When the University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law adds a director of academic support to its faculty next fall, part of her role will be to help address the student body's bar pass rate.
The school's most recent pass rate for the July bar has rattled students and sent administration and faculty scurrying to shed light on the school's lowest performance in a decade.
The pass rate of Boalt's J.D. graduates for the July bar, which has hovered between 85 and 94 percent since the 1998 exam, dipped to 82 percent with the 2007 test. Still, when compared statewide, Boalt's showing is not shabby at all: The overall July California bar pass rate hit 56.1 percent last year, up from 51.8 the previous year.
Dean Christopher Edley Jr. announced last week several immediate and longer-term steps the school is taking to help students succeed at the bar.
"Though our first-time pass rates remain markedly higher than the overall pass rate for ABA-accredited law schools, we do not regard the 2007 results as acceptable," Edley wrote in a memo to third-year students and LL.M.s on April 17. "We do not yet know whether those results reflect statistical variation or real changes in preparedness among our graduates."
The dean also said in his memo that in coming months, Boalt's faculty and administrators will carry out a broader review of the school's academic support program. That program will be headed by Kristen Holmquist, UCLA School of Law's director of academic support, who starts at Boalt in the fall. Holmquist did not return messages left at her office.
Laurie Zimet, who heads the academic support program at Hastings College of the Law, said that most schools across the country now have academic support programs and directors. Zimet says Holmquist, whom she calls a leader in the field, brings a background in "active learning," which includes teaching with an eye to the various learning styles that students of different backgrounds bring to the table.
"Kristen is terrific at being able to identify the different things that affect student learning -- different backgrounds, class, ethnicity, gender, even majors," Zimet said. "It's a great thing for a top law school to recognize that it has the responsibility to help all students achieve their potential both in law school and at the bar."
Howard Shelanski, associate academic dean at the law school, noted that 82 percent is not bad compared with the overall pass rates for the California bar. But that's little comfort to Boalt students, he added. "We want to push back up to our historic levels of bar pass."
But Shelanski said that Holmquist's hire was not a response to Boalt's latest pass rate. He said Holmquist contacted him last fall, before the results came out, about a possible position because she was moving to the San Francisco Bay Area.
"It's very nice that we had somebody coming in who's so highly qualified to address something that emerged later as a problem," he said.
Holmquist's new job description includes an orientation program for first-years as well as courses that will hone exam-writing skills and analysis that are favored on bar essays, Shelanski said. Holmquist will also teach special sections on constitutional law and trust and estates, her areas of expertise. "The exams that she'll give in these courses will give students exposure to the kind of essay writing that bar exams typically demand," Shelanski said.
To address Boalt's bar pass rate in the shorter term, Boalt has rolled out a pilot program this week to offer bar prep assistance to graduating third-years, particularly those who consider themselves at greatest risk.
"Intended to hit the critical issues in the limited window of time before the end of the semester," Edley said in the memo, four sessions will be offered, including one that focuses on the structure of the exam and on exam-writing strategies.
The Law School Admission Council and the American Bar Association's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar compile and publish bar-pass rates collected from schools in the "Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools." In the summer of 2005, the most recent summer bar-pass data available, it indicated that 89 percent of first-time test takers from UCLA School of Law passed, as well as 88 percent of Stanford Law School, 87 percent at Boalt and 84 percent at Hastings College of the Law.
Professor Eleanor Swift, who has been informally involved in academic support at Boalt, said the school has had several iterations of academic support for students, including one program in the past that focused on students admitted under what was then known as affirmative action.
Now there's another program overseen by professor William Fernholz and taught by second- and third-year students. When Holmquist joins the school, she will take that program under her wing and expand it, Boalt professors say.
Professor Stephen Bundy, who is analyzing the bar-pass data, said that some of the long-term questions yet to be answered include whether the latest pass rate was just a blip or a sign of a deeper institutional malaise. He said that he believes the school should ask questions such as whether it matters how many bar courses students take or whether it would help to have more closed-book, in-class exams.
"The bar is the mother of all closed-book, in-class exams," Bundy said. "I think the hiring of Kristen provides a chance for us to look at the way these issues play out through the curriculum."
