California Supreme Court Issues Decision On Bar Exam Cut Score

Will the cut score on California's bar exam be lowered?

Five months ago, after witnessing complete carnage on the July 2016 and February 2017 bar exams as far as passage rates were concerned, the State Bar of California decided it was time to study the exam itself, including its notoriously high cut score. California’s required passing score of 144 is higher than that of 48 other states, with only Delaware’s cut score being higher. Three months ago, the California Supreme Court stripped the Committee of Bar Examiners of its authority to decide the minimum score needed to pass the state’s exam, and many took this as a sign that the court had the intent to set a lower, more reasonable cut score. Last month, the State Bar Board of Trustees provided the Supreme Court with a set of recommendations for the cut score, ranging from doing absolutely nothing to lowering it to 139.

Today, the California Supreme Court has finally spoken — and much to the chagrin of those who took the exam this past July, there is no good news to be had.

The score needed to pass the California bar exam will remain 144. The justices of the state Supreme Court were unpersuaded by pleas to lower the passing score, citing the fact that California’s tailspinning pass rates are consistent with the national nine percent average decline in overall pass rates observed from 2007 to 2016.

The California Supreme Court’s justices roundly rejected the premise of changing the state’s cut score, and instead suggested the following course of action:

The court … encourages the State Bar and all California law schools to work cooperatively together and with others in examining (1) whether student metrics, law school curricula and teaching techniques, and other factors might account for the recent decline in bar exam pass rates; (2) how such data might inform efforts to improve academic instruction for the benefit of law students preparing for licensure and practice; and (3) whether and to what extent changes implemented for the first time during administration of the July 2017 exam — that is, adoption of a two-day exam and equal weighting of the written and multiple choice portions of the exam — might bear on possible adjustment of the pass score.

Examination of these matters could shed light on whether potential improvements in law school admission, education, and graduation standards and in State Bar testing for licensure, combined with effective regulatory oversight of legal education, could raise bar exam pass rates and thereby reduce financial hardship for exam takers, and boost the availability of competent and effective attorneys across all demographics and for all Californians.

The California Supreme Court is unwilling to lower the cut score at this time because there are obvious improvements that could be made to law school admissions that would prevent so many graduates from failing the bar exam. The state Supreme Court justice are turning this around on the law school deans who have beseeched them to lower the cut score by instead imploring that they raise their standards.

It would have been nice if the California Supreme Court hadn’t provided test-takers awaiting their scores with the false hope that they’d be able to pass the bar exam with a lower cut score, but, to take a note from what the state justices seem to be getting at, it would have been even nicer if law schools hadn’t provided them with the false hope that they’d be able to pass the bar exam in the first place.

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California’s July 2017 bar exam results will be released before Thanksgiving. We wish the very best of luck to those who are waiting to see if they passed what will remain for the indefinite future one of the hardest bar exams in the country.

Supreme Court issues letter relating to In re California Bar Exam [California Courts Newsroom]
Bar Exam Passing Score Update [State Bar of California]


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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