Bar Exam Research Articles

Legal Information Management in a Global and Digital Age: Revolution and Tradition

AbstractThis article presents an overview of the public policy issues surrounding digital libraries, and describes some current trends, such as Web 2.0, the social network. It discusses the impact of globalization and the Internet on international and foreign law information, the free access to law movement and open access scholarship, and mass digitization projects, then turns to some concerns, focusing on preservation and long term access to born digital legal information and authentication of official digital legal information. It finally discusses new roles for librarians, called upon to evaluate the quality of information teach legal research methodology and be advocates in information policy. Law librarians are encouraged to join professional associations and undergo continuous professional education. A recent development in the U.S.A., to add a legal research test on the bar exam, is of interest to the whole world, because it signifies the importance of sound legal research training to the competent practice of law.

Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students: A Longitudinal Test and Extension of Self-Determination Theory

Longitudinal studies suggest that law school has a corrosive effect upon the well-being (Benjamin, et al. 1986; Sheldon & Krieger, 2004) and values and motivation (Sheldon & Krieger, 2004) of students, ostensibly because of its problematic institutional culture (McKinney, 2002; Schuwerk, 2004). In a three year study of two different law schools, we applied self-determination theory's dynamic process model of thriving (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000) to explain such findings. Students at both schools declined in psychological need satisfaction and well-being over the three years. However, student reports of greater perceived autonomy support by faculty predicted less radical declines in need satisfaction, which in turn predicted better well-being in the third year, and also a higher GPA, better bar exam results, and more self-determined motivation for the first job after graduation. Institution-level analyses showed that although students at both schools suffered, one school was more controlling than the other, predicting greater difficulties for its students in terms of well-being, job motivation and bar passage. Implications for SDT and for legal education are discussed.

The Interplay between Ranking Criteria and Effects: Toward Responsible Rankings

The law school rankings published by US News and World Report have changed and continue to change the law school world, affecting both the demand and supply sides of legal education. Are the rankings valid? Are they changing schools for the better? The US News rankings mislead both applicants and law schools. As measures of educational quality, the US News rankings are seriously flawed. They overweight criteria that matter little, such as bar pass rate. They exclude criteria that matter greatly, such as job satisfaction. At least two of the seemingly valid criteria incorporated into the US News rankings are illusory; the reputation surveys done by US News do not tap into independent professional opinion but instead measure opinions that are echos of US News and, thus, add little reliability to the results that would be reached on other criteria. A more serious problem is the effect of US News rankings on the operation of law schools and students who desire admission. The rankings have created incentives for students who want to be lawyers to go to schools that have grade inflation and take easy courses at those schools. The US News rankings have created incentives for schools to teach to the bar exam, spend money on glossy publications, raise tuition, increase the number of transfer students, and admit students according to their bubble ability (their aptitude for taking multiple-choice standardized exams) rather than their prospects for contributing to the learning environment at the law school or their prospects for becoming effective and responsible lawyers.

The Bar Examination and the Dream Deferred: A Critical Analysis of the MBE, Social Closure, and Racial and Ethnic Stratification

In this article, the author applies social closure theory to help explain why more than a dozen states have recently enacted more stringent bar exam passing standards and why others are considering similar changes. While higher standards are usually advocated as a way to protect the public from lower student “quality,” the author applies social closure theory and argues that changes in passing standards are a response to a perceived oversupply of lawyers, especially among solo practitioners. In the 1990s, crowding among solo practitioners reached record levels, and real earnings eroded substantially. The author then links this labor market analysis to a critical examination of the knowledge claims that justify the bar exam to the legal profession and the public at large. The article's conclusion is that the psychometric research sponsored by the National Conference of Bar Examiners consistently minimizes and obscures the disparate impact and unfairness of the bar exam for people of color.

