Does State Matter? – Examining the Connection between State and Bar Exam Passage

Over the past several weeks we have examined “business as usual” statistics, namely the US News & World Report law school rankings and application trends. Professor Robert Anderson, Associate Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law, has entered some new stats into the equation: he studied the bar exams of different states and found that the passage rates were affected, by among other things, “the choice of state.”

Anderson’s study of passage rates includes data based on the passage rates of ABA-credited law schools and the GPA and LSAT scores of bar exam takers to determine which states have the toughest bar exams. The results of Anderson’s work confirmed what many already knew – California is the state with the toughest bar exam. While prospective lawyers taking the Virginia Bar Exam had the highest LSAT scores, the passage rate was relatively low putting Virginia into the rank of 6th most difficult exam.

A major factor in determining the difficulty of any state’s bar exam is the passage rate – low passage rates are interpreted to mean that the exam is especially difficult. Anderson does admit that this can be misleading. Using a comparison of the passage rates of the New York State Bar Exam with the rates of the Michigan Bar Exam, it would appear that the two tests are of equal, high, difficulty; in fact the Michigan Bar Exam has undergone some recent changes.

As a note, Anderson does not address any issue of preparedness for taking the Bar Exam. It is not clear if taking a prep course helped applicants for the Bar Exam achieve greater passing rates.

To see Anderson’s posting, and some follow-up on his study, read the full article here.