California Bar Exam Pass Rate Reaches Nearly All-Time Low

These are historically horrible results -- the worst in nearly 70 years.

The results from the July 2018 administration of the California bar exam have been released, and compared to last year’s “breath of fresh air” — an almost 50 percent pass rate — they are pretty bad. In fact, compared to any year in recent memory, they are still really, really bad. Just how bad are we talking here? This is the worst pass rate the state has seen in nearly 70 years.

According to a press release from the State Bar of California — which notes that “[t]he latest results mirror a national downward trend in scores from the July 2018 bar exams” — the overall pass rate for the July 2018 exam was 40.7 percent, while the pass rate for first-time takers was 55 percent. In July 2017, the overall pass rate was 49.6 percent, and the pass rate for first-time takers was 62 percent. The pass rate for repeaters was a horrifyingly low 16 percent. Although California’s overall pass rate dropped by 8.9 percentage points, and its pass rate for first-time takers dropped by 7 percentage points, its examinees seemed to be a bit “more able” than test-takers in other states. The state’s mean scaled MBE score was 1404 (down 17 points since July 2017) compared with the national average of 1395 (down 8 points since July 2017), but this is the closest these numbers have been in quite some time.

Perhaps that bright spot ought to be taken with a shaker of salt, because this is the lowest overall pass rate California has seen for the July administration of the bar since results were released in the fall of 1951, when only 37.6 percent of all test-takers passed the exam. The state hasn’t seen an overall pass rate this low in 67 years. In fact, this pass rate is historically horrible — it’s actually the second-lowest summer pass rate California has seen since the state began publishing test records in 1951. The last time the overall pass rate was nearly this low was 34 years ago in 1984, when 41.8 percent of test-takers passed the exam. In more recent times, the last time the overall pass rate for California’s July exam was this low was in 2016, when just 43 percent of all test-takers were successful on the exam. This is a disturbing trend.

Recall that after the February 2017 administration of the California bar exam, the State Bar changed the way it calculated the total percentage of those who passed. That percentage now includes only those who finished the exam, whereas in the past, that percentage included the total number of those who sat for it. This summer’s low overall pass rate would have been even lower had the State Bar not eliminated those who were unable to complete the test from the calculation. Something is clearly wrong, but it doesn’t seem like anyone in charge knows what to do.

Leah Wilson, Executive Director of the State Bar of California, said she and her team are “troubled by a low pass rate, and are working to better understand the reasons behind this national trend.” Here’s what the California Bar is doing to combat the problems that law graduates face when taking the exam:

Over the last 18 months we have conducted four distinct studies on the California Bar Exam designed to determine if the passing score is appropriate and the content valid. While these studies did not suggest that changes to either should be made at this time, the State Bar takes seriously its commitment to ensuring integrity and fairness in the admissions process. We have just launched a California Attorney Job Analysis Study to collect information about the knowledge and skills that entry level attorneys need. This job analysis will form the basis of a new review of the exam itself to ensure that the Bar Exam is relevant and actually testing what’s needed.

The first meeting of the working group for the Job Analysis Study will be held on December 10, 2018, and the study will be published sometime in December 2019. That study is supposed to help the Bar figure out if they’re “testing for the skills and content that new attorneys need.” (Spoiler alert: They’re not.) The State Bar will also be finishing up its Productive Mindset Study — remember, that’s the one those who failed in February 2018 couldn’t sign up for even though it was advertised to those who had failed the exam so they could succeed in July 2018 — to see if they can figure out how to help students pass the exam. (Hint: They can’t.)

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For the sake of comparison, let’s take a look at the results for the last decade or so of summer administrations of the California bar exam. At this point, you can probably feel free to disregard the July 2017 results since we can now attribute that little hiccup of “success” to the state moving to a two-day test. Check it out, below:

Year Overall Pass Rate
July 2018 40.7 percent passed
July 2017 49.6 percent passed
July 2016 43.07 percent passed
July 2015 46.6 percent passed
July 2014 48.6 percent passed
July 2013 55.8 percent passed
July 2012 55.3 percent passed
July 2011 54.8 percent passed
July 2010 54.8 percent passed
July 2009 56.4 percent passed
July 2008 61.7 percent passed

Here are some additional statistics that the State Bar of California released from this summer’s exam (pass rates rounded to whole numbers):

School Type First-Timers Repeaters
California ABA 64% 22%
Out-of-State ABA 58% 12%
California Accredited (but not ABA) 16% 9%
Unaccredited: Fixed-Facility 12% 6%
Unaccredited: Correspondence 11% 8%
Unaccredited Distance Learning 23% 10%
All Others 31% 16%
All Applicants 55% 16%

Even though pass rates went down across the board, graduates of ABA-accredited law schools still displayed an obvious advantage over their peers who attended California-accredited or unaccredited law schools. Specifically, the pass rate for first-time takers from California’s ABA-accredited law schools decreased by 6 percentage points, down from 70 percent last summer. Those who went to law schools accredited only by California and took the exam for the first time saw their pass rate decrease by 17 percentage points. Boy, are we eager to see the pass rates for individual law schools.

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When you’ve run out of words to describe how bad the situation in California is, it’s inherently obvious that something here needs to change — and fast. Yes, law school admissions standards have played a large factor for bar exam results in the past, but something more must be done. If the California Supreme Court had decided to lower the state bar’s cut score to bring it in line with that of the vast majority of other states (or hell, even if the state’s high court had decided to lower the cut score by just a point or two), imagine how many more people would have passed. This is ridiculous, and it seems like all the State Bar is doing is collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the would-be lawyers who have been forced to take the test over and over again instead of offering them legitimate assistance. Won’t someone, anyone please help the thousands of would-be lawyers who continue to fail the test year after year?

Congratulations if you managed to pass the bar exam in California this summer. If you didn’t pass, don’t despair. Many very successful people have failed the bar exam (see our list of famous bar exam failures). Focus on February and try to develop a plan for passing, and someday, you’ll conquer the beast that is the California bar exam.

State Bar Releases July 2018 Bar Exam Results [State Bar of California]


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked 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.