Thinking out of the Bar Exam Box: A Proposal to "MacCrate " Entry to the Profession

Thinking out of the Bar Exam Box: A Proposal to "MacCrate " Entry to the Profession

Learning Disabilities, Professionalism, and the Practice of Medical Education

The authors use the interface of learning disabilities (LDs) and medical education to explore several issues relevant to medical professionalism and the training of future physicians. First, they examine arguments given by Little (in the preceding article) that a successful suit for accommodations on a state bar exam is generalizable to LDs and medical education, and suggest ways in which this may not be true. They then explore two frameworks for understanding medical education: (1) as a process of academic achievement linked to degree attainment, and (2) as a process of professional acculturation linked to competencies. Within this dichotomy, they then explore (1) the legitimacy accorded to different types of accommodations, (2) differing meanings of a "level playing field," and (3) the legal standard of "otherwise able." They also examine the use of intermediaries (e.g., a reader) as a "leveling" strategy and how, in clinical settings, this might violate core standards of autonomous decision making. The authors investigate the nature of "technical standards" in training across medicine and nursing and find a number of differences, particularly in the intent and levels of detail of standards. Across these two domains, they observe a status hierarchy, medical hubris, and the emergence of a "right to fail" as one travels down that hierarchy. The authors also examine medicine as an undifferentiated degree and consider arguments that medical school course requirements should be unbundled. They close by insisting that medical schools have a social responsibility to shift their pedagogic gaze from identifying handicaps in individuals to understanding how the education of physicians can become, quite literally, "handicapping."

Editorial Note

Law schools are in the business of training “lawyers”, that is, people who will practise law. Law schools are not in the business of training students to only be able to regurgitate what they have learned in a bar exam. Lawyers must interact with a plethora of different people. They include clients, colleagues, opposing counsel, judges, witnesses, probation officers, court staff, support staff and others. Clients are often in crisis and, thus, emotional. Law schools must train students to effectively and intelligently interact with people on an emotional basis if we are to train students to be effective, good lawyers. This paper will briefly give an overview of what is meant by “emotional intelligence” and why it is important to the law school curriculum. The primary focus of the paper will be relating my experience in offering a class on emotional intelligence in the internship program at the University of Denver College of Law, Colorado, USA. I will discuss the goals and objectives that I had; the preconceptions that I brought into the process; the organisation of the class; the methodology utilised; the materials used; the student’s reactions; and, finally, what modifications I would make to the course.

Robert Lawrence Jepsen

Robert Lawrence Jepsen, an ultra high vacuum (UHV) pioneer, died of natural causes in Lacey, Washington, on 13 April 2001. Bob was the first formally appointed director of research for the microwave tube division of Varian Associates, although Russel Varian, chairman of the board, had directed research since the company was founded.Born on 16 June 1920, in Valley, Washington, Bob received his BS in electrical engineering from Washington State University in 1943. In 1951, he earned his PhD in physics at Columbia University, where he was a student of Willis Lamb. His thesis was on the space charge theory of the magnetron oscillator. Because of this research, he was an ideal candidate to direct microwave research at Varian.Bob joined Varian when the company occupied a small manufacturing building in San Carlos, California. In 1956, he led a program involving the investigation of electronic vacuum pumping to eliminate oil contamination of klystron cathodes. This effort led to the invention, with Lewis D. Hall of his group, of the VacIon pump in 1957. Bob’s magnetron theory, which showed that the pumping speed of a Penning cell should be independent of the cell’s diameter, led to the design of honeycomb-shaped anodes and commercial VacIon pumps with speeds of thousands of liters per second.In 1957, through the Varian advanced study program, Bob attended Harvard University for the academic year. There, he studied magnetism in the laboratory of J. H. van Vleck. In 1961, Bob became the manager of research for the newly established Varian vacuum division based on the VacIon pump. He and his colleagues invented and developed the UHV technologies familiar to us today that are used in applications including particle and medical accelerators, and in surface science experiments.During the early 1960s, Bob discovered the mechanism of noble gas pumping in VacIon pumps, which had been a great mystery. Whereas chemically active gases are pumped by reaction with sputtered titanium, the mechanism for the observed small pumping speed for neon and argon was not understood. Bob proved that a fraction of noble gas ions are kinetically reflected from the cathode as neutrals, and buried in the anode surface. This effect could then be enhanced for noble gas pumping.In 1964, Bob became director of research of Varian’s Central Research Laboratory, where he managed a large staff of scientists and engineers pursuing programs in materials science. From 1968 to 1974, he managed an electrographics start-up project, in collaboration with Edward L. Ginzton. Subsequently he studied and passed the US patent bar exam and, as a patent agent, wrote and coordinated the patents of Varian’s industrial equipment group.Bob retired in 1982, after 30 years at Varian, to grow wine grapes in the Pacific Northwest and to live in his home state of Washington, where he grew up as a farm boy.Bob was a director of the American Vacuum Society (now called AVS: The Science and Technology Society) from 1964 to 1966. He was program chair of the society’s annual meeting in 1965.An especially considerate and thoughtful person, Bob was also known for his integrity and generosity in sharing credit for advances made by him and under his influence. He left this impression on his many colleagues as an ideal to be achieved in their careers. When Bob returned from a visit to England, a colleague asked him, “How was everything in England?” Bob replied, “Well I don’t know about everything in England.” This illustrated his complete lack of superficiality and his desire to give honest and accurate answers to all questions.Bob was at the heart of the early development of Varian Associates. For the Varian founders and for Russell Varian, the word “Associates” carried a special meaning: “A man has the right to know the significance of what he is doing… .” Bob embraced this view throughout his career. While essentially modest, Bob’s views were reinforced with an especially crushing handshake, developed from milking cows as a boy.Bob hiked avidly in the Sierras, and was known to enjoy a good cigar, a glass of fine wine, and playing his viola. His colleagues remember him as one who had a major impact on their lives.Robert Lawrence JepsenPPT|High resolution© 2002 American Institute of Physics.

