UTexas admissions favoritism
Jon Cassidy has been doing some impressive investigative journalism lately. His latest researches the favoritism shown to the children of legislators:
Children of three Texas lawmakers who graduated from the University of Texas School of Law repeatedly failed the state's bar exam, highly unusual for the prestigious school where almost every graduate passes the bar exam on the first try.
Jeffrey Steven Carona, Carlos Manuel Zaffirini Jr. and James Ryan Pitts have taken the Texas bar exam 10 times between them, and passed it just twice. Pitts will get another chance in February.
Out of nearly 2,700 UT law school grads in that period, we found only 197 who had to retake the bar exam. Only four UT grads in that time failed the test more times than Zaffirini and Carona.
Despite the Hollywood mythology around the bar exam, it is simply a matter of putting in hard work over a brief period. Show up for BarBri, memorize, show up on time for the exam. As a friend of mine said before she took* the bar, "Trained monkeys could pass the bar exam."
Or as a different friend said while he was waiting for his bar results**, "Taking the bar is really more like fraternity hazing than it is an exam. You have to fail yourself out."
So if the children of our #txlege legislators are failing the bar exam, the most likely two possibilities are
1. There is a massive amount of favoritism being shown in UTexas law admissions
2. They can't be bothered to do the work that every other lawyer does.
While Chancellor Cigarroa says he is probing UT admissions favoritism, I'll bet they don't touch the recommendations made by regents and former regents. Hint, hint.
* It goes without saying that she passed.
** He passed. I hope the suspense wasn't killing you.
Posted by Evan @ 12/19/13 07:40 AM
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