July 2020 bar test-takers down significantly from recent years, but much smaller drop in those who passed

I wondered what happened from the July 2020 administration of the bar exam compared to previous administrations, in terms of test-takers and overall pass rates. I looked at results from 10 states: Colorado, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and West Virginia. These were states that administered a traditional in-person July 2020 bar exam and did not offer some later fall test. I thought this would be the cleanest way to compare recent trends—non-traditional bar exams (like an online option or a new state test), or those that offered another administration later in the fall, might skew the test-taking pool more.

I then looked at the last three years of July test-takers and overall passers. I thought this might even out any irregularities if I looked at just the July 2019 test alone. But, of course, law school graduating classes differ from year to year, both in size and test-taker ability, so it’s only a crude portrait.

In the July 2017, 2018, and 2019 administrations of the bar exam, these 10 jurisdictions averaged 3627 test-takers and 2576 who passed, a 71.0% pass rate.

In July 2020, test-takers were down significantly, 13.9%, down to 3124 (a drop of 503 test-takers). But passers were down just 3.3%, 2492 who passed the exam (a drop of 84 passers over the three-year average).

Complicating this analysis is that North Carolina temporarily reduced its cut score, which might, on the one hand, been designed to offset any disadvantages to preparing for the bar exam during a pandemic, but, on the other hand, may have increased newly-licensed attorneys if bar preparation during the pandemic was not so adversely affected among remaining test-takers. But North Carolina saw a 4.1% increase in passers over its three-year average, one of only two states to see an increase.

A driving factor appears to be that the most likely to fail the bar exam were the most likely to opt out of this administration. That’s particularly the case for those who previously failed a bar exam—repeaters as a percentage of overall test-takers were down significantly according to the NCBE.

For those worried about the pipeline of attorneys more generally and the availability of clients in search of access to justice, the news is at least modestly promising, that while there was a substantial decline in test-takers, the decline in licensed attorneys was much more modest. (This is not to defend other problems with adminstering the bar exam in a pandemic, as I’ve described extensively elsewhere.) It does vary from state to state, however, so it’s worth looking at specific jurisdictions, too. In Mississippi, for instance, passers declined by more than 22% over the three-year average; in contrast, West Virginia and North Carolina saw modest increases. I’ve included the tables below.

	2017-2019 avg		2020		2020 v. avg		2020 v. avg pct
	Takers	Passers	Takers	Passers	Takers	Passers	Takers	Passers
Colorado	740	530	642	499	-98	-31	-13.3%	-5.8%
Iowa	187	151	162	134	-25	-17	-13.2%	-11.1%
Mississippi	169	99	110	77	-59	-22	-35.0%	-22.5%
Missouri	660	525	602	507	-58	-18	-8.8%	-3.4%
Montana	97	80	83	71	-14	-9	-14.7%	-11.3%
North Carolina	833	532	668	554	-165	22	-19.8%	4.1%
North Dakota	72	48	58	44	-14	-4	-19.4%	-8.3%
Oklahoma	288	223	268	215	-20	-8	-6.8%	-3.7%
South Carolina	417	279	385	276	-32	-3	-7.7%	-1.1%
West Virginia	163	109	146	115	-17	6	-10.4%	5.8%