ABA Releases Annual Bar Passage Statistics
The American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar released a comprehensive set of data on bar passage outcomes for all 198 American Bar Association-approved law schools yesterday.
Spreadsheets are available on the section’s website under Bar Passage Data, which report these outcomes on a school-by-school basis and in more detail.
Under recently revised ABA standards regarding bar passage outcomes, known as Standard 316, at least 75 percent of a law school’s graduates who sit for a bar examination must pass a bar examination administered within two years of their date of graduation. This two-year “ultimate” aggregate success standard replaced three separate bright-line tests previously used to measure bar passage compliance—any of which could be met—that took into account a school’s variance from the state law school bar passage average, passage rates for first-time bar exam takers, and ultimate passage scores.
The newly posted data, which is updated annually, shows that in the aggregate, 89.47% of 2017 law graduates who sat for a bar exam passed it within two years of graduation. This two-year “ultimate” aggregate success rate is slightly better than the 88.64% comparable figure for 2016 graduates.
According to the new data, 103 law schools saw 90% or more of their graduates pass the bar exam within two years of graduation.
However, 11 schools—including two of the three law schools in Puerto Rico—did not meet Standard 316. They are:
Even though the ABA no longer examines first-time bar passage rates when determining compliance with Standard 316, the ABA still collects and posts that information.
Under one of the old bar passage standards, a law school could show compliance by demonstrating that its first-time passage rate in the jurisdictions in which its graduates took the bar exam is within 15 points of the overall first-time passage rate in those jurisdictions.
According to the newly posted data, first-time takers in 2019 achieved an aggregate 79.64% pass rate, which is nearly a 5-percentage point increase over the comparable 74.83% pass rate for 2018. A total of 38 law schools had a first-time bar passage rate of 90% or higher.
One school—University of Wisconsin Law School—reported a 100% first-time pass rate, with 149 students “passing” the Wisconsin bar exam on the first attempt. Wisconsin is the only state that has retained the diploma privilege, which permits graduates of ABA-approved law schools located within the state of Wisconsin to be admitted to the practice of law in Wisconsin without having to take a bar exam based upon: 1) the receipt of the J.D. degree and 2) meeting the requirement as to the character and fitness to practice law.
More than 90% of all ABA-approved law schools (179 out of 198) would have met the older first-time bar passage standard:
However, 19 law schools would not have been found in compliance with the now-replaced first-time bar passage standard. They are:
According to the ABA, a law school found not to be in compliance with the current Standard 316 will be given a period of two years to take steps to demonstrate that the school has subsequently brought itself back into compliance. That will primarily be determined by the bar exam outcomes for the following year. If, at the end of the two-year period, the school remains out of compliance, the Council would remove the school’s accreditation unless the school can establish extraordinary circumstances that would lead it to conclude that the school should be given an additional period of time to demonstrate compliance.