No African-American Lawyers Allowed: The Inefficient Racism of the ABA's Accreditation of Law Schools

Economic analysis demonstrates that, continuing from its intentionally racist beginnings in the 1920s, the American Bar Association's system for accrediting law schools excludes most African-Americans from the legal profession, while allowing whites to enter. The discriminatory impact of ABA accreditation takes two forms. First, the ABA accreditation standards inflict academic racism. The standards impose academic requirements that African-Americans tend to lack, eliminating most schools that would serve average African-Americans. For example, the ABA generally denies accreditation to any school for which the average LSAT score is below 143. The average LSAT score for African-Americans is 142, compared to 152 for whites. The ABA's requirements of high undergraduate grades and high bar-pass rates are similarly discriminatory. Second, ABA accreditation imposes financial racism. The accreditation requirements cause law schools' costs and tuition levels to more than double. Because African-Americans have far lower average incomes than whites, the requirements make law school affordable only for whites, not for most African-Americans. Affirmative action and the availability of student loans counteract only a small part of the accreditation system's discriminatory impacts. Elimination of both accreditation and the bar exam would integrate the profession and provide many other benefits, while producing few harms.

Raising the Bar: A Social Science Critique of Recent Increases to Passing Scores on the Bar Exam

More than one quarter of all states have toughened bar exam standards in recent years, with other states poised to follow suit. About one-third of exam takers from ABA-accredited schools now fail the bar exam on the first attempt. Many of these students would have passed the bar five years ago, before states started raising their passing scores. These higher passing scores raise important policy issues about competition, diversity, and access in the legal profession. In many states, moreover, the new scores rest on a flawed statistical process. Bar examiners, unaware of these defects, are setting arbitrary passing scores that most likely exclude qualified applicants. This article explores both the policy issues surrounding recent increases to bar passing scores and the methodological defects in the statistical process used to set those scores. The analyses are important, not only for assuring fair access to the legal profession, but as a case study of the ways in which flawed statistical processes can affect policy outcomes.

