According to a Wall Street Journal report called "Raising the Bar: Even Top Lawyers Fail California Exam," published December 5, 2005, distinguished constitutional scholar Kathleen Sullivan, just retired as dean of Stanford Law School, failed the July 2005, California bar exam. Already a member of the bar in New York and Massachusetts, she joins such well-known California repeaters as former California governor Pete Wilson, who took the exam four times.
The reason for bad scores happening to good people is not taking the exam seriously enough, and not taking enough time off from work for concentrated study. By contrast, according to the WSJ:
Aundrea Newsome, an attorney in Hermosa Beach, Calif., who passed the July test, limited her prep time to two months, but she worked eight to 10 hours a day, every day, during that stretch. "That is standard," she says. "You make a deal with the devil and give up two months of your life to pass."
Read the whole story here. The message is one that I have stressed. Even the most eminent scholars cannot let anything be more important than preparing for the bar exam. You cannot work and prepare for the bar exam, you cannot focus on anything else and prepare for the bar exam. Success on the bar exam requires complete commitment.
