CA Bar Publishes Bar Candidate Answers Only Not Model Answers

The State Bar of California publishes Bar and First Year Law School Exam (Baby Bar) essays and answers soon after the administration of the actual examinations.  They can be found by visiting http://www.calbar.ca.gov.  Click on Bar Exam in the left hand column and then click on Past Exams in the left hand column. 

There you will find essay questions and selected responses for both the California Bar and Baby Bar Examination.  They are listed according to the dates of the exams.  Both the Bar and the Baby Bar Examinations are administered twice each year – the Bar being given in February and July and the Baby Bar given in June and October.  Place your mouse over the exam date you are interested in and there you will find the exams from that date.

This is a wonderful tool for law students and bar and baby bar candidates.  What better way to prepare for these difficult state exams then by practicing with prior tested essay exams.  However, be aware that the two published responses are not model answers but responses written by actual bar and baby bar candidates.  In fact, the State Bar of California states “the answers received good grades and were written by applicants who passed the examination.  The answers were typed as submitted, except that minor corrections in spelling and punctuation were made for ease in reading.”

What this statement means is these responses received passing scores but are not model answers.  Mistakes have not been edited out of the responses including incorrect law, weak analysis, and non-issues; yet, enough issues that were being tested from the facts were in the responses.  Hence, they received good grades. 

In my own sixteen (16) years of being a law professor and tutoring students, I have read many State Bar published responses that contained many errors.  The problem here is that law students study these responses in an attempt to emulate them in their own writings.  Most students do not realize that these are not model answers and that they may contain incorrect information and analysis. 

My recommendation is to use these responses for their issue spotting qualities.  Compare your answers to the published responses to see if you identified the same issues that the answers had.  However, I recommend you obtain professionally written model answers to study from; this way you can study the model answer and trust that it is correct.  You will know that they contain all of the issues being tested and include good analysis which gives you the comfort that you can learn from those responses and incorporate what you learned into your own responses.

As a side note, students studying Contracts, Criminal Law and Torts should review both the Baby Bar and Bar essays for practice.  Also, the Bar occasionally will test the same issues or even the same fact pattern on a future bar exam.  What a nice surprise is it to be at the Bar Exam and look at an essay that you have seen before?   I know this is true; it happened to me.  I was presented with a Civil Procedure essay that I had seen in my practice.  Now the names, dates and dollar amounts had been changed but the same issues were raised in fact pattern.  It was a moment of joy, during the Bar Exam, which I will never forget.

 

 

 

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