Thanks for the info.

It would not be a full time pursuit, he/she would still be living their normal life in the meantime. Does that change things?

Also, seriously looking for a line. Does 10/1 seem ridiculous?

"Living their normal life" is too short on details (employment/family obligations in particular) to possibly set a line without knowing more, but of course the amount of time that someone could devote over the course of the year would change things.

Oh, obviously. How drastically though? Again, does 10/1 seem reasonable?

He/she has a standard FT 9-5, no SO, no kids.

What state?

MA or NH

Is the person betting on themselves? Or is the subject being bet upon by other parties?

Themself.

Okay. I asked because, given the premise that the person has above-average intelligence, the task is largely a WIMfest. I do disagree with the notion that a prepared and intelligent person can't fail though, even given good health and all that on test day. The MBE is largely an exercise in narrowing down to two close options and picking the better one; some significant runbad on flips could railroad a person.

I feel like the prepared and bright person still only passes like 85% of the time, and probably a bit lower for someone who didn't have to spend as much time pounding 1L subjects into their head as a law grad did. Massachusett's first-time pass rate last July was around 70%, and I'm not assigning stupidity or lack of preparation to the entire 30% group that failed. I can't find NH stats.

Learning the bar subjects from the ground up while working full-time is quite a slog, but 10/1 still feels like too much of a payout for the test-taker given that they can make their way into being a favorite by test day through sheer WIM.

Great stuff, ty!

Now that I have good objective info, I must admit that I am the potential test-taker and I was on the fence about taking these odds but now feel much better about it. Again, thanks to all and any additional info would be much appreciated.

It's not at all clear to me that you can sit for the bar in MA without having been to law school.

Really.....I hadn't even considered that. ****!

You can't in Canada

California is one of the only ones where you can, and that’s only if you take the baby bar and are in an apprenticeship program (I think).

See, this is why I posted here. This never even occurred to me. You can't just pay a fee and take it? More homework to do. Thanks again, all.

Probably not. I remember with the MBE they have you sign a statement that you are taking it for the purpose to actually pass the bar. Because they don’t want to much test prep stuff. The guy who ran the company that prepped for the MBE had taken like every bar in the country or something like that, because he was trying to get info on test changes and stuff.

Also some of this I think is just how naturally good the person is at taking tests. There were people in my bar prep class that started off getting like 150 on the multiple choice section (out of 200) when they were telling us to shoot for like a 133 as passing. Then there are a couple people I knew from law school that had tried multiple states several times and just couldn’t get there. I was pretty sure they were not dumb something just was not clicking for them.

like all school, I didn't think it was all that helpful. School to me is more of a means to keep me engaged in consistently learning specific topics. I think if someone said "you need to learn about this" and gave me an outline for a year and I was able to stay self-motivated, I would learn way more than what I learned in school on my own.

It kind of depends how much we are telling them. Are we telling them about Barbri? The format of the test? Or are we just saying "okay bar is in 1 year, GO!" I think someone could pass the bar fairly easily if they studied the right stuff, but I think the completely uninitiated might not know where to start and could waste a lot of time studying stupid stuff. You do have to know A LOT, and it's pretty specific stuff, but I'd say it's very doable if you do it the right way.

months late to this discussion...but referring back to my posts about the bar in this thread, I think anyone with decent intelligence can pass the bar whether they went to law school or not, and I disagree with LKJ. The test is objectively difficult, but it is curved to a crazy degree. Prepared, bright people pass a lot closer to 99% of the time than 85% in my experience.

For some context, at my Tier 2 NY metro area law school, 98% of students with a 3.2 GPA or higher pass the bar (3.2 is slightly below median). So the top half of the class at my not great law school almost never fails. The rates for the bottom half drop off significantly. But the bottom 25-30% are idiots or don't study/do any work.

