Christopher Edley, Stephen Bundy, and Howard Shelanksi Say New Faculty Hire Will Help Boost Bar-Pass Rate

The Recorder, April 24, by Petra Pasternak
http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1208947728506

“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.”

Howard Shelanksi 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.”

“The bar is the mother of all closed-book in-class exams,” Bundy said. “I think the hiring of Kristen [Holmquist] provides a chance for us to look at the way these issues play out through the curriculum.”