Low Bar Scores: Who’s to Blame?
- Akhilesh Samant
- Nov 15, 2015
- 2 min read
With the release of the July New York State bar exam results in October came controversy: every law school demographic (New York ABA accredited, out-of-state ABA accredited, etc.) saw its lowest score on the New York exam since at least 2004. The overall pass rate for all candidates was a measly 61%, down 14% from its 2008 peak. What’s the cause of this precipitous drop?
Law School Deans and recent graduates alike lambast the perceived increase in difficulty of the test. Deans, specifically Nick Allard of Brooklyn Law School, point the finger at the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), a company that prepares large chunks of the exam that are common to most states. They blame the company’s questions for being poorly prepared.
On the other side of the aisle is Erica Moeser, the head of the NCBE. She attributes the drop in passage rate to the lower demand for lawyers. With fewer companies willing to shell out the money to hire an expensive legal team, the number of people applying to law school has seen major decline. Due to this decrease in interest, law schools have had to accept students who would not have made the cut just a few years prior in order to fill their class. Understanding this, Moeser argues that it’s not the test; it’s the lack of qualified takers.
Regardless of the root cause, this argument will be moot in the near future as New York, along with 15 other states, plan to begin administering a standard bar examination. The new exam completely overhauls the original, removing blame from the NCBE’s original test. NCBE still, however, is responsible for the creation of the new exam. Additionally, the new test certifies the taker to practice law in any of the states that offers it. This would allow lawyers more freedom to move around, open up more job prospects, make the legal profession more appealing, and, by extension, make law school applications more competitive, removing doubt about the competency of the test takers.
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