The 3L Town Hall meeting had a very low turnout; maybe a dozen students (at most). Dean Edley, Professor Bundy, the LRAP guy, K. V.Heuvel, Dean Ortiz, and P. Patterson were present to answer questions.
Here's a partial non-literal transcript of some of the questions and answers:
Question: How do we retain faculty?
Edley: If faculty has an offer from a peer institution, campus will let us match salary -- but it's the other parts of compensation (e.g. tuition for kids, mortgage deal for primary AND vacation homes) that we can't match. There are also professional issues (e.g. wall-street connection in NYC for business profs). Then there's the prestige advantage that Yale, Harvard, and Stanford have. Bottom line is that faculty stay because they love the students, people love the Bay Area.
Edley: Faculty loves our students! Right?
Bundy: [silence]
[Edley gives Bundy a look]
Bundy: Right! we love the students!
Bundy: The extra dimension of compensation matters, and prestige matters to some extent.
Question: Do we have a poaching program of our own?
Edley: Yes - for example, Ken Gergen (sp?) from Texas. We poached 2 last year for the JSP faculty.
Question from 2L: How can students have better communication with the administration and vice versa?
Edley: Main route is Dean O's office; Mindi & Dean O are the main channels.
3L #1: There seems to be a disconnect between students and administration. Some students have the chutzpah to walk into the Dean's office, but not all students do. It would be nice to get more emails from the Dean. [Edley response: That's a great idea.]
3L #2: Best way to communicate with students and get feedback is with a weblog.
Edley: So would emails be better than more meetings?
3Ls: Yes.
At some point, discussion shifted to the Registrar's Office. A couple students (and Dean O) defended the Registrar's Office (they're overworked, students come to the registrar's office with unreasonable demands), while others argued the folks in the Registrar's Office were inefficient and unnecessarily rude. Nothing was resolved, but Dean O admonished students for "looking down" on and acting rudely to staff.
Question: How will we choose a replacement for Dean O?
Edley: Berring is heading up a search committee, which will include 2 students and one recent grad.
At the meeting, Edley passed out a memorandum (which will be emailed to all students) discussing last-year's low bar passage rate. The memo doesn't explain reasons for the low-passage rate but instead offers observations and assurances that the School is still looking into the problem. One of the interesting insights it offers is that class rank appears to be correlated with success on the bar. Specifically, on the July 2007 test, 100% of Boalt test takers in the top 1/3 of the class passed, 94% in the middle of the class passed, and 51% from the bottom 1/3 of the class passed. So really, only 1/3 or 2/5 of the class needs to start freaking out.
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"One of the interesting insights it offers is that class rank appears to be correlate[d] with success on the bar. Specifically, on the July 2007 test, 100% of Boalt test takers in the top 1/3 of the class passed, 94% in the middle of the class passed, and 51% from the bottom 1/3 of the class passed."
That is really interesting! I wish they could factor more information in like whether this test taker enrolled in BarBri, whether they took all/some/only the 1st year "bar classes," the number of transfer students, among other factors.
I suppose a simplistic "it's based on your class rank" makes sense, but ruling out/accounting for the other information would bolster it further, imho.
I'm concerned that more emails and fewer meetings will only enhance the disconnect between administration and students. And I'm concerned if the members there were as supportive of that as this makes it seem.
The problem with the reg's office is that it's a vicious cycle: students come to them wanting something done right and done NOW, the staff gets annoyed and exasperated and acts rudely to them, etc. etc.
Though I will add that I've gotten snarky comments from the registrar's office about how nice it must be to be going on to a job that pays a ton of money... and I definitely didn't ever treat them rudely or give off the "I'm better than you" vibe.
The administration has all sorts of information that they could correlate to bar passage and tell us about:
1) LSAT score
2) Undergraduate GPA
3) Bar classes taken
4) Law school GPA in seminar classes
5) Law school GPA in exam classes
6) Law firm v. Public Interest (3Ls fill out a graduation survey), which would probably correlate at least somewhat to BarBri v. No BarBri.
