Press Release, ABA Section of Legal Education Releases Comprehensive Report on Bar Passage Data:
The managing director’s office of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar released today a comprehensive set of data on bar passage outcomes for American Bar Association-approved law schools. Spreadsheets are available on the section’s webpage under Legal Education Statistics, which report these outcomes under ABA Required Disclosures on a school-by-school basis and 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 two-year “ultimate” aggregate success rate is slightly better than the 91.27% comparable figure for 2019 graduates. The 2020 ultimate bar pass data 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.
First-time takers in 2022 achieved an aggregate 73.87% pass rate (78.33% with diploma privilege), which is approximately a 2-percentage point decrease over the comparable 80.28% pass rate (with diploma privilege) for 2021. Consistent with last year, those admitted to the practice of law solely based on their graduation status are considered bar passers. …
Additional bar passage information that will include gender and race statistics on a national basis is expected to be released in the first half of March.
Derek Muller (Iowa) notes that the 2-percentage point drop in the 2022 pass rate mirrors the reduction in 1L academic dismissals following the spring 2020 Covid semester with pass-fail grading and liberalized academic dismissal rules.
