New York Bar Exam Results Reveal Higher Passage Rates Thanks To The UBE

What a pleasant surprise. Congratulations to those who passed!

bar exam passedIn May 2015, it was announced that New York would be adopting the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), and the exam in its new format would first be administered in July 2016. The long wait for New York’s results is finally over, and now it’s time to see whether it was worth it for the state to test uncharted waters during a time when bar exam passage rates had been plummeting across the country.

With Halloween just around the corner, it looks like the New York Board of Law Examiners has finally decided to stop tricking those anxiously awaiting bar results and reward them with a treat. The July 2016 New York bar exam results are finally out, but how much brighter is the picture? According to the New York State Board of Law Examiners, 10,297 examinees — the lowest number of candidates to take a July bar since 2006 — sat for the test this summer. Of those examinees, 64 percent passed the New York bar exam. The overall pass rate for first-time takers was 73 percent. These are modest gains from July 2015, and on par with July 2014 passage rates.

Check out these New York bar statistics to see how much better the July 2016 results are:

Year All Candidates All First-Time Takers All First-Time ABA Takers
July 2004 67.4 percent passed 76.5 percent passed 83.1 percent passed
July 2005 67 percent passed 75.9 percent passed 82.7 percent passed
July 2006 69.5 percent passed 79.4 percent passed 86.7 percent passed
July 2007 70.6 percent passed 79.1 percent passed 87 percent passed
July 2008 74.7 percent passed 83.2 percent passed 90.5 percent passed
July 2009 72 percent passed 80 percent passed 88.2 percent passed
July 2010 70 percent passed 78 percent passed 86 percent passed
July 2011 69.2 percent passed 78.5 percent passed 86.1 percent passed
July 2012 68 percent passed 76 percent passed 83 percent passed
July 2013 69 percent passed 78 percent passed 86 percent passed
July 2014 65 percent passed 74 percent passed 83 percent passed
July 2015 61 percent passed 70 percent passed 79 percent passed
July 2016 64 percent passed 73 percent passed 83 percent passed

Here are some reactions from Above the Law readers to the results:

  • I just passed the NY bar and the first thing I posted on FB was “YOUR BOY PASSED THE BAR!!!”
  • Results are finally out! Someone who DID receive the survey twice passed.
  • I PASSED!!!! THIS IS MY LIFE RIGHT NOW, HOLY CRAP!!!!

New York’s former exam was once known as one of the most difficult to pass in the country, but the UBE was supposed to solve a problem for the state’s test-takers in that it would add a degree of portability to their law licenses when law school graduates’ employment and debt woes seemed to worsen by the day. Given the results of the July 2016 examination, those woes may now have been alleviated for examinees who passed.

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Now that it has yielded positive results, New York’s experiment will surely encourage a greater number of states to adopt the UBE. Law schools must remain cognizant, however, of the fact that just because the UBE may be easier to pass than prior state iterations of the test, it is no excuse to keep admitting students whose performance and success on the bar exam may be questionable at best. Admissions standards must be raised so that those who bet their lives and careers on a legal education don’t wind up in a worse position than what they started with in the first place.

Congratulations to you if you were one of the guinea pigs who was able to pass the bar exam in New York this summer. If you didn’t pass, don’t despair. Many very successful people, including one leading presidential candidate, have failed the bar exam (see our list of famous bar exam failures). Focus on February and develop a plan for passing.

Press Release: NY Bar Exam Results – July 2016 [New York Board of Law Examiners]


Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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