Law Schools

How Did Out-Of-State Law Schools Perform On The California Bar Exam? (July 2017)

Which law schools did the best, and which schools did the worst?

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Results from the July 2017 administration of the California bar exam were released on November 17, 2017, and it was on that day that the legal profession at large celebrated the fact that less than half of those who took the test had passed. Thanks, in part,
to the test’s new two-day format, the overall passage rate for the July 2017 exam was 49.6 percent (up from 43.07 percent in July 2016), while the passage rate for first-time takers was 62 percent (up from 56 percent in July 2016).

First-time takers who attended in-state ABA-accredited law schools passed at a 70 percent rate, while first-time takers from out-of-state ABA-accredited law schools passed at a 67 percent rate. Just before the new year, we found out how in-state law schools performed on the test. One month has passed, and now we know the same information for out-of-state law schools.

Which out-of-state law schools did the best, and which schools did the worst?

As usual, the California State Bar has provided information only for law schools with 11 or more takers. The full list of results by out-of-state law school can be found on the next page. Pepperdine Law Dean Paul Caron breaks it down over at TaxProf Blog:

Out-of-state law schools with the highest pass rates:

  • Chicago: 100% (24 students took the bar)
  • Yale: 97.1 (34)
  • Harvard: 93.7% (95)
  • Duke: 92.6% (27)
  • Notre Dame: 92.0% (25)
  • NYU: 91.9% (92)
  • Columbia: 90% (40)
  • Virginia: 89.7% (29)
  • Michigan: 86.0% (43)
  • Pennsylvania: 83.3% (24)
  • Northwestern: 82.9% (35)

Is anyone really surprised that members of the T14 performed the best on the California bar exam this past summer? Special congratulations go out to Notre Dame (ranked #20 by U.S. News and Above the Law) for infiltrating a list that’s filled with some of the best law schools — and doing better than more than half of them.

Out-of-state law schools with the lowest pass rates:

  • Washington University: 65.2% (23 students took the bar)
  • Illinois: 63.6% (11)
  • Cornell: 61.9% (21)
  • Emory: 52.6% (19)
  • Arizona: 50% (14)
  • Dickinson: 46.2% (13)
  • Loyola-Chicago: 41.7% (12)
  • Oregon: 36.4% (11)
  • Tulane: 31.3% (16)
  • Arizona State: 36.4% (15)
  • American: 28.0% (28)

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Speaking of T14 law schools, what the heck is Cornell doing on the list of the out-of-state law schools that did the worst on the July 2017 California bar exam? With a 28 percent pass rate, it’s fair to ask what on earth happened at American? Yikes.

Missing from the lists of the best and worst pass rates are the law schools that make up the hollow middle: Texas (79% pass rate / 14 takers); BU (75% pass rate / 16 takers); Georgetown (75% pass rate / 68 takers); GW (74% pass rate / 54 takers); and Vanderbilt (73% pass rate / 11 takers). Congratulations to everyone who passed.

Schools that were redacted from the full list due to having fewer than 11 test-takers were: Cardozo; BC; BYU; Brooklyn; Florida Coastal; Gonzaga; Chicago-Kent; Indiana-Bloomington; Lewis & Clark; Michigan State; NYLS; Phoenix (aka Arizona Summit); Seattle; Suffolk; Cooley; Iowa; Miami; Minnesota; Washington; and Wisconsin. Both Arizona Summit (31 takers) and Cooley (29 takers) had more repeaters take the exam than first-timers this summer, with 19 percent of Summit grads passing and 14 percent of Cooley grads passing. Given their track record when it comes to the bar exam, we wonder if the pass rates for their first-timers were better… or worse.

What are your thoughts on the California bar pass rates for these law schools? Feel free to contact us by email, by text message (646-820-8477), or by tweet (@ATLblog).

(Flip the page to see the list of California bar pass rates for out-of-state law schools.)

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July 2017 California Bar Exam Results For Out-Of-State Law Schools [TaxProf Blog]

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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