Thank you for starting and participating in this thread. I do not understand your sixth point in light of your third point. Why would any admissions process need to be reconfigured ? Why would additional AOs need to be hired to conform to Chief Justice Roberts opinion ? In my view, this is a very simple and inexpensive transition--eliminate race boxes from the admissions application and read the applicants' personal statement essays. |
The LSAT indicates how well a student might do in his or her first year of law school. Years two & three revert back to typical undergraduate memorization and application skills. |
Disagree. Rote memorization won't help you understand and perform legal analysis. I went to a first tier law school with larger-than-average classes where I had a lot of friends who were top of their class in undergrad but never did well in law school -- because they just didn't get it. Their undergrad memorization and application skills were fine. Their critical thinking was average at best. They struggled. Some failed the bar. |
Our experiences at top tier law schools differ. Also, I never used, or implied, the term "rote memorization" in my response. My phrase was "memorization and application". The only folks--very few--who failed the bar also finished at or near the bottom of the class. I am not sure as to whether or not to believe your response; I would love to know your law school. |
If you reject the professor’s experiential comment so rudely, at least state your credentials and explain what your answer would be. After all, this is a discussion and Q&A thread. If you have no worthwhile contribution to make just STFU. |
Very good question. I believe that the major application advisors (think Spivey) will change the way that they are advising applicants to craft their applications. From this point forward the applications will be crafted to show that the applicant has had to overcome challenges in some way that demonstrates an ability or character trait that will be (should be?) of value to the school. This will not be the advice only to diverse candidates. White candidates -- particularly those with less than stellar LSAT and UGPA -- will be urged to write this as well. And, maybe some others, as well. Each one of those statements must be read with care. And, anticipating litigation and discovery (because the majority made it easy for plaintiffs to get standing in such cases), the admissions officer must write an evaluation of the candidate on the same dimensions. The evaluation must be at least several sentences, explaining the degree to which they find the candidate's experiences, and the connection to valuable skills and character traits, believable and appealing. I would not merely rely on a check box. Further, I would not want a canned paragraph. We would need to be showing [i]individualized attention to comply. I think this will be on top of the other work that the admissions officers have to do. Until the volume of applications starts to shrink (see my previous post on demographics) we will need an extra admissions officer or two to do the work.[/i] |
Believe it or don't, lol. I don't care -- I'm really just here for local business recommendations. As far as where I went to law school, like I said, it was top tier. And yeah, the folks who failed the bar tended to be at the bottom of the class, but those were the people who, like I mentioned, don't get it. A colleague went to law school at Stanford, and she didn't get it. Failed CA twice, finally passed DC after multiple attempts. Super smart, not great at thinking like a lawyer. You say you went to a top tier law school as well, but I'm not sure whether or not to believe that. Or maybe you didn't go at all? |
CHIEF Justice Roberts! |
PP, are you Chief Justice Roberts? I can’t see anyone else wanting to point out this ‘slight’…. If so, many of us are concerned about your recent opinions. |
Professors think about grading all the time. We worry about it. Here's what we know. 1. Students' grades correlate highly between courses. If a student gets an A in one course, the probability is high that the student will get an A in a second course. Thus, whatever it is that we are reacting to when we read exam answers, we (professors) tend to react in the same way. 2. Some of us use multiple choice question, similar to those on the bar examination. Students' scores on multiple choice questions correlate highly with their scores on answers to essay questions. 3. There has been grade inflation over the past 40 years. 4. Grading answers to essay questions is the most boring part of a law professor's job. That is unanimous. The most difficult task is paying attention when reading the 40th answer in a row to the same essay prompt. I don't condone drinking while grading, but I understand it. 5. We are profoundly uncertain about making small distinctions -- e.g. A or A-? -- but quite confident about making large ones -- e.g. A or B-?. I apologize for having missed some of the posts along the way. I have been dealing with a bathroom redo and it has been consuming my time (and our money). I will attempt to insert italicized responses where I think I have a reasonable answer. |
The relation between LSAT and passing the bar is probabilistic, and depends on not only LSAT but which state bar the graduate is taking. Some states have very difficult bar exams (think about California and New York). For such states higher LSAT scores are required to produce the same probability of passage as a lower LSAT has in an easier state (e.g. Pennsylvania). |
You clearly don’t know anything about legal writing. |
The New York state bar exam is NOT difficult--maybe you got the impression that it was/is difficult by using bar passage rates instead of required UBE (Uniform Bar Exam) results. Prior to joining the UBE, the New York state bar was approximately the 33rd hardest bar exam. Arizona has the highest required UBE score among the 41 jurisdictions that use the UBE. At least 21 states require a higher UBE score than does New York state. About 10 states do not use the UBE (Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, California, Nevada, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Hawaii, and Virginia) although this number may decrease. |
I believe that Pennsylvania requires the second highest minimum UBE score among the 41 jurisdictions that have adopted the UBE. New York state requires a much lower minimum UBS score than does Arizona or Pennsylvania. |
Among the 41 jurisdictions that use the UBE (Uniform Bar Exam), these are the 21 jurisdictions that require a higher minimum UBE score than does New York state (NY requires a minimum UBE score of 266):
273 Arizona 272 Pennsylvania 270 Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington state, West Virginia, & Wyoming. New York state requires a minimum UBE score of 266 as do Connecticut, Wash DC, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey,New York, South Carolina, and the Virgin Islands. Although California is not a UBE state, the California state bar is widely recognized as a difficult bar exam due to its low passage rate--although California has a number of non-ABA law schools which are permitted to sit for the California bar exam. |