As you may have heard, the California bar results were released last Friday. Congratulations to those who passed, and better luck next time to those that didn’t.
In the wake of the results, a couple of interesting stories have emerged. First, remember when an earthquake mildly disturbed bar exam takers in Southern California? The California State Bar did when it got around to scoring the July exam, and it awarded southern California test takers as many as 5 extra points based on which test center they were at during the earthquake.
Apparently, the Bar created some kind of fancy matrix to figure out how to award the extra points it felt earthquake-terrorized test takers deserved, and, since lawyers suck at math, the matrix produced some pretty ridiculous results. The absurdity is covered in detail by ATL and Lowering the Bar, so I won’t bore you with it here.
Mentioned in the ATL item, but not really discussed, is another intriguing storyline. As The Shark reported late Friday, the overall passage rate for California’s July exam was 61.7%, the highest passage rate in California since 1997.
As ATL notes, the passage rate in California typically hovers (.pdf) in the 40s and 50s. By contrast, the passage rate (.pdf) for New York’s July exam was 74.7%, the highest passage rate in New York since...2007. Further, by my count, in 2007 (.pdf) only the District of Columbia (56%) and the Virgin Islands (52%) had bar passage rates equal to or lower than California’s (56%).
Why are California’s passage rates so much lower than New York’s? Some argue that New Yorkers are just smarter than Californians. I seriously doubt this is true. It seems more likely that the California test is just harder. But, this may not be entirely accurate either.
A couple of weeks ago, Dean Barbieri, Director of Examinations for the State Bar of California, came to King Hall to discuss how the bar exam is graded and how students should prepare for it. During this discussion Mr. Barbieri discussed several factors which lead to California’s historically low passage rate.
First, California allows graduates of non-accredited law schools to take its bar exam. This year, for instance, the pass rate for first time test takers from non-accredited law schools was 33%, compared with 83% for first time test takers from accredited law schools. Mr. Barbieri also noted that California has one of the highest passage requirements for the MBE section in the nation, that it allows certain apprenticeships in lieu of legal study, and that it allows law students from foreign jurisdictions to take its exam. Finally, as evidenced by the guy in this video who has taken the California bar exam 41 times, California allows people to take its bar exam as many times as they would like. Repeat test-takers have significantly lower passage rates.
So, don’t be discouraged by California’s low bar passage rate. When you start breaking down the statistics, the passage rate that matters to most people – the rate for first time-takers from accredited law schools – is 83% in California. Still not as high as New York (91%), but those three years of California living should more than make up for the gap.
UPDATE: Attempting to paraphrase Mr. Barbieri above, I wrote "California has one of the highest passage requirements for the MBE section in the nation." After a commenter pointed out that my paraphrasing of Mr. Barbieri might be inaccurate, I phoned Mr. Barbieri. As it turns out, the commenter was correct. According to Mr. Barbieri, California has the second highest minimum passing score when the nation's bar exams are evaluated on the same scale (Delaware has the highest). The MBE score is tied to this score, but my original understanding of Mr. Barbieri's statement was wrong and I regret my error.
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