BarWrite® Blog

West Virginia University College of Law

Chuck Newton has posted a nice pitch for West Virginia University College of Law, a reasonably-priced public law school in scenic Morgantown, West Virginia. I was struck by his saying, as something important about the law school, that it prepares graduates well for a difficult bar exam.

People who believe that we can dispense with the analytic bar examination

"Cultivate Healthy Fear!" and Other Expert Tips to Help Law Students Get High First Semester Grades and Pass the Bar Exam Three Years Later

New York, NY, November 29, 2006. Only first-year law students who get good grades on their law school exams this December and January are likely to pass the bar exam three years from now. Law schools want new students to feel comfortable, but law school grades are the best single predictor of passing or failing the bar exam. And statistics from the National Council of Bar Examiners

Strong Students Have Strong Habits, Expert Says

STUDY SKILLS AND STUDY HABITS OF STRONG STUDENTS AND WEAK STUDENTS (Reprinted from the California Law Student Journal, October 2006) By Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D. In nearly 20 years of preparing bar candidates and helping law students write better final exam essays in our BarWrite® Schools, I have noticed big differences between strong students and weak students. Strong students don't get better grades by accident. They don't get better grades just because they are smart. Strong students are remarkably different from weak students in the way they study. This is partly

Harvard Law School Revises First-Year Curriculum

In a step that has been expected for some time, Dean Elena Kagan of Harvard Law School announced today that the law school will alter its first-year curriculum by

Is This Law School Expelling Students to Raise its Bar Pass Rate?

A story called "Law School Sued for Expelling Students," by Leigh Jones from the National Law Journal for September 1, goes to the effort of law schools to raise their bar pass rates. Leigh reports that a former law student, Thomas Joseph Bentey, has brought suit against St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami in the U.S. District Court for the

Law Schools Unintentionally Help Turn Weak Students into Failing Bar Candidates

New York, NY  April 15, 2006.  In a column appearing in the April 2006 issue of the Law Student Journal, bar exam expert Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D., president of BarWrite® and BarWrite Press and author of Scoring High on Bar Exam Essays, says that law schools unintentionally help turn weak students into failing bar candidates:

Law schools unintentionally help turn weak students into failing bar candidates. In my nearly twenty years of helping students pass the bar exam, I have observed that when law school professors tell first-year students how to study in law school, their words also help their strongest students pass the bar exam three years later.

Does U.S. News Look at the Right Factors in Ranking Law Schools?

There is a lively discussion of the U.S.News rankings over at the March 31 Volokh Conspiracy.

U.S. News Announces its Law School Rankings

U.S. News & World Report has announced its law school rankings.

Leiter's Law School Rankings Now Available

Leiter's Law School Rankings presents new quality rankings of law faculty and law students, as an alternative to the rankings in U.S. News. It is an

Should the Third Year of Law School Be Abolished?

Take a look at the debate over at the Legal Affairs Debate Club.