Despite pandemic, bar exam results climb

Tha National Jurist reports

The bar exam and the pandemic? For law school grads, it was like taking on two brutes at once.

If a jurisdiction managed to hold the July exam in person, test-takers had to wear masks and sit 6 feet apart. Sure, not a distraction … Many states didn’t play that game. They postponed the test and held it online. Some graduates had to wait until October to take it. Some had to start and then restart prep. A good number had to postpone taking or seeking jobs.

And yet …

The 2020 passage rate eclipsed that of 2019, according to recent figures from the ABA. First-time takers passed at a near 83% rate, up 3 percentage points from the previous year.

In New York, first time testers passed the online test at a 85% clip, 9 percentage points better than the July 2019 first-time testers. Over all, 84% passed, compared to the 65% who passed the year before.

In California, nearly 61% passed the October online test, compared to the 50% who passed the in-person test the year before. That state lowered its cut score slightly because of the pandemic and the uncertainty it was causing.

Some states offered diploma privilege, meaning graduates did not have to take the bar exam. When they were factored into the pass rate, it went up slightly to 83.66%.

A number of schools continue to rock the bar, surpassing more well-known institutions. Belmont University College of Law in Nashville notched a 93.59% pass rate, which bettered law schools such as Notre Dame Law School (91.97%) and Georgetown University Law Center (90.22%).

And there was more good news about the bar. The ABA also recently released the ultimate bar passage data for the Class of 2018, which also saw improvement.

That’s the percentage of students from a class who pass the bar within two years of graduation. It’s a key and relatively new measurement. If a school falls below 75%, it can lose accreditation under ABA Standard 316. That change came with much controversy because a number of the schools susceptible to it enrolled sizeable minority student bodies and were considered key to helping to diverse the legal profession.

For the Class of 2018, the ultimate bar passage rate was at nearly 90%. That’s up from 89.47% for the Class of 2017. Three schools got 100%. They were Belmont University (mentioned above), the University of Chicago and University of Washington School of Law in Seattle.

More at  https://www.nationaljurist.com/national-jurist-magazine/despite-pandemic-bar-exam-results-climb

Ten schools were below the all-important 75% mark. They are:

 

Charleston School of Law 74.19%
Mississippi College 73.83%
Dayton University 73.33%
Barry University 67.26%
Western New England 64.79%
University of San Francisco 63.13%
Western Michigan – Cooley 62.31%
Golden Gate Law School 57.50%
Inter American* 55.43%
Pontifical Catholic* 52.08%