CALIFORNIA BAR EXAM PASS RATES
Students who successfully earn their JDs and want to practice law typically must take and pass a bar examination. These exams are administered by the states or jurisdictions where individuals intend to practice. The State Bar of California administers the General Bar Examination twice each year (in February and July) to individuals seeking licensure in California (applicants). The bar exam currently consists of five essay questions, one performance test, and 200 multiple-choice questions known as the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE).[11]
JULY 2022 EXAM RESULTS
In July 2022, a total of 7,164 applicants sat for the bar exam, with approximately 66 percent having earned a JD from a California law school. Among this group of applicants, the majority were from ABA-approved schools (3,629), while 881 graduated from a CALS and 183 graduated from an unaccredited school. The analysis below explores bar exam passage rates among this group of applicants more deeply.
Most bar exam test takers from CALS and unaccredited schools take the exam more than once.
The vast majority (83 percent) of July 2022 applicants from ABA-approved schools took the bar exam for the first time (see figure 9). In contrast, most applicants who earned their JDs from a CALS or an unaccredited school had previously attempted the exam.
Figure 9. Test Taker Status for July 2022 California General Bar Exam Participants by Type of California Law School
Note: Number of test takers in parentheses.
Figure 10. July 2022 California General Bar Exam Pass Rates by Test Taker Status and Type of California Law School
Note: Number of test takers in parentheses.
In general, applicants who earned their JDs from ABA-approved schools have higher bar exam pass rates than applicants from CALS and unaccredited schools.
Figure 10 lays out July 2022 bar exam pass rates based on the type of law school attended, distinguishing between first-time takers and repeaters. Overall, when looking only at these three groups, students who graduated from ABA-approved schools have the highest pass rates, followed by graduates from CALS and graduates of unaccredited schools. This pattern is true for both first-time takers and repeaters. Furthermore, among all three types of California law schools, first-time test takers have higher pass rates than repeat test takers.
Among first-time exam takers, Asian, Latino, and Black applicants have lower pass rates than white applicants.
As noted above, graduates from ABA-approved schools who took the bar exam for the first time generally achieved the highest bar exam passage rates, followed by graduates from the CALS and graduates from unaccredited schools. The results in figure 11 show that this is true for all racial/ethnic groups and both men and women. However, across both ABA-approved schools and CALS, Asian, Latino, Black, and “Other” applicants had lower pass rates compared to their white counterparts. Specifically, among applicants from ABA-approved schools, Black applicants had the lowest pass rates (48 percent). On the other hand, among applicants who earned JDs from a CALS, Asian applicants had the lowest pass rates (23 percent). Additionally, while men and women achieved similar pass rates at ABA-approved schools, men had higher pass rates at the CALS and unaccredited schools.
Figure 11 also shows that bar exam pass rates for repeaters were lower than first-time takers for all racial ethnic groups for all three types of schools. Moreover, many of the racial/ethnic and gender disparities in pass rates noted above decrease when examining pass rates among repeat test takers. For example, pass rates for Latino, Black, and “Other” first-time applicants from ABA-approved schools were lower than their white counterparts. However, among repeat applicants, the pass rates for these groups were similar to those of their white counterparts. Another interesting finding is that Asian repeat applicants from ABA-approved schools had the lowest pass rates (20 percent) among this group of test takers, while this was not the case for Asian first-time test takers. Black and Latino repeat applicants from unaccredited schools fared the worst: none of them passed the bar exam in 2022.
Figure 11. July 2022 California General Bar Exam Pass Rates by Race/Ethnicity and Gender Identity, Type of California Law School and Test Taker Status
Note: Number of test takers in parentheses. Data is displayed only for groups with 11 or more applicants. Data is suppressed for Asian, Hispanic, Black, and Other applicants from unaccredited law schools for first-time test takers and Other repeaters from unaccredited law schools. See methodology for discussion about data suppression. “Other” is comprised of American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, individuals who selected more than one racial/ethnic group, and individuals who selected the racial/ethnic category “Other.”
TRENDS IN BAR PASS RATES
The analysis below explores exam passage rates for first-time applicants who took the July exam for the years 2012 through 2022.
Over the past decade, first-time applicants who earned their JDs from ABA-approved schools consistently had higher bar exam pass rates than applicants from CALS and unaccredited schools.
Graduates from California’s ABA-approved schools who took the bar exam for the first time achieved higher bar exam passage rates than graduates from the CALS and graduates from unaccredited schools (see figure 12). In the majority of years analyzed, graduates from the CALS had higher exam passage rates than graduates from unaccredited schools. However, there were instances when the pass rates between these two schools were similar. Notably, the most substantial disparity occurred in July 2022, with 36 percent of CALS graduates successfully passing the bar exam as first-time applicants, while only 13 percent of graduates from unaccredited schools achieved the same outcome.
Figure 12. July California General Bar Exam Pass Rates for First-Time Applicants for Years 2012–2022 by Type of California Law School
Note: The July 2020 exam was administered in October 2020.
Over the past decade, Asian, Latino, Black, and “Other” first-time applicants consistently had lower bar exam pass rates than white applicants across all three types of law schools. Black students who attended ABA-approved and CALS had the lowest pass rates compared with all other racial/ethnic groups.
As noted above, graduates of ABA-approved schools who took the bar exam for the first time in July 2022 had higher pass rates than graduates of CALS and unaccredited schools. Asian, Latino, Black, and “Other” first-time applicants achieved lower bar exam passage rates compared with white applicants, regardless of the type of law school. Black graduates had, on average, a 54 percent pass rate at ABA-approved schools and an 18 percent pass rate at the CALS, the lowest among all racial/ethnic groups. At the unaccredited schools, white graduates had an average pass rate of 32 percent, while all other racial/ethnic groups had average pass rates that were significantly lower. Men and women who graduated from ABA-approved schools had similar pass rates, but among graduates of CALS and unaccredited schools, men had higher pass rates than women. The results in figure 13 lay out the average July first-time pass rates for the years 2012 through 2022 and show that these disparities (type of school, racial/ethnic, and gender) have been consistent over the past decade. The average first-time pass rate among graduates of ABA-approved schools over the past decade was 72 percent, compared with pass rates of 31 and 24 percent for graduates of the CALS and unaccredited schools, respectively.
Figure 13. Average July California General Bar Exam Pass Rates for Years 2012–2022 First-Time Applicants by Race/Ethnicity and Gender Identity by Type of California Law School
Note: Average pass rates were calculated where data was available for groups with 11 or more applicants. There were fewer than 11 applicants from unaccredited schools for several years of data for the following racial/ethnic groups: Black and “Other” (six years of data), Asians (five years of data) and Latinos (four years of data).