Michigan's Minority Graduates in Practice: The River Runs Through Law School

This paper reports the results of a 1997–98 survey designed to explore the careers of the University of Michigan Law School's minority graduates from the classes of 1970 through 1996, and of a random sample of Michigan Law School's white alumni who graduated during the same years. It is to date the most detailed quantitative exploration of how minority students fare after they graduate from law school and enter law practice or related careers. The results reveal that almost all of Michigan Law School's minority graduates pass a bar exam and go on to have careers that appear successful by conventional measures. In particular, the survey indicates that minority graduates (defined so as to include graduates with African American, Latino, and Native American backgrounds) are no less successful than white graduates, whether success is measured by the log of current income, self-reported satisfaction, or an index of service contributions. Also, although an admissions index that combines LSAT scores and undergraduate grade-point average is a significant predictor of law school grades, it does not predict career success on any of our three outcome measures. Michigan is a highly selective law school; our results may not generalize to people who have graduated from other law schools.

Assisted Suicide, the Supreme Court, and the Constitutive Function of the Law

It not difficult to compose a brief summary of the Supreme Court's assisted suicide decisions that would suitable for bar review study guides and law student outlines: With no dissenters, the Court overturned the decisions of the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts that conferred Fourteenth Amendment protection upon the choice of competent, terminally ill adults to end their own lives with medication prescribed by their physicians. (1) Holding that the Constitution does not protect a right to commit suicide that itself entails a right to assistance in committing the act, the majority opinions relegate assisted suicide and euthanasia to the laboratory of the states. (2) However, the decisions leave open the ill-defined possibility that the Court might revisit the issue, particularly if presented with a more narrowly focused claim than the one vindicated by the two circuit courts. Such a description would probably enable recent law school graduates correctly to answer a multiple choice bar exam question on whether there a constitutional right to die. But grasping their bottom line not the same as grappling with the power of the two decisions to shape our society's ongoing debate about the neuralgic ethical and legal questions entangled in end-of-life decisionmaking. As legal theorist and literary critic James Boyd White has taught us, courts do not simply issue abstract judgments that impersonally and mechanically guide the behavior of individual and institutional agents in our society. According to White, those who play a role in the legal enterprise are engaged in a type of rhetoric that actually helps shape the moral identity of the community in which they participate. The community-constituting character of law does not inhere solely in the results that issue in particular cases, but also in the very way the questions are framed for decision. A lawyer arguing a client's position, and a fartiori a judge rendering an opinion, is always saying not only 'Here how this case should decided,' but also 'Here--in this language--is the way this case and similar cases should talked about. The language I am speaking the proper language of justice in our culture.' (3) Assuming that White correct, if we are to understand the full import of the Supreme Court decisions on assisted suicide, we cannot fix our gaze solely on the conclusions they reach. We must also scrutinize the way the justices frame the issues at stake, the communal hopes and fears they invoke, the modes of argument they find persuasive and those that they discount, and the particular words and phrases through which they convey all of those things. By exercising the authority to interpret the constitutive document of our nation that has ultimately rested in their hands since the Court decided Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the justices inevitably wield a tremendous power of moral formation. In effect, they are moral teachers who help to shape the character of our nation. White reminds us that the habit of regarding law as the instrument by which 'we' effectuate 'our policies' and get what 'we want' wholly inadequate. It the true nature of law to constitute a 'we' and to establish a conversation by which that 'we' can determine what our 'wants' are and should be (p. 42). How, then, do the opinions in Glucksberg (4) and Quill (5) refocus the discussion regarding our communal obligations to the persons in our midst who are confronting the momentous and often terrifying task of relinquishing their earthly existence? In what follows, I would like to examine three issues on which these decisions are likely to exert significant pedagogical influence: (1) the tension between general rules or classifications and the particular needs of individuals; (2) the relationship among pain, dignity, and equality; and (3) the limits of philosophical theory and the importance of practical experience. Equality, Rules, and Exceptions The opinion of the Court in Glucksberg communicates its most significant moral lesson in the way that it frames the legal claim at stake. …

