Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Should You Appeal Your Bar Exam Score if You Failed the Florida Bar Exam?

By now you have received your fail letter detailing your bar exam scores. You can look at Part A, the Florida essay and multiple choice and find out your scores, the mean scores and how close you were to passing. You can also look at Part B, the MBE, where the score is broken out by subjects. Again, you need to examine your weak sections.

In Florida, those 2 sections are equally weighed. You can technically fail one and overall pass the Florida bar exam.

You need to know the mean score of both sections. Each essay will have the student score and the mean score as well as the multiple choice student score and mean score. The scores are also adjusted upwards and downwards depending on how hard the essays/multiple choice were. This is where you can see whether you have the probability of success on appeal. Are you close enough to maybe squeeze out a point or two?

Once the appeal process has been started then you can also request a copy of the graded essay for a fee and determine what issues you missed. The fail letter will tell the student how to make the appeal.

The appeals process normally is not successful, but if you are close, it is worth a try to see if you can get a point or two more to be successful.

Please note, Bar Professors provide private tutorial for repeat bar takers. Contact us at pass@barprofessors.com

Friday, September 24, 2010

West Virginia and Iowa Bar Exam Results for July 2010 are Out

West Virginia and Iowa Bar Exam Results for the July 2010 Bar Exam are Out. Please see their respective websites for names and numbers.

Congratulations to those who passed.

Monday, September 20, 2010

July 2010 Florida Bar Exam Results by Law School

Here are the July 2010 Florida Bar Exam Results by Schools:

U. of Florida 86.8%
U. of Miami 86.0%
Florida State U. 86.2%
Nova Southeastern 80.8%
Florida International 84.2%
Florida Coastal 78.8%
Stetson 78.8%
St. Thomas 78.7%
Barry U. 74.7%
Florida A&M U. 62.5%
Ava Maria 64.0%

Total first timers 79.2%

The July 2010 Florida Bar Results are Now In

The July 2010 Florida bar exam results are now up on the website.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Scoring the Florida July 2010 Bar Examination: How Do I Pass?

Grading the Florida Bar Exam

The MBE & Florida sections are weighted equally on the Florida Bar Exam. This is called the “overall method”. (Rule 4-25(a)). A combined weighted score of 136 is required to pass the Florida Bar Exam. It doesn't matter if your score in one section or the other is below the 136 - it's the average score that matters. So basically you can fail the FL or the MBE section and still pass the FL bar exam if your overall score is at least 136.

If you fail one section of the bar and choose to re-take only that one section in the next examination, you must score the 136 points or higher on that section. The Florida Board of Bar Examiners calls this the “individual method”. (Rule 4-25(b)). Your chances of passing are slightly lower than re-taking the entire bar again.
If an applicant attains a passing scaled score on only 1 part and elects to take the overall method of the General Bar Examination as described above, the previous passing status will not be replaced by a failing status if the applicant fails to achieve a passing score on a subsequent submission effort. (Rule 4-25.1).

Each examination paper produced by an applicant on the General Bar Examination will be separately graded. The scores of each section of Part A will be converted to a common scale by a recognized statistical procedure so that each section is equally weighted. The sum of the converted section scores is the total score for Part A. All total scores attained by the applicants on Part A are converted to the same distribution as their Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) scaled scores. MBE scores (Part B) are the scaled scores on the MBE provided by the National Conference of Bar Examiners. Scaled scores are used in order to ensure that the standard of measurement of competence from examination to examination is not affected by the difficulty of the particular test or the ability of that particular group as distinguished from the general population of applicants. Rule 4-26.1

On the Florida portion of the bar, each essay is worth 100 points for a 300 point total. The multiple choice questions are worth 100 points total, so each question is approximately 1 point each. There are usually 10 experimental questions. The average essay score is around 40 points, requiring you to get your remaining points on the multiple choice questions.

Depending on the difficulty of the essay question and the average grade, the Board of Bar Examiners may adjust your score either downward or upward. There is a school of thought that a bar taker should hope for a difficult question so that the average grade is lower – thereby requiring the Bar Examiners to adjust upward. If the essay is an easy one, usually the average score is higher, thus requiring a downward adjustment. The Board does not adjust the multiple choice questions – there are what they are and the point totals do not change.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Idaho Bar Exam Results Are Out

The Bar Exam Results for Idaho are out. The successful applicants are listed on its web site. The pass rate was 81.5%.

Congratulations to all applicants who passed!

Please note, Bar Professors provide private tutorial for repeat bar takers. Contact us at pass@barprofessors.com.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The July 2010 Bar Exam Results for New Mexico, Missouri and Oklahoma Are Out

The Bar Exam Results for the states below are:

Oklahoma....85% pass rate
Missouri.....87.35% pass rate
New Mexico....88% pass rate

Congratulations to all applicants who passed!

Please note, Bar Professors provide private tutorial for repeat bar takers. Contact us at pass@barprofessors.com

Monday, September 13, 2010

Florida Bar Exam Results for July 2010

The Florida Bar Exam Results for July 2010 will be posted on this site on September 20, 2010.

Please make a note that Bar Professors will start its early bar prep for the February 2011 bar exam in November 2010. Bar Professors specialize in tutorial preparation and repeat bar takers.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

The North Carolina Bar Exam Results are Out

North Carolina is the first state to release the bar exam results for July 2010. You can see the names of the successful applicants on the Law Examiners website. Congratulations to all those who passed!