“Go F*ck Yourself” — State Bar of California

The fact that California has the worst bar exam in the country with consistently the lowest passage rates is, well, a well-known fact. Yet, not one that seems to bother the California State Bar enough. In a statement released May 18th, 2018, (the date the February 2018 results were released at 6pm)[1], the Executive Director of the State Bar of California, Leah T. Wilson, did not feel the need to mention that the most recent results were the worst passage rates since 1951, with an abysmal 27.3% of test-takers passing the exam. Ms. Wilson did however, “acknowledge a low overall pass rate,” and bring up something called the “Productive Mindset Intervention Program”:

“In order to help improve performance on the bar exam, we recently launched the Productive Mindset Intervention Program. Through this program and ongoing study, we hope to better understand the downward trend of bar exam pass rates.”

As one of the 3, 418 out of 4, 701 test takers for the February 2018 exam who received the crushing news that we failed on May 18th, I was very interested in the “Productive Mindset Intervention Program” that had been “recently launched.” The same statement continues:

“The Productive Mindset Intervention Program will be available to applicants beginning with the July 2018 Bar Exam. This program is a partnership with researchers at Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and Indiana University. The program is designed to improve exam performance across the board.”

Well, gee. This program sounds really great! You may be wondering, as I was, “How do I sign up?” The answer is: You can’t! Haha!

No, seriously. You can no longer sign up for the program that, according to the Executive Director of the State Bar of California on May 18th, had just been “recently launched” for the July 2018 exam. I found this out by calling the Los Angeles Office of Admissions and asking for information on how to enroll in the program. I was told that the deadline for enrollment was May 14th, 2018. Some might find that an odd date to choose, as it is four days before the Bar Exam results were released. Meaning that anyone who had failed the February administration and would be registering for the July exam had missed the enrollment deadline for a program designed to improve their performance in July.

When I asked the representative (who did not provide his name upon answering the phone) how the deadline for a program that was announced on May 18th could have been May 14th, he became flustered and sounded uncomfortable, struggling to answer me. It was as if he was fully aware of how ridiculous the words coming out of his mouth sounded. He was only able to muster out that it is a “pilot program,” with no explanation at all given for the enrollment deadline having passed before the program was ever announced, or the February test-takers received their results. I pressed him further, asking if it was a program designed only for first-time test takers or 3Ls. I was told that it was for “anyone who enrolled by May 14th.” I asked, “But, how could anyone who had taken the February exam enroll by May 14th?” The answer is, of course, that they couldn’t — but because he was unwilling to say that, the representative simply breathed in silence on the other line as the tension grew. Much angrier now, I demanded to have the names of the persons in charge of running the “Productive Mindset Intervention Program,” and for their contact information. If you’re reading this and you’re wearing a hat, I would advise holding onto it before proceeding on and reading the response I received. The words that stumbled out of the man on the other line’s mouth were “no one has been appointed for that yet.”

No one. Has been appointed. For that. Yet.

Just to recap, the enrollment for a program that was just announced on May 18th as “recently launched” and “available to applicants beginning with the July 2018 Bar Exam,” is supposedly not limited to first-time takers, and that no one has been appointed to run yet…closed May 14th. If this seems as illogical and impossible to understand to you as it did for me, you might be wondering how to complain about it. Well, you can’t do that either. You see, no one has been appointed for that yet, so your only option is to “write a letter,” as I was told this morning — to the Sacramento office.

The Sacramento Office of Admissions will indeed be receiving one hell of a “letter” from me, and hopefully from many others who are as appalled with the California State Bar as I am. These are the attorneys evaluating the competency of others? This is the best they can do? Let’s review some lesser-known facts that should bother the State Bar very much:

· At 144, California has the highest cut score in the country aside from Delaware.

· Delaware only administers its bar exam once a year, in July, and had an overall passage rate of 69% for July 2017[2].

· California’s overall passage rate for July 2017 was 49% — 20 full percentage points below the only other state with a comparable cut score. This was actually hailed as an improvement over the July 2016 overall passage rate of 43%.

· The July 2016 overall passage rate for the California Bar Exam was so low, that 20 out of 21 deans of ABA-accredited California law schools petitioned the State Supreme Court to intervene, as it has authority over the State Bar[3].

· The California Assembly’s Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the subject, where Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker (the former Executive Director of the State Bar before Ms. Wilson) testified that there is “no good answer” for why the California cut score is as high as it is[4].

· The petition from the 20 law school Deans to the CA Supreme Court suggested using either a 133 cut score (the same as NY) or a 135 (the national average). Instead of using its authority to do either of those, the CA Supreme Court simply punted the issue back to the State Bar, ordering them to conduct a “study” and “report back” at the end of 2017[5].

· The end of 2017 has come and gone, the cut score remains the same without any rational explanation, and nothing has yet come from this 2017 “study” — unless of course you count the innovative new “Productive Mindset Intervention Program,” for which enrollment ended before it was announced.

