Monday, October 29, 2012

Meet the Board: Caleb Harlin

For the next couple of weeks, we'll be introducing (or re-introducing) the members of the OBCLAA's 2012-2013 Board. We're hoping that this will give you some insight into who's leading the OBCLAA and where we hope to take the Association over the next year. As always, if one of these bios gives you an idea for how YOU can get involved, don't hesitate to post a reply or contact individual Board members. Enjoy!

Today we'll be meeting Caleb Harlin, the Chairman of the National Association & Accreditation Committee. Caleb is continuing in this position after doing some impressive work in his 2011-2012 spearheading the research behind our interactive map of State Bar Rules. Thanks, Caleb!

My name is Caleb Harlin and I currently reside in Oklahoma.  I attended Oak Brook College of Law and graduated cum laude in 2009.  Following my graduation, I passed the California bar exam and was sworn in as an attorney in June of 2010.  Since that time, I have been actively practicing law in the areas of personal injury, business law, and civil litigation.  Due to my desire to practice law in Oklahoma, I have gone back to law school and am currently studying at the Oklahoma City University School of Law with the goal of setting up my own law practice in Oklahoma in the areas of personal injury, business law, civil litigation, and estate planning, with a focus on offering counsel to clients for more than simply legal needs.  In the meantime, I do contract research and writing for several law firms of various sizes.  I enjoy running and cycling, playing chess, and performing music on the piano and violin.  

My time at Oak Brook was very valuable in many ways.  First, it enabled me to study the law from a principled, Christian perspective.  Second, the flexibility of its method of study allowed me to invest a great deal of time in my family during my years in law school.  Third, it was affordable.  Finally, it adequately prepared me to pass the bar and ultimately to be successful in actual legal practice.  

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Meet the Board: Emily Milnes

For the next couple of weeks, we'll be introducing (or re-introducing) the members of the OBCLAA's 2012-2013 Board. We're hoping that this will give you some insight into who's leading the OBCLAA and where we hope to take the Association over the next year. As always, if one of these bios gives you an idea for how YOU can get involved, don't hesitate to post a reply or contact individual Board members. Enjoy!

Today we'll be meeting Emily Milnes, the Student Liaison. After doing a great job in her 2011-2012 term, Emily was reelected for another term.
I am a third year JD student (09B), living in Washington state.  As a current student, I find it a real privilege to be studying at OBCL, where the emphasis in each class is that the field of law is the harvest field where God's redemptive work of justice and the ministry of the Gospel takes place.  
In the coming year, I'm looking forward to continuing as student liaison, working with current students, TAs, professors, and OBCL alumni, while organizing the First Year MBE Program and the Baby Bar Mentoring Program for first year students, as well as scheduling alumni-mentoring conference calls for second and third year students -- and if the mentoring program is something that sounds interesting to you, I'd love to have you join us!
  • We're always looking for alumni who would be interested in hosting an MBE conference call with first year students.  (These calls review material from Torts, Criminal Law, and Contracts.  The set of MBE questions and the corresponding detailed answer guides are provided prior to the call -- all you have to do is show up!)
  • And for each class, there is always a need for alumni who are currently practicing in a field of law and who would be interested in sharing their experiences by meeting with students via conference call during the semester to answer any questions that the students may have about the real-world practice of law for each particular subject that they're currently studying -- whether it's Immigration, Constitutional Law, Bankruptcy, etc.  (Retired OBCL exams and answer guides are available for most subjects, and these can be provided prior to these conference calls as well, if helpful.)
So whether it's working through a set of MBEs or expounding the rule against perpetuities, if working with current OBCL students by occasionally volunteering your time and experience is something that sounds interesting to you, please send me an email!  It's fun.  And we'd love to have you on board.  Thank you! 
Emily may be reached by email at:  milnese@gmail.com

Friday, October 5, 2012

OBCL Success by the Numbers



---Guest post by OBCL alum Elliot Ko

Emily's note: This week, the Sacramento Business Journal published a story on the Bar success rates of California law schools, showing that OBCL grads were not only competitive with by outperformed grads from some of CA's top-ranked law schools. We asked recent grad (and newly-minted California attorney) Elliot Ko to draft up a post with some more details on these numbers and Oak Brook's Bar pass rates. Thanks, Elliot!

