Set Up for Success
October 3, 2008
by Sky Barsch, correspondent
Staff photoASP Assistant Director Giuliana Robertson at work with student Keith Weisinger JD’09.
International law, tax law, and reproductive justice are just a few of the diverse areas VLS students are researching. If there’s one goal common to all JDs on campus, it’s passing the bar, and Vermont Law School is devoting the resources and expertise required to help students achieve this goal.
Nesha Christian-Hendrickson JD’08 was approaching high-anxiety time in May: the excitement of graduation and the looming bar exam. With only two more months to study, Christian-Hendrickson sought support at the law school’s Academic Success Program (ASP).
“It was good to have somebody who would say, ‘Here’s a game plan, and here’s how you’re going to approach it.’ Bar study is doable if you have a plan and if you start as early as possible,” Christian-Hendrickson said. “Professor Robertson would say, ‘Today you’re going to do two additional essays on top of your bar review.’ And she wouldn’t give the essays a cursory review—she would really go line by line.”
Rebecca Flanagan, director of the school’s ASP, and Giuliana Robertson, the assistant director, both new to VLS, are retooling the program. They are full of ideas and enthusiasm and are pumping new energy into this vital resource for students adjusting to law school, struggling with coursework, and the all-important preparation for the bar.
Randy Mondesir is a third-year student taking Advanced Bar Study, for the “monster exam” that is awaiting him.
“The burden would be a lot tougher without taking the class,” Mondesir said. Robertson, “makes it simple, she breaks it down.”
Bar preparation is just one component of the ASP. The team—Flanagan, Robertson, and Program Coordinator Katrina Munyon—is available to help students no matter what their stage of education and career preparation.
“I do a lot of workshops with the 1L class on outlining and note-taking, and what sort of skills they need. And I work one-on-one with any of the 1Ls who drop by,” including those with anxiety issues, Flanagan said. In addition to numerous other responsibilities, she works with upper-class students who are academic mentors.
For example, students may be having trouble understanding what they should know about a case that is assigned to be read for class. Students may have trouble anticipating what their professor will ask.
“The process seems very mysterious to them,” Flanagan said. She helps them put that process into the context of reading a case as a lawyer—how students can use a previous case to help prove or disprove a point in a case they are working on.
Another area Flanagan helps students with is time management, learning how to balance law school with other commitments like family.
“Law school is a full-time job, plus,” she said.
Some of the stress management tactics students can find through the ASP are fun—including yoga and destressing lunches. Both Flanagan and Robertson praised Vermont Law School for being a supportive environment, to both students and staff.
“VLS is really supportive for the students,” Flanagan said. “They do a lot to help them succeed and understand there are safety nets for them here.”
“I felt set up to succeed, which is a pretty impressive thing to say about any employer,” Robertson said. “I have been given the tools I need to support what I love doing.”
Every year VLS graduates take the bar exam in as many as 29 different jurisdictions. In 2007, the overall pass rate for first time VLS bar takers was 74.3 percent, a number Robertson says is up from previous years. Of the 2007 graduates who took the Vermont bar, 73.3 percent passed. As of this writing, most jurisdictions’ results are not yet available for the July 2008 exam; however, the July Vermont results have recently been posted and 90 percent of the 2008 graduates who sat for this exam passed it. Robertson said she is hopeful that VLS will see this upward trend continue throughout the other jurisdictions, both in 2008 and into future years.
“A lot of factors go into that, and I’m just one of them,” Robertson said. “It’s not something that I can single-handedly do. But I would love to be a part of bringing the bar passage rate up.”
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