TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Julia Wilburn on Feb 24, 2023

Bar passage rates remained steady in 2020, according to information from the American Bar Association’s section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, though the first-time passage rate fell by about 2 percentage points. The new data shows that in the aggregate, 91.44% of 2020 law graduates who sat for a bar exam passed it within two years of graduation (91.87% with Diploma Privilege). The two-year “ultimate” aggregate success rate is slightly better than the 91.27% comparable figure for 2019 graduates. The 2020 ultimate bar pass data also reveals that 92.58% of all graduates sat for a bar exam within two years of graduation. Spreadsheets are available on the section’s webpage under Legal Education Statistics, which report these outcomes under ABA Required Disclosures on a school-by-school basis and in more detail.