Law Schools

States With The Best -- And Worst -- Bar Passage Rates

How does your state stack up?

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Passing the bar exam is the ultimate rite of passage for attorneys. The arduous multi-day exam is the final barrier between law students and their ultimate dream of a career in the legal profession. But that final test is not merely perfunctory — it’s a challenging exam that can put test takers through the wringer (and even collects its own category of horror stories here at Above the Law).

Given the import of the bar exam — both in the lives of prospective lawyers and in law school rankings — it only makes sense to track how well everyone is doing. Nationwide, the average bar passage rate for first-time test takers in 2017 was 74.99 percent. Thought the multistate bar exam has increased in popularity, states still devise their own standards (controversially, in a few states), and often add state specific elements to the exam. So the good folks at ALM have compiled a list to track just how well each state’s test takers fare.

The below list — taken from the data on 2017 bar exam takers — shows which jurisdictions are passing the highest percentage of (first-time test-taking) wannabe lawyers and which states saw the highest rates of bar exam failures last year.

Top 5
1. Oklahoma 86.9 percent
2. Iowa 86.57 percent
3. Missouri 86.30 percent
4. New Mexico 85.71 percent
5. New York 83.92 percent

Bottom 5
46. Maryland 66.70 percent
47. California 66.19 percent
48. North Carolina 65.22 percent
49. Arizona 63.99 percent
50. Mississippi 63.95 percent

Check out the full list compiled by Law.com here.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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