As I've mentioned before, I aced the bar, and I am not even close to being in the top few percentile of lawyers in terms of intelligence/test taking. Studying for it is a daunting task and no one walks out of the room confident, but if you're even somewhat intelligent, studied, and didn't have a massive migraine or some other health issue day of, it's hard to fail.

Btw, while no study source is perfect and nothing truly prepares you for the actual questions you'll see on test day, there are some that are close enough such that you can very accurately predict whether you'll pass or not based on how you're doing in practice.

I know one person who finished cum laude at GULC fail the NY bar the first time. She was one of those persons that really prepped for everything to a crazy degree and she just completely freaked out on the day of the exam although her simulated scores suggested she was basically 100% to pass.

Most horror stories about people (the above average IQ and well prepped kind of people) failing come down to test anxiety and I think people should acknowledge that more. I didn't really speak up because I wasn't even signed up for the bar but I always wanted to scream at the top of my lungs: "Stop freaking out. you just need like 65% of the questions correct to pass."

What I did (just a few months ago) was I calculated number of correct necessary to get like 280 (NY only needs 266). Google says that's about 65% correct. 65% of 175 graded questions = 113.75, rounded it up to 114. I did the same for 55% (roughly NY pass) and 60%. Then I used binom.dist function in Excel to calculate the probability, given a correct rate, to score at or above the aforementioned %s. The results are below:



So really, aiming for 70% correct is likely more than sufficient (especially for NY). 75% is getting excessive but may be warranted if you have suspicions about your writing ability, difficulty of the test bank you're using, and/or test anxiety issues. Once your accuracy is about that desired %, the more effective use of your time will be just getting familiar with the test format and timing and making sure you answer the questions within time frame. There is no bonus for passing with the highest score in NYS.

If you're going for a 280 score state, you probably should aim for 75-80% on practice exams.

reality check here am i crazy???

an acquaintance of mine is representing 3 co-workers in an employment discrimination case (all separate one plaintiff cases but each will be witnesses) and they name their supervisor in the Petition(s) as like the main villain who is doing all these awful things to them. no individually named defendant just the company -but still...there is no way this atty (or even anyone in his small 5 person office...) can represent the supervisor in his own employment discrimination action against higher management right???? i don't see how that can possibly be ethical but am I missing something


in unrelated news we had a jury last week try to give us 0 in actual damages and 400k in punitives. was a shitshow for 30 seconds then we made an objection and got the judge to send the jury back and sort it out...thankfully they just went half and half. it would have been better if they just did actual and no punitives since the state takes 50% cut of punis but oh well can't complain. not that i'll see much of it I wasn't trying the case although i have my first jury trial (not solo though really only doing 4 or 5 witnesses) here in about 10 days. i'm kind of glad it's not close to a slam dunk it takes a bit of the pressure off knowing there is little chance of a punitive verdict (and <50% of any positive verdict probably) and if i can pull one out of a hat i will be thrilled. i still have a lot of work to do dealing with "i don't know/I don't remember" witnesses and just keeping my calm in court in general. i have a bad habit of staying up all night because i can't sleep before big depos or motion hearings and really not performing on a 50% functioning brain so i'll take as much trial experience as i can get

I'm obviously super late to this discussion but I am 99% sure you can't just sit for the bar exam just by paying a fee/expressing interest (and not actually trying to become a lawyer).

What would be interesting is if you took a bunch of practice questions from bar prep companies, hired an essay grader, simulated test conditions, etc. I imagine if the stakes were high enough, you could put this together.

Good idea, I shall look into that. Thanks again, all.

I've been picking up a lot of criminal defense cases lately (at least for me, signed up 3 in the last week).

New York's new criminal laws make my job so easy.

I can’t imagine how this would ever be ok.

Go on?

I’ve said this before, I’m really curious how all the drug legalization in different states have impacted criminal practice. The rinky dink possession cases should be gone?

Wife just spent about 15 minutes whining about having to work non-stop with only a 30 minute break from 8:30 to 2:40 in her union teaching job.

I involuntarily rolled my eyes so hard I almost pulled a muscle.