From NC to CA: The July 2017 Results Season Has Come to a Close
With the State Bar of California’s release of its bar exam results yesterday, all July 2017 bar exam results have been announced (at least by my count).
What began with the North Carolina Board of Law Examiners’ release of results on August 28 and ended with California’s on November 17, the 81 days of "results season" have seen a majority of jurisdictions enjoy an increase in first-time bar passage rates compared to the July 2016 administration.
While an official, comprehensive summary for the July 2017 bar exams won’t be available until the National Conference of Bar Examiners publish the results in the March 2018 issue of The Bar Examiner, an informal tally indicates that a years’ long trend of dipping bar passage rates might be seeing an end.
A jump in July 2017 bar passage rates isn’t too much of a surprise after the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ announcement on September 20, 2017, that the “national average MBE score for July 2017 was 141.7, an increase of about 1.4 points over the July 2016 average score of 140.3.” Since many states scale the written portion of their exam to the scaled MBE score, an increased MBE score has twice the impact on an examinees’ combined exam score.
Looking specifically at the most recent released results in California, the passing rate for first-time applicants on the July 2017 bar exam was 62 percent overall, up from 56 percent on the July 2016 exam. The numbers were also up for first-time applicants from schools accredited only by California, 21 percent to 33 percent from the July 2016 to July 2017 exams.
It should be noted that the July 2017 exam was the first administered by California over two days instead of the traditional three. With the change, the MBE is given more weight. Now, the MBE and the written portion of the exam (the essay and performance test questions) are each worth 50 percent.
Previously, when the bar exam was administered over three days, the MBE was worth only 35 percent while the written portion was worth 65 percent (with the essays worth 39 percent and the performance tests worth 26 percent).
Preliminary statistical analyses from the July 2017 California Bar Exam:
