Summary: Recent bar exam data released by the Florida Board of Bar Examiners shows that graduates of Florida Coastal School of Law performed poorly on the summer test.
On the first attempt at the bar exam, four out of every 10 Florida Coastal School of Law graduates did not pass, according to a report from The Florida Times-Union.
The Florida Board of Bar Examiners issued data this week that shows 42 percent of the law school’s graduates failed the exam.
In February, 73 percent of Florida Coastal students passed the Florida Bar. Of the Florida Coastal students who took the Florida Bar in July, just 58 percent passed, which is under the state average of 72 percent.
The dean of the law school, Dean Chidi Ogene said, “We don’t have the answers. We are as nonplussed as you are about the variability of the score. We need to find means to enable them to tackle and proceed on the bar exam on the next go-around. We are putting together a process as we speak to help our repeaters.”
Ogene said that a Bar preparation expert to tutor students due to fewer professors working at the school. He said that the students who took the exam in the summer should not have had a different experience at the law school than those who took it in February.
Ogene said that the low bar passage rate does not prove that an essay criticizing the school and published in The Atlantic magazine, is correct.
“I would strongly caution against making the direct linkage to this result and saying that proves this professor right,” Ogene said. “How then does he explain the 72.9 percent from the immediately preceding Bar. Somewhere in there, you’ve got to triangulate and figure out what did we get right and what did we get wrong and how can we improve to get things back to where they need to be.
“I want students who come in to think of two things: How do I pass the Bar, and how do I get attorney job?”