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Thomas Jefferson School of Law Believes Its 2011 Graduates To Be Kind of Stupid

Much to the ABA's embarrassment, Thomas Jefferson School of Law released some papers to reassure students that even with a 33% first time bar passage rate (and an incomprehensible 13% pass rate for returning test takers), TJSL was still well within ABA parameters. So who is to blame for these alleged "outlier results"? According to the law school, Bar/Bri, and the students themselves....

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Standard 301

Standard 301 (A): A law school’s bar passage rate shall be sufficient, for purposes of Standard 301(a), if the school demonstrates that it meets any one of the following tests:

(1) That for students who graduated from the law school within the five most recently completed calendar years:

(a) 75 percent or more of these graduates who sat for the bar passed a bar examination, or

(b) in at least three of these calendar years, 75 percent of the students graduating in those years and sitting for the bar have passed a bar examination.

2) That in three or more of the five most recently completed calendar years, the school’s annual first-time bar passage rate in the jurisdictions reported by the school is no more than 15 points below the average first-time bar passage rates for graduates of ABA-approved law schools taking the bar examination in these same jurisdictions.

Report on TJSL’s Current Status: December 2011

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The relevant time frame for this update is 2006 through 2010 for the most recently completed calendar year’s graduates. The graph below includes graduates so far from 2011, but the data are incomplete: December graduates will take the bar exam in February 2012.

We currently exceed the aggregate 75% criterion under Standard 301 (A)(1)(a). Our aggregate bar passage rate (grads from 2006 through 2011) is 84.9% (903 of 1063). For 2007-2011 grads, the aggregate pass rate is 77.4% (735 of 949), which also meets the criterion.

We have met the standard under Standard 301 (A)(1)(b). As illustrated in the figure below, in four of the last five completed calendar years our graduates have passed a bar at a rate greater then 75%: 2006 grads 89.1%; 2007 grads 90.9%; 2008 grads 91.5%; 2009 grads 81.7%. Grads from 2010 and 2011 do not yet meet the criterion: 70.8% of 2010 grads have passed a bar, whereas only 42.3% of 2011 grads have done so.

Standard 301(a)(2) considers the past five annual bar pass rates for first-time takers. To meet this criterion, for three of the five years TJSL’s annual first-time taker rate must be no more than 15% lower than the aggregate ABA rate for each year. For this criterion, a weighted average across jurisdictions is calculated for TJSL and for the ABA pass rate.

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TJSL met the compliance benchmark for (a)(2) in 3 years (2006, 2007 and 2008). TJSL was out of the compliance range on this measure in 2009 and 2010. Thus, TJSL also meets Standard 301 compliance under Standard 301(a)(2) as well.

To reiterate, in order for an ABA accredited law school to be in compliance with Standard 301, a law school must demonstrate it satisfies at least one of the possible 3 methods required for compliance. TJSL meets this Standard under not one, but two of the possible methods.

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