Bar Exams

New York Bar Exam Results Reveal Worst Pass Rates In More Than A Decade

This is terrible. How bad is the damage?

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The results for the July 2015 administration of the New York bar exam are out, and they really aren’t pretty. In fact, they’re downright ugly. It would seem that Erica Moeser, president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners and newly appointed oracle of the legal profession, was correct: today’s test-takers are simply “less able” than their predecessors.

Congratulations to you if you passed the New York bar exam this time around, because many of your peers did not. Please reach out and thank your law school for admitting subpar students, because your colleagues’ failure is making your success look even better.

How bad is the damage? According to the New York State Board of Law Examiners, 10,671 examinees — the lowest number of candidates to take a July bar since 2006 — sat for the test this summer. Of those examinees, only 61 percent passed the New York bar exam. The overall pass rate for first-time takers was 70 percent. These are precipitous drops.

Take a look at these New York bar statistics to see how awful the July 2015 results are:

Year All Candidates All First-Time Takers All First-Time ABA Takers
July 2015 61 percent passed 70 percent passed 79 percent passed
July 2014 65 percent passed 74 percent passed 83 percent passed
July 2013 69 percent passed 78 percent passed 86 percent passed
July 2012 68 percent passed 76 percent passed 83 percent passed
July 2011 69.2 percent passed 78.5 percent passed 86.1 percent passed
July 2010 70 percent passed 78 percent passed 86 percent passed
July 2009 72 percent passed 80 percent passed 88.2 percent passed
July 2008 74.7 percent passed 83.2 percent passed 90.5 percent passed
July 2007 70.6 percent passed 79.1 percent passed 87 percent passed
July 2006 69.5 percent passed 79.4 percent passed 86.7 percent passed
July 2005 67 percent passed 75.9 percent passed 82.7 percent passed
July 2004 67.4 percent passed 76.5 percent passed 83.1 percent passed

Even when the results were bad in the past, they were never this bad.

Some will blame the record high number of foreign-educated candidates who took the exam for these horrendous results. For the July 2015 exam, 3,154 foreign-educated examinees sat for the test, accounting for 29 percent of all candidates who took the exam. The pass rate for this group was an astoundingly low 33 percent. While these test-takers dragged down the overall pass rate and overall pass rate for first-time takers, the pass rate for all first-time takers from ABA-accredited law schools doesn’t lie. That number dropped by 4 percent between 2014 and 2015, and it represents the lowest percentage of first-time takers from ABA-accredited law schools to have passed the exam since July 2004.

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What is to be done about this problem? There’s a relatively simple solution that no one will pursue because money matters above all else in this world. Law schools need to stop scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to admitting students to fill their otherwise empty seats. Admission standards must be raised to end this misery.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again because it really bears repeating: “Until law schools realize they’re doing a disservice to everyone — their students, their graduates, and their graduates’ future clients — things will only continue to get worse.”

UPDATE (12:20 p.m.): This post was revised significantly shortly after publication to include additional data on bar exam pass rates prior to July 2007.

UPDATE (9:00 p.m.): According to the New York Board of Law Examiners, the July 2015 overall passage rate of 61 percent is the lowest the state has seen in at least 35 years.

Press Release: NY Bar Exam Results – July 2015 [New York Board of Law Examiners]

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Earlier: The July 2015 New York Bar Exam Results Are Out!

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