HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The Bar Exam: What’s The Right Number To Flunk? “Having given no thought whatsoever to how a ‘cut score’ was determined, I had always assumed that there was some empirical basis, some firm, rational measure, below which a bar exam taker was just too pathetically stupid to be allowed near clients. After all, if a couple of people hanging out in a bar somewhere, drinking some boilermakers, said to one another, ‘hey, let’s cut them off at 133,’ and they all laughed and nodded, that would seem kinda arbitrary. Would all those really smart law deans let that happen? . . . So the law examiners, the law school deans, the law professors, the American Bar Association, the courts, took some random number and used it as the cut rate for passing the bar exam? So we thought you folks weren’t blithering idiots were smart enough to figure out a pass rate that would establish minimal competency and protect the public from a guild of goofballs? And what you’re telling us is that there really was a grand conspiracy of dunces who shrugged and mumbled, ‘I dunno, 133 sounds about right. Okay with youse guys?'”