In the weeks since bar results were released, I've interacted with my classmates enough to pick up some gossip about who passed and who didn't. The list seems pretty arbitrary. Many slackers passed; many good students failed. Based on these results, I do not think the bar exam does much to separate the good candidates from the poor.
You might wonder how my bar exam scores panned out. I didn't botch the essays so badly as I thought. All my essays passed, though the scores were thoroughly mediocre. This tends to confirm a theory I've heard more than once: the essay questions are intended to test one's ability to write, not so much one's knowledge of the law. Probably half of what I said about the law in my essays was made up on the spot.
My multiple choice scores were fairly strong, which made for an overall score well within the passing range. My total score was just above the midway point between barely passing and top paper. A popular aphorism goes, "If you passed the bar by more than one point, you studied too hard," but I have no regrets about my hours of preparation. I prefer an aphorism that BarBri puts on some of its t-shirts: "Do it once. Do it right. Never do it again."
1 comment:
Hmmm... the bars are like any other test, the passers come as surprising. What's important is you did your best, and that you get what you deserved after all the effort and hardships you have undergone.
-Guy Chambliss
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