Law Schools

Bar Exam MBE Scores Increase For First Time In 5 Years

Finally, some good news for law school graduates!

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Is there a faint glimmer of hope on the horizon for law school graduates who want to pass the bar exam in the near future? If we allow past to serve as precedent, then the answer could be yes.

Hot off the heels of a record low for the February 2018 bar exam and a 34-year low for the July 2018 bar exam, the national average score on the Multistate Bar Exam is now on the rise — a very small rise, mind you, but a rise nonetheless. According to the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the national average MBE score for the February 2019 exam was 134.0, an increase of 1.2 points. This is the first increase in the mean February MBE score since 2013, after which all hell broke loose and nationwide bar exam pass rates dropped like mad.

“This is good news,” said Judith Gundersen, president of the NCBE, in an interview with Karen Sloan of Law.com. “It should translate into higher pass rates because the MBE is half the exam. We would expect that in jurisdictions that do have a better MBE score, their pass rates will go up.” (It should be noted, however, that not every jurisdiction saw an increase this winter.)

And that’s not the only good news. Here’s more from the NCBE:

While the MBE mean score increased for both February 2019 first-time test takers and February 2019 repeat test takers, the increase was smaller for first-time test takers and repeaters who had passed the bar exam on a previous attempt, and higher for repeaters who had not passed the bar exam on a previous attempt.

That’s right, repeaters who’d previously failed the saw their MBE mean scores increase, and Gunderson was just as shocked as we were. “It’s great that the repeaters improved so much,” she said. “What does that mean? I don’t know. Did people study differently, or did they put more time into it? Our researchers are looking at it.”

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Cross your fingers and pray that this means bar exam pass rates will see a meteoric rise in the future. Come on, wouldn’t that be nice? Let’s hope for better outcomes.

February 2019 MBE Mean Score Increases [National Conference of Bar Examiners]
February Multistate Bar Exam Scores Inch Up After a Five-Year Slide [Law.com]

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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