A number of readers of this blog just graduated from law school this spring, and are sitting for the bar exam this week. Different states host the bar exam on different days; as best I can tell from googling around, some folks are mostly or entirely done as of today, and others start tomorrow. If you’re taking the bar and are just about (or entirely) done, congrats! And if you’re starting tomorrow, good luck!
Amongst law students, at best they will be ½ way done today. As a statistical matter, in many states, essays are less time, and in other states there is a 3d day of multi-state “performance” testing, so, as of 4:00 or so eastern time, I don’t think that many recent law students are quantitatively over 50% done. Still others have not started as of yet.
Tomorrow, most people will be taking the MBE, which is uniformly six hours.
Phew — at least I’m not too late.
For what little it’s worth, Maryland’s essay is worth 2/3 of the total and is on the first day. So they’re “mostly” done, at least if one is literal about it (a fact in which few bar takers will probably find all that much solace).
Speaking from the perspective of a current bar taker, I don’t know that there is a half done, 30% done, or any fraction. There is done and not done, at least that is how its feels. I am “not done.” I look forward to someday being in the other category.
David, There seems to be some disagreement as to exactly what MD’s bar essay portion is worth. I have heard that BarBri is saying “the essay portion is worth twice as much as the MBE” but in looking at the bar examiner’s materials, this does not seem to be the case. I think this is a fiction created because, in MD, one’s essay score is increased by the mean of “the Maryland applicants’ MBE scale scores.”
Instead, I think that a better way to put it is that “a single unscaled point on the Maryland essay exam, are worth twice the number of points as a scaled MBE score.” Even so, this is not precisely correct, as takes many assumptions. Looking on their website, it reads “The maximum possible raw score on the Essay Test will be 72 points.” As we all know, the maximum raw score on the MBE is 200, and I think that is the maximum scaled score as well.
http://www.courts.state.md.us/ble/pdfs/gbtips.pdf:
Here are the fomulas:
Total Scale Score = (Essay Scale Score x 2) + MBE Scale Score
Essay Scale Score = [(A-B)/C][D] + E, where
A = the sum of the applicant’s raw scores on the 12 Essay questions
B = the mean of the A values across all applicants
C = the standard deviation of the A values across all applicants
D = the standard deviation of the Maryland applicants’ MBE scale scores
E = the mean of the Maryland applicants’ MBE scale scores
To prove my point, let me give you a few hypotheticals, and assume that Maryland is an average state MBE-wise, so I can use the figures available here: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Dgb2OC8hqtkJ:ncbex.org/pubs/pdf/740205_2004statistics.pdf
I further assume that the average essay score is a 3/6 on each essay. I assume that the standard deviation of raw essay scores is one, the standard deviation of MBE scores is 19 (as per the 2004 results), and the mean of scaled scores is 135. I am doing this really quickly, so I hope I am not missing anything. After multiplying the crap by two, the first thing I notice is that an unscaled score of 29 or less is actually a negative score. A raw score of 40 on the essays is enough to pass, without a single multi-state counting.
So, for example, getting 29 correct, translates to a contribution to the total score of 4. But, getting just one more question correct translates to a total score of 42. In essence, each point on the essay exam is worth 38 points in contribution. This means that a person scoring an average of 3.3 on each question (that is, a total of 40 points_has an essay contribution of 422, which is passing. Someone scoring less than 40, must make up for this by scoring about 38 points on the MBE.
Getting one point scaled point on the MBE, is just one point. The value of an unscaled point varies (and I didn’t have time to figure this out, but it is really about 1.2 or so scaled points.)
Perhaps someone else can put these into a Google Spreadsheet.
Flint, I don’t know much about feelings. So, I can’t try and put them in a spreadsheet.
As for Virginia, I’m happy to report that its bar exam ended yesterday. Which means, of course, that I shall now forget absolutely everything that I was forced to learn about wills, mortgages, suretyship, domestic relations, local government, and so on. (No offense to lawyers who find this stuff really cool!) Congrats to all who tested this week!
Sorry if this is a bit tangential, but I’ve been thinking about it since I took the bar exam.
I was a little confused to learn that Virginia caps at 800 the number of people it permits to take the bar exam by laptop computer. Everyone else is stuck writing by hand. I’ve heard that many other jurisdictions similarly limit the number of laptop users, usually by some sort of lottery system.
I got into the laptop program in VA, so I don’t have anything to complain about. But the system seems pretty unfair to all those people who don’t get in. It seems to me that the lottery winners have a very real advantage over the lottery losers. Typing is faster, easier to read (many of us lawyers have awful handwriting), and much easier to edit and refine.
This has me asking myself: is there any rational reason for a state to want to cap the number of laptop exams? I mean, why would any state want to have a significant number of handwritten exams to grade? Aren’t they messier and more difficult to grade? I’ve heard plenty of law professors say that they find typed exams much easier to read and grade. The bar’s lottery system seems about as arbitrary as randomly requiring a certain percentage of test takers to take the exam while standing on their heads.
I just googled around before posting this comment, and found this article: http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1152090321045
Opening sentence: “Suppose a judge gave you 5 1/4 hours to write the most important brief of your career and ordered you to write it in longhand? Would you be uneasy?” The article goes on to explain that NJ capped the number at 400 this year, which ended up being 300 persons short. Am I the only one who thinks this is kind of crazy?
This post responds to the 7/26 S.scotus post concerning how much the MD essay exam is worth. It is quite late as I write this, and to be honest, I did not punch in the numbers on my own.
Your final conclusion, however, which states that scoring an average of a 3.3 on each essay question — a total of 40 points, which then totals a passing score of 422 — seems to both contradict Barbri’s opinion, and moreover, the Board’s description as to the caliber of an answer receiving a score of 3.
The Board’s description of an answer receiving a 3 is one that demonstrates an incomplete understanding of the relevant and material facts and misses significant issues and key principles of the applicable law. It seems obvious to me that it is unlikely that a candidate receiving an average score of 3.3 would pass the MD bar before even sitting for the MBE.
My opinion is that an average of at least a 4 to 4.5 is needed to pass the MD essay test. This is based on Barbri, the Board’s representative good answers, and common sense once you read the Board’s description of what constitutes a 3 answer.
Again, it is very late, and my apologies if I misunderstood your post. Math is not my strong point (especially at 3am). Perhaps you could lay it out a bit more clearly if it is convenient for you to respond?
In any event, though, if you are correct, and a 3.3 average score on the essays would win the day, I (and countless others) would be extremely pleased.