Who has passed the bar exam in the most number of states?

July 11, 2009 4:57 PM

Who holds the record for passing the bar exam in the greatest number of states, and what is that number?
posted by banished to Law & Government (5 answers total)

You're gonna have to give us a more detailed question. Do you want to know the person who has been admitted to practice in the most states, or the person who has sat for the bar exam in the most states? Because the two need not necessarily be the same thing. There are plenty of ways of being admitted to the bar without sitting for the exam. Reciprocity, corporate licenses, the legal academy, all of them are ways of being admitted.

As a result, I can't think of any compelling reason for doing this more than two or three times. But I wouldn't even know where to find such a statistic, nor how to verify it. I don't think that's something anyone keeps track of.
posted by valkyryn at 6:53 PM on July 11, 2009

Response by poster: The person who has taken, and passed the bar exam, in the most number of states.
posted by banished at 7:21 PM on July 11, 2009

The guy who runs the bar-prep company PMBR claims to have passed the bar in a ridiculous number of states. He even claimed he passed the bar in the Virgin Islands despite knowing nothing about V.I. law because he aced the multiple choice portion of the test (which is the same in every state, and is what PMBR exclusively focuses on).

Ha! Okay, found him. Turns out the National Conference of Bar Examiners accused PMBR of copying its questions. Check this out:

According to the suit, PMBR's founder, Robert Feinberg, took the bar exam in Alaska in February 2003 and "attempted to leave the room with notes recorded on scratch paper -- contrary to the instructions that had been given to all examinees -- but was stopped by an exam official."

And yowza, they got slammed with a big verdict. Plus, more about PMBR's test-taking:

Feinberg himself has taken the MBE more than 20 times, Fullam found, and Zimmerman has taken it more than a dozen times.

But to ensure that they will be allowed to take the test again, they often fail, Fullam found.

"Given that these individuals are highly paid to prepare students to take (and presumably to pass) the bar exam, their failure rate is strikingly high. Mr. Feinberg, for example, failed five consecutive bar examinations in Alaska before barely passing in February 2004," Fullam wrote.

"Perhaps even more startling, Ms. Zimmerman twice failed the Kentucky bar examination despite passing the essay portion, because her scores on the MBE were so low," Fullam wrote.

posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:23 PM on July 11, 2009

Well, I've taken and passed four...
posted by paultopia at 10:55 PM on July 11, 2009

My Dad may hold the record for passing two with the longest interval in between: Nebraska in 1952 and Pennsylvania in 1992.
posted by dinger at 3:09 AM on July 12, 2009 [1 favorite]