The American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has released new data on bar passage outcomes for law schools. The comprehensive report details the pass rates of students who took the bar exam for the first time in 2022, with the aggregate pass rate standing at 78.33%. This figure is lower than the 80.28% pass rate achieved by first-time takers in 2021. It should be noted that these percentages include people admitted to practice through diploma privilege.
The data also highlights the two-year bar passage rates, which are based on 2020 graduates. According to the report, the two-year pass rate for this year is 91.44%, a slightly higher percentage compared to the 91.27% rate for 2019 graduates. It is important to note that Standard 316 requires law schools to have a bar passage rate of at least 75% within a two-year time period.
Law schools are required to demonstrate “good cause” in order to justify a time extension beyond the two-year period. The guidance memo published in May 2019 states that schools could provide examples of temporary circumstances they cannot control, academic transfers, and efforts to provide broader access to legal education coupled with a showing that the school maintained academic rigor.
The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has made the spreadsheets available on its website under Legal Education Statistics, which report these outcomes on a school-by-school basis in more detail. The new data shows that in the aggregate, 91.44% of 2020 law graduates who sat for a bar exam passed it within two years of graduation (91.87% with Diploma Privilege).
The report also reveals that 92.58% of all graduates sat for a bar exam within two years of graduation, and that schools were able to obtain bar passage information from 98.56% of 2020 graduates.
Bill Adams, managing director of ABA accreditation and legal education, notes that the data is being made public as a matter of consumer information under the authority of ABA Standard 509. He also pointed out that the latest data is not a compliance report for ABA Standard 316, which establishes bar exam outcomes that a law school must achieve under the accreditation standards.
Adams said the bar passage scores represent one of the best measures to determine if a particular law school is offering a rigorous program of legal education to students whom the school has determined through its admissions process are likely capable of completing the J.D. program and being admitted to the bar.
The ABA’s release of this data is intended to provide important consumer information for students considering whether and where to attend law school, as well as for others with an interest in legal education. In the first half of March, additional bar passage information that will include gender and race statistics on a national basis is expected to be released.
