Even as someone who passed this time around in an exam with the lowest pass rate in CA history, I 100% think it's getting harder and not related strictly to the applicant pool. The first and only other time I took it was one of the last 3 day Bars in July 2016, and, for obvious reasons, I saw dramatic differences from that test to this one. Despite format change, I thought this Bar was magnitudes harder than than that one and, from practicing problems of past tests, it does appear that it's been significantly harder (at least essay-wise) each time since. First of all, there were almost no cross-over issues in the 2016 exam I took and the essay questions were very straight forward. Secondly, the only thing I felt was particularly hard about the MBE in July 2016 is that I was not prepared for how logically tricky the questions were, but there were very few questions on areas of law I was unfamiliar with.
This time around we had half the time to do the PTs and may as well have had 1/2 of the time to do the essays given that I felt there were sooo many more issues and multiple cross-overs. Of the 5 essays at least 3 of them were major cross-overs of multiple types of law (not just a standard two part cross-over) within a single question. Also, I felt the MBE included a ridiculous amount of questions on topics that were either barely talked about in preparation materials or that I had literally never seen at all, on top of being logically tricky and the typical MBE horror. I looked at the July 2017 exam in preparation for this one anticipating that cutting out a day would mean intense cross-overs, but, from what I remember, there was not one cross-over issue in that exam or at least if there were, they were very very minimal. Luckily I assumed that was only because it was the first administration of the 2 day exam and that they might turn up the heat this time and that over-preparation boded in my favor, but it still supports the argument that the exams are changing significantly and getting harder each time.
I do think that the lowering LSAT score trends do partially attribute to the lowering MBE trends since I find the two exams very, very similar, but I don't think that's the whole story either for the MBE trends alone or the Bar exam as a whole. I personally thought just from 3 cycles past the MBE I took this time around was a completely different exam that I had no way to fully prepare for and probably barely passed based on luck.
estefanchanning wrote:Serious question:
I agree with everyone that the CA bar exam is insane. But:
I think we can all agree that the test is not getting harder year after year. If that's the case, can we really blame the State Bar for such a low passing score? Perhaps the feb test was a bit harder than previous examinations, but idk if it was the cause of such a drastic drop in passing rate.
All that to say, perhaps the issue is with the actual law schools and their predatory admission practices? Perhaps their standards have sunk so low that they're the true cause of this decline?
To be clear, I don't think the bar exam is proper measure of who will be a good lawyer. But at the same time, I do think that law schools are more to blame than the State bar? This is a classic res ipsa situation, in that there is a harm that wouldn't have otherwise occurred without the negligence of someone, we just don't know who's fault it is exactly.