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Law School Bar Passage Rates

194 schools reporting ultimate passage, 193 with a usable first-time figure · ABA 509, 2025 cycle

Across the 194 ABA law schools that report first-time bar passage, the median school passes 84.8% of its takers on the first attempt, ranging from 44.9% to 99.4%.

Ultimate passage — counting repeat takers — has a national median of 92.1%, with a range of 64.5% to 100.0%. The gap between the two measures is the part attributable to students who did not pass the first time and went back. Nobody actually takes the exam once and stops.

Between the 2023 and 2024 graduating classes, ultimate passage moved a median of -0.46 percentage points. 108 schools declined and 83 improved. Single-year movements at small schools are usually cohort noise rather than a change in programme quality.

10 schools report an ultimate rate slightly below their first-time rate, which should not be possible if both were measured the same way. These are schools that submitted figures for different cohorts under slightly different definitions. The reported values are kept as filed rather than adjusted, and the schools are flagged on their pages.

Passage rates are not a measure of teaching quality. They are shaped at least as much by which students a school admits, how much they prepare, and the difficulty of the bar in the jurisdiction they sit in — California and New York administer harder exams than most states, and the schools there are not weaker for it.

Two measures, different questions

First-time passage excludes retakers. Ultimate passage includes them. The gap between the two is the share of outcomes attributable to students who did not pass the first time and went back — which, at the median school, is worth 7.0 percentage points.

For choosing a school, ultimate passage is the more useful figure — nobody actually takes the bar once and stops. First-time passage is what state bar associations publish, which makes it the right number for comparing schools within one jurisdiction. The first-time-only ranking is here.

Passage rate distribution

First-time passage by band. The boundaries are ours for readability, not an official classification — the school count in each band shows the actual shape.

Ranked by ultimate passage rate

194 schools. The year used is shown per row — where a school has no 2024 figure the 2023 value is used and labelled.

Ranked by first-time passage rate

193 schools with at least 10 first-time takers. Schools with smaller cohorts are excluded because their rate is decided by a handful of individuals.

Too few takers to rank

These schools report a first-time rate based on fewer than 10 takers, so a single result moves the percentage several points. Shown for completeness.

Figures that do not reconcile

10 schools report an ultimate rate below their first-time rate, which is not possible if both were measured the same way. The values are kept exactly as filed and neither figure is adjusted to match the other.

No passage data reported

These schools filed no bar passage figures in the disclosure and are excluded from every ranking above. A missing figure is not a zero.

• Wilmington University School of Law

Source: ABA Standard 509 Required Disclosures, 2025 reporting cycle. First-time passage describes the most recent cohort; ultimate passage is reported for the graduating classes of 2023 and 2024 as filed. Neither rate predicts an individual outcome. State bar associations publish their own figures, which may differ from a school's self-reported numbers because of jurisdiction differences.