7) Student Age
8) URM-status
9) Journal experience
10) Moot court experience
11) Undergraduate major
12) Transfer student/previous law school
Admittedly, many of these classifications are probably uncorrelated, but if one is truly concerned, it would be worth checking. Then again, maybe they have looked into these things but just didn't release the results.
Class rank correlation is a good start, but they could do a lot more. With the keys to the administrative kingdom, I could have had a comprehensive report out long ago.
Yeah 3:02, don't let the issue of privacy get in the way of giving you a report to mull over. By all means, you should have all of that info about all the bar takers at Boalt. I'm sure you couldn't figure out who all of those people are. I am sure they won't mind random people knowing their personal information
did anyone ask about the telebears scandal, and if so, what was the response?
The telebears scandal isn't a 3L issue. Bring it up at your own town hall.
um, asshole @3:23, a lot of the topics discussed aren't 3L issues. such as what faculty will be around here next year, when thankfully, you and your attitude won't be either.
Patrick just posted a pretty good update about what he has learned from talking to the Deans. You can read it here.
(Please don't call me a troll. I'm just trying to be helpful.)
For some reason, my effort to link directly to Patrick's comment doesn't seem to work on my browser. Just in case it's not working for you, either, he posted it at 3:40 pm on April 17.
3:06 - I didn't say that they had to give me (or anyone) the full report. Eliminating the voyeur problem would be easy. DO could hold the results and only tell individuals in a confidential meeting how their particular demographic did. Or they could not tell us any results, but let us know what factors they have looked at.
And anyways, 1-5 are in no way personally identifying, and 6-12 only identify groups, not individuals.
Oh my god! Bar passage rates correlate to how well you can take tests at Boalt! Alert the presses! This should not be a surprise. It cracks me up how people at Boalt love to pretend that correlations don't exist.
.... except that after 1L year only about half (at most) of our grades are based on anything remotely like the bar exam. I've managed to get well into the top 1/3 by doing well in paper and skills-based courses. I still suck at timed, multiple choice or essay exams.
would somebody please post the bar passage email? alumni/ae are following this issue as well, but won't receive it.
the email is posted over at N&B
it's over at the "other" blog.
From: Dean Edley, Associate Dean Shelanski, Assistant Dean 0rtiz, Professors Bundy and Selbin
To: Third Year and LLM Students
Subject: Bar Examination Issues
Date: April 17, 2008
Since the release of last July’s bar examination results many students have been understandably concerned about Boalt Hall’s bar passage rate and what it might mean for them personally and for the School. The rate at which Boalt J.D. graduates have passed the July sitting of the California bar has varied significantly over the past decade.* Last year’s 82% pass rate is the lowest recorded by Boalt graduates in the past 10 years. Though our first time passage rates remain markedly higher than the overall pass rate for ABA accredited law schools, we do not regard the 2007 results as acceptable. We do not yet know whether those results reflect statistical variation or real changes in preparedness among our graduates. We have begun to look at those issues and will look more deeply into them in the coming academic year. In the meantime we wanted to report some initial steps intended to address the concerns of graduating third year students.
Our first short term goal was to find a simple way to help students understand, on a confidential basis, their own prospects on the bar. The experience at other law schools is that class rank is a reliable and readily available measure of whether a student has reason to be concerned about passing the bar. That turns out to be true at Boalt as well. Boalt does not record class rank on transcripts, and it does not disclose class rank, except for very limited purposes. But we do calculate class rank for J.D. students, both for clerkship purposes and for purposes of various academic awards.**
Class rank turns out to be correlated with success on the bar. At the July 2007 sitting, for example, 100% of Berkeley J.D. test takers from the top third of the class passed. Of the students in the middle third of the class, 94% passed. Among students in the bottom third, 51% passed. But correlation is not destiny. Students in the top third of the class sometimes fail. Even last year, when results significantly lagged our historical averages, students in the bottom third were still more likely than not to pass. For all students, invested effort, focus and test taking strategy matter at exam time.
Still, knowing your class rank may empower you, whether by giving you confidence that the approaches you have relied on in law school will likely carry you through or by alerting you to the potential need to intensify your efforts or master new skills. You may already have a clear idea of your class rank, perhaps because of the clerkship process. But if you don’t know that information, and believe it would be helpful to you to know it for purposes of bar examination planning, you can obtain it, on a completely confidential basis, by making a personal visit to Dean 0rtiz’ office or sending her an e-mail requesting your ranking.
