California's bar exam being tough is a bit of myth. Yeah, California has a very low passage rate for their bar; but that's because California--unlike most every other state in the union--allows graduates of
unaccredited law schools to sit for the state bar exam.
In most states, you can't take the bar exam unless you have a degree from an accredited law school. So those gaudy failure rates in California are mostly folks who weren't smart enough to get into an accredited law school trying to backdoor into the profession via an unaccredited law school.
California bar passage rates for graduates of accredited law schools push 90%:
Quote:
With a bar passage rate of 86.7 percent, USC Gould was second only to Stanford Law, which announced an 88.8 percent passage. Bar passage rates among other top California law schools were 84.8 percent at Berkeley Law, 85.4 percent UCLA Law and 79.8 percent at UC Irvine Law.
Even lowly (but accredited) UC Irvine has 8 out of 10 grads passing. I think if an accredited school's bar passage rate falls too low consistently, the ABA puts the school on accreditation probation and eventually might even pull the school's accreditation.
Looks like Cali's the only state that allows unaccredited grads to sit for their state bar right out of law school; which means they have grads of unaccredited law schools nationwide rolling into California to sit for and fail the California state bar exam:
Quote:
Currently graduates of non-ABA schools can only sit for the bar exam and practice (if successful) in California.
http://lawschoolnumbers.com/application ... law-school
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