More than 1,650 law school graduates are on their way to practicing law in New York after passing the New York State Bar Examination in February.
With 3,962 test-takers, the overall pass rate clocked in at 42%, up 2% from last year. That share is significantly higher for first-time test-takers who attended American Bar Association-approved law schools, with that subset of examinees passing at a rate of 71%.
Whether a student studied law at an ABA-approved law school in New York or elsewhere in the U.S. did not translate to significant discrepancies in success on the state-specific exam.
Of the 418 graduates of New York law schools who took the exam for the first time in February, 72% passed, outperforming their 338 counterparts from out-of-state ABA-approved law schools by just 3%.
Pass rates on the New York exam were much lower for foreign-educated candidates, though. Approximately 1,900 applicants fell into that category, just 35% of whom passed. First-time foreign-educated examinees fared fairly better with a pass rate of 45%.
Repeat test-takers also fared worse. Of the 2,575 repeat examinees, just 33% passed.
The bar is administered twice a year, typically in July and February. The summer exam is always the more popular option because more students graduate in the spring, and the prevailing wisdom is to take the exam as soon after graduation as possible. Less than half as many people who took the July 2023 bar exam in New York took the February 2024 exam.
The overall pass rate for the July 2023 exam was 66%, with first time test-takers from New York’s ABA-approved schools passing 83% of the time, trailing out-of-state counterparts by 5%.
, 2024-05-03 21:27:41
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