Monopolies Are Bad – Except Mine
The State’s Legal Cartel announced the results of the July 2002 admissions exam yesterday. Forty-nine point five percent of the hopefuls failed. California’s passage rate is always a little out-of-whack since attendance at an ABA-accredited school (or any accredited school) is not required to sit for the exam. This is shown in the Bar’s press release, which reported that passage rates of first-time takers were
29.7 percent for applicants from schools accredited by the Committee but not approved by the ABA, 20.0 percent for applicants who studied law at unaccredited law schools, and 42.2 percent for those that were not allocated to a law school (because they did not take the [bar exam] within one year of graduation).
I’ve heard all the public policy reasons for letting these schools exist because they serve disadvantaged and underrepresented groups, and their graduates increase diversity in the bar, blah, blah, blah, but c’mon. At some point isn’t a school or class of schools that can only produce a 20% passage rate just exploiting their students?
