Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Bar Passage and course choices - little correlation

The title to this post will take the reader to a post in the Opinion blog of the NY Times. The author refers to a study done by the Assistant Dean at St. Louis University law School, "Does Law School Curriculum Affect Bar Examination Passaghe" in teh upcoming issue of Journal of Legal Education. The dean, Douglas Rush, finds no correlation between bar passage and course selection for any but the third quartile of the class, looking at five graduating classes at SLU. In the third quartile, he found a weak correlation. The research was replicated with students at Hofstra as well.

The students in the top quarter had very high likelihood of passing, and students in teh bottom quarter had very low likelihood of passing. The students in the middle had middling chances of passing and very little changed according to what classes each selected in law school The question is whether this means faculty need to tweak how they teach or if it means that law school grading is just an excellent indicator of bar passage. The comments following the interesting blog entry are kind of interesting, too.

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