I've just finished reading Walter Isaacson's wonderful biography of Steve Jobs. Near the end of his life, Jobs makes a statement about why the large tech companies have gone into decline:
"The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesmen, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues...So the salespeople end up running the company."
I think the same analysis holds true in the bar review. The early pioneers in the bar review field were innovators at one time, but as they gained near monopoly strength, they stopped innovating. Indeed, they stopped teaching and began to simply put their energy, their resources and their focus on selling rather than on helping students learn how to pass the bar.
Compounding the problem is that the large bar reviews rely on law schools who simply don't hire professors who can teach. In a NY Times article this week, the point was made that law schools don't teach lawyering. One reason, according to the article: "there are few incentives for law professors to excel at teaching. ... it won't win them any professional goodies, like tenure, a higher salary, prestige, or competing offers from better schools." In other words, the schools don't teach, the big bar reviews hire the professors who don't teach and the student is woefully prepared for the bar and for a life of practice should they ever get past the exam.
Into this mess comes the law student with a six figure debt and no clue about how to get through the exam and to find a job. That's why I take our task at Celebration Bar Review so seriously. Instead of focusing on marketing, we focus on teaching. Over the last 20 years, education has made huge strides and we have attempted to implement them to our students' advantage through the use of technology, stress management, multiple intelligences, directed personal feedback and more.
The big bar reviews, and their companions, the big law schools, still live in the world of the Harvard Law School of the 70's - the 1870's - and Christopher Langdell's case method. It is just now being understood by the consumers of legal education that they are being cheated by their school - and their big bar review - when those institutions and corporations fail to adapt and integrate substance with effective teaching pedagogy. A system of education based on the assembly line "stand and deliver" model of Dean Langdell is doomed in our fast and competitive world. But don't tell that to the big bar reviews. They've invested millions in classroom settings, canned lectures and ponderous books that haven't changed more than an iota since they were created. And why should they? As long as the "salesmen" run the process, it's all good - at least for the companies.
But it doesn't have to be that way. Change can happen. #OccupyWallSt can become #OccupyBigBarReview. It can be done. At Celebration, we continue to have pass rates that far exceed the state averages, and often with a student base of repeat takers and foreign attorneys who are often the least likely to succeed. How do we do it? By continuing to innovate, research and employ the best technology and teaching methods with a passion for our students and not just our bottom line.
Something that the others should think about...
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