The bar passage rate is a crucial metric for law schools, as it reflects the quality of their graduates and their educational program. According to the American Bar Association, bar passage rates are “the single best outcome measure . . . in assessing whether a law school is maintaining a ‘rigorous program of legal education.’”
Bar passage rates are better measures of the quality of legal education than graduation rates or employment results. Students are entitled to an education that provides them with a reasonable chance of passing the bar and entering the profession.
In his study titled “Ultimate Bar Passage Rates: Which Law Schools Are Overperforming and Underperforming Expectations,” Jeffrey S. Kinsler, professor of law and founding Dean of Belmont University College of Law, examines law schools’ bar passage rates relative to expectations. Kinsler used Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores and undergraduate grade point average (UGPA) to calculate a predicted bar passage rate, identifying which law schools are overperforming or underperforming in terms of preparing their students to pass the bar exam.
Kinsler used linear regression models to assess the performance of 186 law schools using median LSAT and Ultimate Bar Pass Rate and median UGPA and Ultimate Bar Pass Rate. He proceeded to calculate an annual rank for each law school based on its overperformance (or underperformance) of predicted expectations for bar passage, and then he calculated an average annual rank based on each law school’s performance over the three-year period of 2017– 2019.
According to the study, the five law schools that added the most value to ultimate bar passage during the period of 2017–2019 were as follows:
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Campbell University Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law
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Liberty University School of Law
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Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law
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Belmont University College of Law
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Samford University Cumberland School of Law
Another study published by the Florida Law Review titled “The Secret Sauce: Examining Law Schools That Overperform on the Bar Exam,” by Christopher J. Ryan Jr. and Derek T. Muller, also examines which schools overperform on the bar exam and why. The research began by accounting for law schools’ incoming class credentials to predict an expected bar exam passage rate for each ABA-accredited law school. The study then examines each law school’s aggregated performance on bar exams for which its graduates sat, based on relative and absolute performance, weighing the difficulty of each state’s bar exam. Through this analysis, the study identified law schools with consistently higher and lower first-time bar exam passage rates over a period of six years between 2014 and 2019.
In addition to identifying overperforming law schools on the bar exam, their methodology is a novel contribution not only to the legal education literature but also to quantitative methodological literature, given its unique tailoring of the classic value-added modeling design to the realities of the bar exam. In the second phase of the research, the authors of the study surveyed administrators at these overperforming and underperforming law schools, as well as law schools in the middle of the distribution, to qualitatively assess how these law schools approach bar support and bar success of their students.
These studies provide significant insight into how law schools are responding to recent negative trends in bar passage rates, validate successful approaches to mitigate these negative trends, and recommend options available to law schools seeking to improve their students’ bar passage rates.
