Campbell Law & Teaching the Test

For the unacquainted, Campbell Law (officially, the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law) is perhaps the most well-respected law school you've never heard of. In North Carolina, Campbell is known for producing high-quality attorneys. I have had the privilege of knowing and working with several and found them equal to their alma mater's sterling reputation.

Campbell Law is also known for its graduates' tremendous success rate on the North Carolina bar exam: 97% passed in 2006 and 95% in 2007. It's one of the many reasons "Why Campbell." Campbell is not cheap ($26,800 per year) and job prospects immediately after graduation are not spectacular (62.6% employed at graduation). [Source: US News & World Report] But, its graduates are technically sound and almost always pass the bar exam.

Campbell attracts my attention because of an article published last September about the school's tremendous passage rate. According to the article, Campbell graduates are required to take courses in all of the subjects tested by the North Carolina bar exam. Nevertheless, the school dismissed the idea that it might be a three-year, $81,000 bar preparation course that merely "teaches for the test."

My reactions:

1. Protestations aside, Campbell probably does teach for the test. Why wouldn't they? Campbell is largely lost in the shuffle of U.S. law schools and does not place highly in the annual rankings. Its students pay a pretty penny in tuition and many do not have a job at graduation. So why not teach for the test? If you aren't either (a) at a top-14 law school or (b) at the very top of your class at a lower-ranked school, all that you can truly ask of your school is that it prepare you for the practice of law. You can't practice law if you don't pass the bar examination, so teaching for the test is the school's duty to its students. I would be disappointed if Campbell didn't teach for the test.
2. Why the negative inference? The bar examination is supposed to test your broad knowledge of the law and legal reasoning. I like to think of its scope as testing those topics about which any lawyer is likely to be asked at least once in their careers; if not by clients, then by friends or family. In other words, it tests the things that lawyers should know. At my law school, the required curriculum included all of the multistate topics but anything beyond that was left to the students' discretion. This is perfectly fine if you are positive about what kind of law you're interested and employable in. But probably not the best course for students who should keep their options open for as long as possible. You don't want prospective students to think you're the vastly more expensive equivalent of BARBRI. But if the bar examination truly tests your general legal competency and your students are best served by developing that general competency, I see no reason to shy away from admitting that you teach the test. You can teach the test "and more." But be honest: you're teaching the test. And it is ok.