Howard University School of Law had a problem, and school officials knew it. Over a 20-year period, 40 percent of its graduates who took the Maryland bar exam failed it on their first try. During the next 24 months — the time frame required to determine its “eventual pass rate” — almost 90 percent of the students did pass.
What they didn’t know was what was causing the embarrassing bar results, which threatened the law school’s accreditation status. A study commissioned by Dean Kurt Schmoke revealed that one-third of the students at the historically Black Washington, D.C. school declined to take bar exam prep courses. The post-graduation courses, offered by a variety of private companies, are widely viewed as vital to ensuring a positive result on the exam.
“Not taking the course? That’s like fighting a heavyweight battle with one hand tied behind your back,” says Schmoke, the former mayor of Baltimore who has been at the helm of the law school since 2003. “Their reason was money.”
The price of the courses vary by company and state, but they generally average between $2,000 and $3,000. Traditionally, graduating students take out a loan to cover the expense, which is separate from any law school loans, and thus not covered by financial aid.
In 2008, Howard became one of the first law schools to specifically address bar prep courses, instituting a nonrefundable “bar examination fee.” The $3,000 expense is evenly folded into tuition over the course of the three-year law program. That decision came the same year the American Bar Association ramped up accreditation standards — 75 percent of a school’s first-time bar exam takers must pass the test three years in a row, and 75 percent of all test-takers, including repeat test-takers, must pass over a five-year period
“Unfortunately, these [courses] are a necessary evil,” says Schmoke. “But we think they’re worth it. I want to make sure that our first-time pass rate is the same as our eventual pass rate.” To help them reach that goal, Howard recently joined the Alliance for Legal Education, which is lobbying to reverse a rule barring use of federal tuition grants to cover post-graduation exam prep courses.
Other campuses also are taking action to reverse high failure rates by graduates unprepared for the rigors of the exam, which many consider the toughest professional licensing test in America. Florida A&M University College of Law offers its new graduates a free, 10-week bar prep course. It is the culmination of bar exam prep opportunities that, starting in their first year of law school, are available through FAMU’s Academic Success and Bar Preparation program. That endeavor emphasizes, among other aims, the importance of earning a solid GPA as a first-year student. The ABA mandates a uniform first-year curriculum, meaning courses taught in year one are very likely to appear on the bar exams of every state.