Our second goal has been to establish an initial pilot program of assistance in preparing for the bar. The schedule for that program is attached to this memorandum. We designed this program in consultation with experts who have conducted such programs at other schools. It is intended to hit the critical issues in the limited window of time before the end of the semester. The program consists of four sessions, two dealing with preparation strategies and the structure of the examination, and two focusing on exam writing strategies and skills for the performance and essay portions of the exam. All sessions will be recorded and made available on a secure site for those who cannot attend in person. The sessions which involve exam writing each include a proctored practice examination, which will be graded by an experienced bar grader. Accommodations will be offered to eligible students on the proctored tests. Please contact M*nd* Mysl*w*ec if you will be requiring accommodations.
Though the program is designed to be of special use to students whose academic record in law school indicates that the bar may pose a distinctive challenge, it is open to all graduating third years and to LLM students who plan to take the bar. The two shorter initial sessions on Demystifying the Bar seem particularly likely to be useful to all and helpful in deciding whether it would make sense to participate in the longer exam writing sessions that follow.
Looking ahead, in the coming months the School will continue its study of diagnostic and curricular issues relating to bar passage. These inquiries will be conducted in conjunction with a broader review of our academic support program, headed by our new Director of Academic Support, Kr*sten Holmqu*st. Ms. Holmqu*st is coming to us from UCLA Law School, where she has been director of their very successful program. A central goal of those inquiries will be to identify durable programmatic changes that could help in ensuring a higher rate of success on the bar for all our students over the long term.
----
* Here are the data: July 1998 -- 91%; July 1999 -- 85%; July 2000 -- 94%; July 2001 -- 90%; July 2002 -- 85%; July 2003 -- 91%; July 2004 -- 87%; July 2005 -- 87%; July 2006 -- 85%; July 2007 -- 82%. Because historically so few LLM graduates have been eligible to take the California bar, we do not have data on their pass rates.
**We do not calculate class rank for LLM students.
Hey! Numbnuts!
(that's you, BLB admin anonymously who copied and pasted the post from nuts and boalts).
the asterisks are the same place.
good luck on the bar, genius.
i posted it, and i assure you i am not a BLB admin. and PSA: the person who posted it on N&B did not *gasp* write the email. He copied it from his own inbox.
Why such an assholish comment, 10:40?
Children ... children! The sandbox is large enough for everyone to play. And there are plenty of toys, too.
I think it's good that they disclosed the information re: class rank/bar passage. While it might "freak out" people in the bottom 1/3 of the class, these statistics indicate that they might have good reason to freak out and work really hard. And for people in the top 1/3, it lets them know that they should keep doin' whatever they're doin'.
I'd be curious to know the reactions of people in each of the class rank brackets. As a 3L who's in the top 1/3 of the class, I feel relief. It lets me know that my performance on exams in law school will most likely translate to performance on the bar exam.
I am a tad worried because I tend to do worst on multiple choice exams, which is a large portion of the bar exam. But I imagine that's true of many people at Boalt (given our somewhat lower LSAT scores than at other top schools), even in the top 1/3 of the class. So this serves as a nice reassurance.
Does anyone who failed the bar last year want to speak up?
WTF is up with people defending the Registrar's Office? I can understand that a lot of students probably come to them in a huff with various frustrations, but honestly, their job is to deal with those problems. They get paid to do it, and we pay them to do it. When we're lawyers, people will pay us to do things, and we will be expected to do it competently and professionally.
The 3L Town Hall thread must be the best place for this question:
I'm a red-hot 1L, going to class in my swanky suit with my hair slicked back, and I just know I was the best oral advocate in my WOA class. Can anyone tell me when the WOA awards are given out (or if they have been) and how we're notified? My ego needs it. Thanks.
I can't tell if you're joking. Oh well. Last year they sent the whole mod an e-mail announcing the winners. Through the magic of Gmail, I can tell you it was on May 1.
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