Helping, doing, and the grammar of complicity

In law a constant stream of actual cases, more novel and more tortuous than mere imagination could contrive, are brought up for decision-that is, formulae for docketing them must somehow be found. Hence it is necessary first to be careful with, but also to be brutal with, to torture, to fake and to override ordinary language ....(1) Introduction This essay is about grammatical(2) and, to a lesser extent, moral aspects of law of complicity, which treats someone who helps someone else commit a crime as though helper himself committed crime. The point I hope to make here is similar to one Professor Phillip Johnson made about what he called the unnecessary crime of conspiracy.(3) In its current mode, complicity too is unnecessary, but for better reasons, I think, than Professor Johnson came up with for saying same about conspiracy. Johnson suggested eliminating crime of conspiracy by calling conspiracies attempts,(4) a change of description that is more than semantic. Attempting entails trying. Conspiracies may demonstrate their members' antisocial character, but by agreeing to kill someone tomorrow or next month parties have no more attempted or tried to commit murder than those who engage to marry attempt to marry, or those who register for a Bar Exam prep-course attempt to take Bar Exam. Professor Johnson forces his redescription of conspiracy into Model Penal Code's definition of attempt which, even without his help, already makes a paranoid fantasy out of what it means to attempt a crime. Despite what Code says, searching for a victim,(5) reconnoitering,(6) or possessing materials to be used in crime(7) are not part of grammar of trying to commit a crime; equally ungrammatical is Professor Johnson's claim that agreeing to commit a crime is trying to commit a crime. I am not concerned here with conspiracy, but with complicity. My thesis is that in its current mode, where someone encourages someone else to commit a crime, complicity is unnecessary because it is redundant of laws that criminalize solicitation (a request that someone else commit a crime)(8) or conspiracy (where requested party agrees).(9) Where complicity is not redundant, that is, where criminal idea does not originate with helper, or where there is no agreement to commit a crime, I would redescribe complicity as an inchoate or risk-based, as opposed to consequence- or harm-based, mode of criminality. This is because essence of complicity is not causal as to principal or perpetrator's offense, but relational as to principal offender, or simply expressive of helper's antisocial or dangerous character.(10) A decade ago, Paul Robinson,(11) Sanford Kadish,(12) and Joshua Dressler(13) each wrote excellent pieces on complicity, which before then had received little scholarly attention in America. In 1991, Oxford University Press published Keith Smith's impressive one-volume treatise, which presents Smith's views alongside centuries of English thought on topic.(14) None of these four principal works or work examined therein, including that of criminal-law gurus George Fletcher and Glanville Williams, sees complicity as a form of inchoate liability. In last quarter-century, three short articles recommending such an approach have appeared in English law journals: two by Richard Buxton and one by J.R. Spencer, both of whom focus more on operation than on meaning of complicity.(15) The same can be said of English Law Commission, whose 150-page consultation paper compresses into a few short paragraphs essence and logic of complicity.(16) The Model Penal Code, too, hints at inchoate nature of complicity, but Code's approach fails both grammatically (someone who tries but fails to help robbery has perpetrated robbery),(17) and thematically. By placing complicity provisions remote from inchoate provisions, and by sentencing complicit actors like perpetrators, not like inchoate offenders, Code's drafters demonstrate that they saw complicity as only nominally inchoate or risk-based. …

African Americans Outpropagandized Again

ON pest control say that for every cockroach you see, there are a hundred hiding in the walls. And so, though we may expend a lot of time and energy swatting the one cockroach in plain view, and that may give us satisfaction, the job of getting rid of a nest of pests is much more difficult. Jesse Jackson made one of his great speeches when he pleaded with mean Pete Wilson and his front man Ward Connerly (whom Jackson signified on as Nebuchadnezzar's Eunuch) to change their minds about ending affirmative action at the University of California. Mr. Wilson, who had to take the bar exam four times, pretended that he was concerned about reverse discrimina-

Toward a More General Theory of Regulation

Toward a More General Theory of Regulation

A Modified Proposal for "Bar Exams"

A Modified Proposal for "Bar Exams"

A Proposal for "Bar Exams"

A Proposal for "Bar Exams"

A Proposal for “Bar Exams”

A Proposal for “Bar Exams”