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.

In addition to the numbers on bar passage, the data incorporates those who become licensed to practice law by alternative pathways. These graduates are admitted to the practice of law and are considered bar passers without sitting for a bar examination.

The new data shows that in the aggregate, 90.40% of 2021 law graduates who sat for a bar exam passed it within two years of graduation (90.53% with alternative pathways). The two-year “ultimate” aggregate success rate is lower than the 91.85% comparable figure for 2020 graduates. The 2021 ultimate bar pass data also reveals that 95.41% of all graduates sat for a bar exam within two years of graduation, and that schools were able to obtain bar passage information from 98.49% of 2021 graduates.

First-time takers in 2024 achieved an aggregate 82.79% pass rate (83.02% with alternative pathways), which is more than a 3-percentage point increase over the comparable 79.44% pass rate (with alternative pathways) for 2023.

Six law schools fell short of the 75% accreditation threshold:

The information released today includes charts that include aggregate data in different ethnicity categories for information collected in 2023 and 2024 broken down by gender.

• ABA Journal, More First-Time Bar Candidates Passed Eexam in 2024, New ABA Data Shows
• Reuters, Bar Exam Pass Rates in US Rose as Race Gaps Narrowed in 2024, ABA Data Shows

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