Friday, July 29, 2005

Feb Calfornia Bar Pass Rates - Online Schools outperform Cooley and several other ABA schools.

La Verne continues to impress me. Their Feb 2005 performance on the California Bar was 67% - respectable performance for a non-ABA school and is at or above many ABA accredited schools. Likewise, Concord (a non-ABA online law school) consistently produces good bar pass rates year after year - this time it was 55%. Mind you in California, the Gold Standard of bar exams, performing at or above 50% is a good showing.

Cooley's bar pass rate in California was 14% - affirming my decision to leave the school as being a wise move. I should note that this does not mean I believe Cooley is a bad school per say, rather the cost of legal education at Cooley, or perhaps any ABA accredited school for that matter, is way out of line with the tuition charged. I've come to believe, based in part on my experiences at Cooley, that traditional legal education (traditional in the sense that the ABA has had a near monopoly on legal education for the past 50 years, whereas before the ABA monopoly nearly HALF of all practicing lawyers had obtained their credentials by correspondance and/or non-ABA education) is fast becoming obsolete and the elitist nature of the ABA is doing more harm than good. In fact, a considerable number of ABA school bar pass rates are below those of non-ABA/Online law schools (ABA schools - U of Denver 25% , New England School of Law 17%, Whittier 33%, Thomas Jefferson 32%, to name just a few...).

I would be pretty ticked off about an education investment that cost $150,000+ only to discover that I was still unable to practice law in ANY state, whereas my counterparts who spent a total of $10,000+ were engaged in the profession.

3 Comments:

At Saturday, July 30, 2005 10:34:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey man, shoot me an email...I've been trying to get ahold of you, but my emails bounce back.

~neurosis
neurosis2@gmail.com

 
At Sunday, August 21, 2005 3:50:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can understand your frustration. Just remember passing the bar does not make you a good lawyer. Many schools teach to the bar. So th students become good bar takers and not good attorneys.
Also many jobs require that the person have graduated from an ABA school. Many ABA schools are not worth their money so go to a good school that is recognized and good.

 
At Thursday, August 25, 2005 12:18:00 PM, Blogger majqa said...

True - a bar exam does make the attorney, although it stands to reason that after spending six-figures on an ABA education one would hope to have a reasonable shot at passing the California bar exam (no wonder the ABA wants to put a stop to non-ABA bar admissions).

Considering that a fair number of ABA graduates perform far below even those of online law school graduates makes me wonder if the "ABA" credential would be of any value were it not for its monopoly position in the marketplace of legal education. Previous to the ABA monopoly, nearly half of all practicing lawyers "read black-letter law" vs the system of formalized legal education today.

It's certainly possible that many ABA schools do a great job at turning out graduates with solid legal skills, but such skills are useless when graduates are unable to pass a bar exam.

 

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