Law Schools

A Breakdown Of California Bar Exam Results By Law School (July 2018)

Which in-state law schools did the best on the test, 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 16, 2018, and that day marked a dismal new low for exam-takers in the state. In July 2017, almost half of all test-takers passed the state’s notoriously difficult professional entry exam, but this past summer, almost everyone failed. The overall pass rate for the July 2018 exam was 40.7 percent (down from from 49.6 percent in July 2017), while the pass rate for first-time takers was 55 percent (down from 62 percent in July 2017). This was the worst pass rate the state had seen in nearly 70 years.

Given the fact that so few of those who took the exam were able to pass it, people have been wondering about the pass rates by law school. Until now, the only information we’ve had with regard to law schools has been the overall pass rates for first-time takers who attended ABA-accredited law schools, both in-state (64 percent) and out-of-state (58 percent). A little more than one month has passed, and now we know that almost every single ABA-accredited law school in the state of California saw its pass rate sink. We’ve collected all of the bar exam pass rates for these California law schools, thanks to Pepperdine Law Dean Paul Caron’s report at TaxProf Blog.

Which in-state law schools did the best on the test, and which schools did the worst?

Congratulations go out once again to Stanford Law, which has claimed the number-one pass rate for first-time takers for four years in a row, with 91 percent of its graduates passing the exam (down from 96 percent last summer). Second-place honors go to UC Berkeley, with an 86 percent pass rate for first-timers (down from 89 percent last summer). Even T14 law schools were affected by this past summer’s plague of declining pass rates on the California bar exam.

But how did everyone else do?

Here’s a list we’ve created of pass rates for first-time takers on the July 2018 administration of the exam for all 21 ABA-accredited California law schools:

  • Stanford: 91 percent
  • UC Berkeley: 86 percent
  • UCLA: 83 percent
  • USC: 80 percent
  • UC Davis: 75 percent
  • Loyola (LA): 72 percent
  • San Diego: 71 percent
  • UC Irvine: 69 percent
  • Pepperdine: 66 percent
  • ABA STATEWIDE AVERAGE: 64 PERCENT
  • Chapman: 60.3 percent
  • UC Hastings: 59.6 percent
  • Santa Clara: 58 percent
  • Southwestern: 53 percent
  • California Western: 52 percent
  • Western State: 51 percent
  • McGeorge: 50 percent
  • La Verne: 34 percent
  • Golden Gate: 33.9 percent
  • San Francisco: 33 percent
  • Whittier: 26 percent
  • Thomas Jefferson: 25 percent

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This may be the first time that almost every single ABA-accredited law school in California saw its pass rate decrease. So our readers can see the difference in how law schools did in July 2018 compared to July 2017, we created this list of year over year percentage point decreases (and increases) in pass rates by law school. As you can see, some schools experienced “normal” fluctuations of just a few percentage points, while others saw decreases in their pass rates that were absolutely, positively insane:

  • Stanford: Pass rate decreased by 5 percentage points
  • UC Berkeley: Pass rate decreased by 3 percentage points
  • UCLA: Pass rate decreased by 5 percentage points
  • USC: Pass rate decreased by 8 percentage points
  • UC Davis: Pass rate decreased by 4 percentage points
  • Loyola (LA): Pass rate decreased by 1 percentage point
  • San Diego: Pass rate decreased by 7 percentage points
  • UC Irvine: Pass rate decreased by 14 percentage points
  • Pepperdine: Pass rate increased by 1 percentage point
  • ABA STATEWIDE AVERAGE: 64 PERCENT
  • Chapman: Pass rate decreased by 4 percentage points
  • UC Hastings: Pass rate decreased by 1 percentage point
  • Santa Clara: Pass rate decreased by 21 percentage points
  • Southwestern: Pass rate decreased by 4 percentage points
  • California Western: Pass rate decreased by 13 percentage points
  • Western State: Pass rate decreased by 5 percentage points
  • McGeorge: Pass rate decreased by 12 percentage points
  • La Verne: Pass rate decreased by 7 percentage points
  • Golden Gate: Pass rate decreased by 17 percentage points
  • San Francisco: Pass rate decreased by 21 percentage points
  • Whittier: Pass rate decreased by 12 percentage points
  • Thomas Jefferson: Pass rate decreased by 5 percentage points

Yikes. Five law schools saw the majority of their graduates fail the bar exam on their first try this past summer, and one usually high-performing law school — UC Irvine — saw its pass rate take a complete nosedive. Just one school saw its pass rate increase by just one percentage point. Congratulations to Pepperdine Law! You survived wildfires and the July 2018 bar exam.

What on earth is going on in California? Thanks to a new study, the State Bar has a few ideas, noting that law students’ undergraduate credentials (GPA and LSAT) and law school performance (final law school cumulative GPA) accounted for up to 50 percent of the California bar exam’s depressing pass rates between 2013 and 2017. The law school brain drain is behind the drastic drops in bar exam pass rates? Who knew! (Well, we did, but that’s neither here nor there.) The State Bar concludes that “[u]ltimately, the study was unable to account for a substantial amount of the decline in pass rates, concluding that other unexamined factors have contributed to the decade-long decrease in Bar Exam performance.” Damn you, “unexamined factors.”

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

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(Flip to the next page to see pass rates for all law schools with more than 10 graduates who took the July 2018 bar exam in California.)

State Bar of California Releases Report Exploring Changes in Student Performance on the California Bar Exam [State Bar of California]
California’s Bar Exam: How Schools Fared and What Questions a New Analysis Didn’t Answer [The Recorder]
July 2018 California Bar Exam Results [TaxProf Blog]

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.

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