Law Schools

Which Law Schools Are 'Overperforming' On Their Bar Exam Passage Rates?

Did your law school make the list? Find out here.

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bar exam scantron multiple choiceThe July 2023 bar exam is nearly upon us, so what better time to discuss law firms that are beating the odds to “overperform” when it comes to passing the test.

According to a new paper — “The Secret Sauce: Examining Law Schools That Overperform on the Bar Exam” — there are a quite a few law schools that are doing better than expected when it comes to their graduates passing the bar.

Law.com has the details, courtesy of its authors, Professor Christopher J. Ryan Jr. of Louisville Law and Professor Derek T. Muller of Iowa Law:

The authors identified overperforming and underperforming law schools based on the extent to which they surpassed predicted bar success, accounting for the students admitted in each law school cohort and state bar passage averages in the jurisdictions in which their graduates sit for the bar.

The survey identified and gathered information from law schools that both overperformed and underperformed on the bar exam over a six-year time period (2014 to 2019) and analyzed how these law schools approach their students’ success on the bar exam.

The results suggest that overperforming law schools prioritize bar success by focusing bar support on first-time bar passage instead of ultimate bar passage.

Without further ado, based on Ryan and Mueller’s findings, these are the top 25 law schools that overperform on the bar exam (with their U.S. News rankings following, gavel bang: TaxProf Blog):

  1. Florida International (#60 in U.S. News)
  2. Stanford (#1)
  3. USC (#16)
  4. UC-Berkeley (#10)
  5. North Carolina (#22)
  6. Belmont (#105)
  7. Michigan (#10)
  8. Florida State (#56)
  9. UCLA (#14)
  10. Virginia (#8)
  11. Campbell (#125)
  12. Yale (#1)
  13. LSU (#99)
  14. Georgia (#20)
  15. Duke (#5)
  16. Harvard (#5)
  17. Wake Forest (#22)
  18. Georgia State (#69)
  19. Chicago (#3)
  20. Penn (#4)
  21. Illinois (#43)
  22. Baylor (#49)
  23. Washington & Lee (#40)
  24. Liberty (#135)
  25. Vanderbilt (#16)

Congratulations if your law school made the list, and best of luck on the upcoming bar exam, no matter where you went to law school.

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Here Are the Law Schools ‘Overperforming’ on Bar Passage Rates, According to New Study [Law.com]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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