BarclayBlog

Law Library announcements, legal research updates from around the world, new and interesting research resources and web sites of interest to the faculty at the Syracuse University College of Law. Note: For easy navigation, right click on hyperlinks to open links in a new window.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

"Does Law School Curriculum Affect Bar Examination Passage?”

Douglas Rush, a former lawyer and assistant dean at
the St. Louis University Law School, and research
methodology associate professor Hisako
Matsuo have written the paper “Does Law School
Curriculum Affect Bar Examination Passage?” The paper,
scheduled for publication in the upcoming Journal of
Legal Education, is currently available at the bePress
Legal Repository.

The article, which is also the subject of a New York
Times blog opinion piece (9/24/2007), describes the study
conducted of all 2001 -2005 graduates of St. Louis
University School of Law who took the Missouri
bar as their first bar examination between 2001-
2006.

Their findings? The authors found that "no statistically
significantly relationships were found between bar
examination subject matter courses taken and bar
examination passage for graduates ranked in the first,
second or fourth quartiles of their graduating class."

Hat tip to Out of the Jungle.