Worst Bar Exam Results Ever? Only ONE Person From This Law School Passed The Bar Exam

This is unbelievably bad.

oops keyIndiana Tech School of Law threw open its doors in 2013, amid cries that Indiana had no need for another law school during a time when jobs for law school graduates were few and far between. The administration had hoped to enroll 100 students, but only 30 students signed up to attend, and just 27 enrolled. After three years of hard work, by the time Indiana Tech’s inaugural class was set to graduate this past May, 20 students earned a degree from the state’s fifth law school.

With Indiana Tech’s debut class having set a goal to have a 100 percent bar passage rate, those graduates were under intense pressure to succeed. “If we can pass the bar at a higher rate than average, that will prove to the legal community and all the naysayers out there that we’re a viable institution and that we’ll be around for many years to come,” a cum laude graduate said in an interview with Indiana Lawyer.

The results from the July 2016 administration of the Indiana bar exam were released earlier this week. How did Indiana Tech’s graduates fare? Here are just some of the congratulatory remarks that we’ve received from Above the Law readers:

• Worst passage rate I’ve ever seen by a long shot.

• I hope the ABA takes notice and action.

• This is almost criminal.

According to the Indiana Board of Law Examiners, of the 508 people who sat for the Indiana exam, 414 of them were first-time takers, with a pass rate of 68 percent. The overall pass rate for the Indiana exam was 61 percent. The overall pass rate for Indiana Tech School of Law graduates was 8.33 percent (12 graduates sat for the state exam).

Here’s additional reporting on the law school’s dismal results from the Indiana Lawyer:

An Indiana Lawyer review of the names of successful applicants for the July 2016 Indiana Bar Exam released Monday only includes one student from Indiana Tech. A spokesman for Indiana Tech would not confirm or deny that student was the only one who passed the test, but did clarify that a dozen graduates sat for the exam.

“We had 12 graduates sit for the July bar exam. As is the case everywhere, we had a mixture of passage, failure, and those within appeal range. So we won’t know our pass number until that process is done,” wrote Brian Engelhart, vice president of university relations for Indiana Tech, in an email.

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Engelhart did not respond to further inquiries from the Indiana Lawyer as to why only 12 graduates sat for the July exam, or whether others deferred the exam until February. Calls for comment to Dean Charles Cercone, Associate Dean andré douglas pond cummings, and members of the board of trustees went unreturned.

Since Indiana Tech earned provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association in March, which entitled its graduates to sit for the bar exam in any American jurisdiction, it’s quite possible that the law school’s eight other graduates are still awaiting their results from nearby states like Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. But given the results released thus far, their waiting game just became even grimmer.

Prior to taking the July exam, an Indiana Tech graduate — one who sat for the Indiana exam this summer, but whose name does not appear on the list of those who passed the bar — said in an interview with the News-Sentinel, “We were guinea pigs. We get to set the traditions.” Ouch. It goes without saying that an 8.33 percent bar exam passage rate isn’t the best example for Indiana Tech’s first graduates to have set for the law school.

With such a poor bar exam passage rate, the administration at Indiana Tech must be praying that its lone graduate who passed the test is able to find a job working as a lawyer — he or she will quite literally make or break the school’s employment statistics.

Lone Indiana Tech Law student passes July exam [Indiana Lawyer]
Indiana Tech Law School graduates under pressure to be exemplary attorneys [Indiana Lawyer]

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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.