All right folks, just in time for the start of Winter studying for the February 2015 bar exam I am happy to say that Brooke Baker in DC is offering a Bar Exam Stress Management workshop at Yoga District’s Glover Park studio on November 1st from 1:15 to 3:15. It’s a great way to learn techniques for dealing with stress and anxiety management which usually peaks around this time of year with results coming out and studying beginning. Interested folks can sign up on Yoga District’s website: https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/home?studioid=2070
Category: Bar Exam
DC bar exam results are posted here for the July 2014 exam.
The overall pass rate was 39.3% this time with a 55.2% pass rate for first time takers.
Congratulations to everyone who passed!!! If you did not pass, take a couple of days to get over the initial disappointment and then take a look at how you prepared and think of a plan for February 2015.
The results for the July 2014 Virginia Bar Exam have been posted over at the VBBE’s website.
Overall pass rate was 68%
The first time taker pass rate was 72.86%
Congratulations to everyone who passed! This is a big moment and your hard work has paid off. The swearing in ceremony is on December 3rd at the Greater Richmond Convention Center at 12:30PM. It’s a very nice ceremony and is a special session of the Supreme Court of Virginia.
For everyone who did not pass, don’t despair. Instead, look over how you studied for the exam and what you feel you should have done differently. Don’t give up and be sure to apply to take the February exam before the December 15th deadline.
Pretty big news for anyone planning to take the NY bar exam. The New York State Board of Law Examiners has recommended that the existing test (which is generally considered one of the harder bar exams in the nation) be replaced by the NCBE UBE (National Conference of Bar Examiners Uniform Bar Exam). The UBE consists of the 200-question MBE, 6 MEE essays and 2 MPT performance tests.
The Court of Appeals is allowing for Public Comments until November 7, 2014 at the following url:
New York Court of Appeals request for comment
If these changes go through, it would be quite a change as this would be the first “big” state to change their bar exam in favor of the UBE. The target is to replace the existing exam for the July 2015 administration of the New York bar exam. The proposal also states that there would still be a state-specific component. Apparently, the same 50 multiple choice state-specific NY questions would remain as a 1-hour test to be given concurrently with the UBE. The good news is that they are proposing to also offer just the 50 NY questions in December and Early Spring for those who pass the UBE but fail the NY section.
Big changes indeed if this all goes through. Stay tuned…
Now that the bar exam is over, we wait for the results. This is the worst part really, 2+ months of waiting from here is no fun. DC and Maryland should post the last week of October, we’re looking around Oct 29th for DC and Oct 31st for Maryland. Virginia is a bit earlier to post and will be in mid October, towards the end of the week, October 17th. And of course for California, you’ve got over 3 months of waiting, until November 21st until the results are sent out.
This bar exam marked the end of a couple of things. First of all, for DC and all other jurisdictions using the MEE (including all UBE jurisdictions), commercial paper is no longer a tested essay topic. Additionally, for everyone except Louisiana and Puerto Rico (which doesn’t use the MBE), this was the last time the MBE will test the same six subjects because starting with the next bar exam in February 2015, Civil Procedure will be added to the MBE as a 7th subject. My students for February already have a strategy around this and in fact this should make the MBE easier for those who have struggled with it in the past for several reasons, but we’ll cover that another day. For the time being, try not to think about the bar exam and enjoy the rest of the summer. The results will be here when they will be here, nothing can make them come sooner or later.
Congratulations on surviving the first day. Down here in Virginia we had an interesting exam, with our predicted subjects making up nearly all of the exam and with civil procedure(s) having a negligible showing: Lots of local government, some personal property, crim law, partnerships, wills, domestic relations, agency and commercial paper. DC was fairly straightforward as well, with predictions nearly on the mark this time (6 out of 7 ain’t bad): crim, contracts, evidence, civ pro, fam law/conflicts and corporations. And on a positive note, the administration/proctoring of the DC exam today went smoother than last time, although there were still some issues, but hopefully this is a sign they are getting their act together slowly but surely. Oh, MPTs were a fairly tough memo and a letter. Good luck on the MBE tomorrow for everyone taking it!