Yale tends not to concentrate on the nuts-and-bolts "black letter law" but on more theoretical and abstract stuff.
Somebody who lives for the more political courses, might well have snoozed through the more concrete courses that teach the material that the bar exam tests.
Still, I wouldn't say that she was all that bright. It was more that she was very active and ambitious and this impressed people as a sign of intelligence, rather than of energy or will power or the will to power.
“Yale tends not to concentrate on the nuts-and-bolts “black letter law” but on more theoretical and abstract stuff. Somebody who lives for the more political courses, might well have snoozed through the more concrete courses that teach the material that the bar exam tests.”
Law schools teach how to think like a lawyer, and Yale students like those of other schools substantially rely on bar review courses that often provide the “black letter law” for many subjects that students may not have taken at all. Mrs. Bill took such a course with a highly noted teacher of that era, Joseph Nacrelli, and unlike others who participated in his review appears to be the only one to fail. Thus reference by some to those associated with her being “flabbergasted” by the revelation of her failure first admitted openly in her autobiography.
She entered the Rose Law Firm specializing in patent and intellectual property litigation. She had no technical background, and the only patent case I am aware of that Rose was involved in led to the billing fraud that sent Webb Hubbel to jail. She was the only partner that claimed specialization in IP law in the 1992 copy of Martindale-Hubbell, and it is very interesting that somehow he took the hit.