Law Commons^™

Reexamining Relative Bar Performance As A Function Of Non-Linearity, Heteroscedasticity, And A New Independent Variable, Rory Bahadur, Kevin Ruth, Katie Tolliver Jones

New Mexico Law Review

One might believe that a law school's graduates doing better on the bar exam than their matriculating credentials predicted must be primarily attributable to the teaching ability and performance of the institution's faculty. Some scholarship makes such a claim. However, it is empirically untrue. Prestidigitation rather than legal pedagogy yields such superficial results. Law schools manipulating their matriculant pools via academic attrition and transfer is the sleight-of- hand that improves their graduates' bar performance rates. This article reveals the math behind the magic.

This article demonstrates that effective pedagogy may not be the only driver of a law school's students …