, Family Law, First Amendment, Missouri Civil Procedure, Real Estate Transactions, Remedies, Secured Transactions, and Trusts and Estates. Since all graduates are required to take the core, thirty-hour, first-year curriculum, the variable collected in this study was the total number of elective, upper division, bar examination subject-matter courses taken by each graduate. The study did not attempt to correlate the graduate's ability to pass individual sections tested on the Missouri bar examination with whether the graduate took the underlying bar examination subject-matter course while in law school because some subjects are tested on multiple parts of the bar examination; some subjects are tested at various weights or not tested at all on bar examinations in different years; and because bar examination test scores on individual subjects are not released for individual test takers unless that test taker specifically authorizes the release of that data, which would result in an incomplete data base.
35. Julie Pallant, SPSS Survival Manual 160 (2d ed., New York, 2004).
36. Id. at 201.
37. 2 + (N1 + N2 - 2). The guidelines used to interpret the results, .01 = small effect, .06 = moderate effect, .14 = large effect, are found in Jacob Cohen, Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2d ed., Hillsdale, N.J., 1988).
38. Because we are using a "one-tailed" hypothesis, we divided the "two-tailed" significance level reported in the SPSS output by a to arrive at the correct significance level to interpret the t-test.
39. William D. Henderson and Andrew P. Morris, Student Quality as Measured by LSAT Scores: Migration Patterns In the U. S. News Ranking Era, 81 Ind. L. J. 163 (2006).
40. ABA, Standards for Approval of Law Schools, supra note 7, at Standard 301; See also American Bar Association web site, (last visited Oct. 17, 2007), which reports that the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar voted on August 4-5, 3005 to place Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, California, and Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco, California, on two years probation for, among other issues, their low bar examination passage rates.