Bar exam passing-rate rise is 1st in years
The passing rate on the California bar exam rose to 49.6 percent in July, ending a three-year decline and making 4,236 applicants eligible to join the ranks of the state’s 189,000 practicing lawyers.
The results, announced by the State Bar on Friday, came a year after the passing rate had dropped to 43 percent, the lowest in 32 years. It was 55.8 percent in July 2013 and had dropped every year since then — until now. A similar trend has occurred in bar exam results nationwide.
Some law school deans and other leaders in the legal profession have called for California to reduce its passing score, the second-highest of any state. They argue that the high barrier disproportionately affects minorities and the poor and has little relationship to competence or effectiveness as a lawyer. But the state Supreme Court, which oversees the State Bar, refused to lower the passing score last month and called instead for the bar to work with law schools on improving legal education.
The exam is given twice a year, in February and July. The July test has nearly twice as many participants, a majority of them recent graduates taking the exam for the first time.
The passing rate was 62
percent for first-time test-takers and 28 percent for those who had failed the exam at least once before, the State Bar said. It was 70 percent for first-timers from California law schools accredited by the American Bar Association.
Prospective lawyers must also pass a separate “professional responsibility” exam on legal ethics. That exam was instituted nationwide in 1980 in response to the involvement of numerous lawyers in the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.
The California bar exam was reduced from three days to two this July, for the first time in 25 years. The so-called performance test, which is designed to measure on-the-job skills, was cut from six hours to 90 minutes. The remainder of the test consists of essays on hypothetical legal cases and a daylong multiple-choice exam that is given nationwide.