When you think of the best law schools in the country, what schools come to mind? Yale? Stanford? Harvard? Indeed, these three schools top the U.S. News & World Report’s 2013 law school rankings, followed by Columbia University, the University of Chicago, New York University, UC Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and the University of Michigan.

Elliot (07B) with classmates during Trial Advocacy
Recently-released results from the February 2012 California Bar Examination, however, contain the name of one law school whose graduates performed comparably to the graduates of these top tier-law schools---even though it wasn’t even ranked in the U.S. News & World Report’s latest law school rankings.

The California Bar is generally considered the most difficult bar examination in the country. It is a grueling ordeal which covers thirteen subjects, lasts three days, and costs more than $750 just to take. The stakes are high. The pressure is intense. And the pass rates are always predictably low. In fact, this past February, the pass rate was just 42.5%. Even among out-of-state attorneys who were allowed to take a shorter version of the exam because they were already licensed to practice law in another state, the pass rate was only 45.9%. Little wonder, then, that the list of lawyers who have failed the California Bar reads like a “Who’s Who” of famous dignitaries in California. (Current California governor Jerry Brown, for example, failed the California Bar twice before passing it on his third try. Former California governor Pete Wilson failed the California Bar three times before passing it on his fourth try, and current Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has yet to pass the California Bar after taking it four times.)

If you peruse the results of the February 2012 California Bar Examination, however, you will find the name of one law school with a surprisingly high pass rate: Oak Brook College of Law. Obviously, Oak Brook isn’t exactly a household name. But among those law schools who sent at least five first-time takers to the February 2012 California Bar Examination, Oak Brook’s 89% first-time pass rate was the second highest in the country—behind only Western State University College of Law and ahead of every other U.S. law school that sent more than ten total takers to the February 2012 California Bar Examination, including #7 ranked UC Berkeley (71%), #10 ranked University of Michigan (80%), #13 ranked Georgetown University (77%), #15 ranked U.C.L.A (71%), #18 ranked U.S.C. (57%), #26 ranked Arizona State (50%), #29 ranked Fordham University (71%), and #49 ranked Pepperdine University (71%). In fact, if you add law schools with less than five first-time takers into the mix, Oak Brook’s first-time pass rate actually  topped that of #2 ranked Stanford Law School (75%), #20 ranked George Washington University (75%), #26 ranked Boston University (75%), and #29 ranked U.C.Davis (50%). And if you factor in repeat takers, Oak Brook’s 63% overall pass rate is still good enough to place it in eleventh place in the country.

This isn’t the first time Oak Brook’s graduates have done well on the California Bar Examination. So what makes them so successful? Is it Oak Brook’s selective admissions policy? Not really. In fact, unlike most law schools, Oak Brook doesn’t even weed out applicants based on their LSAT scores. And it doesn’t even have a brick-and-mortar campus of its own. Instead, once a year, its students meet at a rented facility for a school-wide conference. The rest of the year, its tightly knit student body study on their own, upload their assignments online, and communicate with each other regularly via phone calls, text messages, and instant messages. But the differences don’t stop there. For example, Oak Brook’s student body is largely comprised of young homeschool graduates and thirty- to fifty-year-old men and women embarking on their second or third careers. Furthermore, unlike most top-tier law schools that charge anywhere from $40,000 to $50,000 in tuition every year, Oak Brook charges only $4,000 in tuition every year, with most of its professors receiving the most minimal of salaries in order to keep the school’s expenses low. And as if all this wasn’t already enough to make this school unique, Oak Brook is an unabashedly Christian school whose website states that its mission “is to train individuals who desire to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ through service as advocates of truth, counselors of reconciliation, and ministers of justice in the fields of law and government policy.”

In our status-obsessed society, it’s good to know you don’t have to have the most money or go to the most prestigious school in order to have a successful career. What you’re made of, who you live for, and how hard you are willing to work still matters more than anything else in the world.