· The California State Bar releases its Bar Exam scores later than any other state. (New York’s scores were released April 26, 2017.)

· The registration deadline for the July administration of the Bar Exam for every other state is in late April to early May. This means that if you were considering taking any other state’s July exam in the event of failing California’s in February, you cannot register in time. (New York’s deadline was May 8, 2018; Arizona’s was April 30, 2018.)

· The fee to sit for the California bar for non-attorney applicants is $860, which the State Bar collects from close to 9,000 applicants every July and 5,000 applicants every February. That is ~$7,740,000 for July and ~$4,300,000 for February, meaning the State Bar of California makes ~$12,040,000 on bar exam fees each year.

· Of the 4,701 applicants who sat for California’s February 2018 exam, 3,434 were repeat takers[6]. As in, 3,434 people who have paid that $860 registration fee two or more times (along with buying a prep course two or more times and paying for a hotel stay two or more times).

· Hotels near the test centers in California jack up their rates to between $500–600/night for the dates of the exam, which are in the middle of the week during non-peak tourist season. The “group rate” of ~$240 per night that the CA State Bar claims is available is actually not available, as the hotel representative will tell you when you call to book your reservation. I encourage anyone reading this to call every hotel near the Pasadena Convention Center and try to book a room for the July Bar Exam dates (July 23–25). Be prepared to laugh or cry.

· Barbri, the bar prep company most used by law students which boasts the highest successful pass rates, currently offers three courses to choose from for the California Bar. They cost $3,445; $3,695; and $3,995 each[7]. But hey, there are payment plans available for just $300/month!

· There are no statistics available for what percentage of test takers use prep courses, or what percentage of successful test takers used prep courses, or any data available for analyzing the role that class and poverty play in bar passage rates.

· Once you pass the California Bar, however many tries it takes, you must still go through the Character & Fitness process. It currently costs $550 for the privilege of having your moral character evaluated by the Committee of Bar Examiners, an invasive process that can take up to six months[8].

After graduating from law school in New York in 2015, I moved to California with my fiancé. My fiancé passed the NY Bar before we moved, as he graduated a year earlier than me. He currently works as an Immigration Attorney making $60,000/year. In what I now consider to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life, I decided not to take New York’s exam and to just take California’s. My fiancé & I are both first generation college and law graduates, and I attended my undergraduate university (a Top 10 Public University) on a 100% merit-based scholarship. I have wanted to be an attorney since I was nine years old, so after earning my bachelor’s I applied to law schools all over the country, ultimately deciding to move to New York City. My FAFSA estimated family contribution for my law school tuition was $0, meaning I qualified for government loans financing my entire legal education.

I am currently $340,000 in debt for my J.D., after amassing no debt for undergrad. It took an entire year being in California before we were able to save up enough money for a $1200 prep course from a company called Themis. (No, they are not as good as Barbri. Just cheaper.) I have now taken and failed the California exam three times and registered for a fourth administration, totaling $3,440 in registration fees alone. That is in addition to the incalculable lost wages from being unemployable in the profession I have a $340,000 degree for, which I cannot make loan payments on until I am employed. My most recent score on the February 2018 administration would have qualified me to pass in New York, as well as nearly 30 other states — and I was not able to afford a prep course for February.

Not only is the California State Bar making a killing off of failing its own law graduates miserably, its multi-faceted failure disproportionately affects individuals who are either from out of state, poor, or both. Let’s not even get started on how those categories intersect with race and gender. Why would anyone from another state want to go to law school or practice law in the state of California? I certainly don’t anymore, but since the registration deadlines for every other state I was considering passed long before the CA results were released on May 18, I’ll be making one more attempt before getting married in March of 2019. And I’ll be doing it without the benefit of whatever the hell this new “Mindset Intervention” program entails, since enrollment ended 4 days before it was announced.

I would like to know exactly who was targeted for this “Productive Mindset Intervention Program,” how they were contacted, why February test-takers were completely ignored, and what the program includes. I’d also love an explanation as to why the State Bar finds any of this information remotely acceptable. All I want is to practice my profession and be a contributing and successful member of society, but it appears to me that the State Bar’s goals are more in line with JLo and Cardi B — Dinero.

[1] http://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News-Events/News-Releases/state-bar-of-california-releases-results-of-the-february-2018-bar-exam

[2] https://courts.delaware.gov/bbe/2017barresults.aspx/

[3] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-faigman-california-bar-exam-cut-score-20170321-story.html

[4] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-faigman-california-bar-exam-cut-score-20170321-story.html

[5] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-faigman-california-bar-exam-cut-score-20170321-story.html

[6] http://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News-Events/News-Releases/state-bar-of-california-releases-results-of-the-february-2018-bar-exam

[7] https://www.barbri.com/states/california/#pricing

[8] https://www.calbarxap.com/applications/CalBar/info/moral_character.html#fees