Matthew Heron Earns Top Bar Score Matthew Heron, ’02, treated studying for the bar exam like a job, working 40-50 hours a week. In July 2002, Heron passed the multi-state bar exam with a score of 185—the highest in Michigan—on his first attempt. Nationally, the highest score was 186—attained by only four people—placing Heron in the 99.9th percentile. Nearly 46,000 people in the country took the exam. Heron told the Bay City Times (Bay City, Michigan) that he passed with such high scores by “just doing the work I was supposed to do.” Preparation courses and practice exams helped him prepare, he said, but mostly it was a matter of putting in the hours. Heron graduated summa cum laude in June 2002. He currently is a law clerk to Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan. MSU-DCL STATS: The college’s student profile is on the move. MSU-DCL’s July 2002 bar passage rate for first-time applicants rose to 87 percent, second among the five law schools in Michigan and on the heels of U-M Law School at 94 percent. Applications for admission are up by more than 50 percent compared to last year, and LSAT scores of newly accepted full-time students have increased to an average of 156.