Earlier this year, I looked at the change in California’s bar exam cut score (from 144 to 139), and what it looked like for the October 2020 bar exam. Unsurprisingly, bar passage rates jumped, especially among repeaters.

The July 2021 exam is now the third exam with the lower cut score. It’s yielded a couple of results (statistics here) that are interesting, in my view. First, repeaters have declined significantly, and pass rates for repeaters have returned to a fairly low level. Second, there has not been a significant uptick in new attorneys admitted to California this year.

Among first-time test-takers of the general bar exam who graduated from ABA-approved law schools, we’ve seen a relatively steady decline in overall test-takers. When the cut score was lowered in 2020, we saw a jump in passers. (The July 2020 exam was moved to October due to Covid-19 concerns.) The pass rate jumped from 71.7% in July 2019 to 82.4% in October 2020. It fell slightly to 78.9% this year (but still an increase, albeit a bit more modest compared to 2019). But all that’s much better than the 60-something% pass rates in July 2016, 2017, & 2018.

Over to repeaters. We saw a surge in repeaters in October 2020 among ABA-accredited schools, and a surge in those passing. Repeaters increased from 1368 in July 2019 to 1645 in October 2020. And the repeater pass rate climbed, too, from 34.6% to 49.7%. But this July, we saw a sharp decline to just 839 test-takers, and the pass rate fell to just 26.1%.

The decline in repeaters is no surprise—as more people pass the first time, we’d expect repeaters to drop, too. But the decline in the pass rate, I think, also shows that the lower cut score is sweeping in those most likely to ultimately pass. Those who are not passing with the new, lower cut score may be increasingly distant in scores, at the lower end of the bell curve if you will.

One potential benefit of the new, lower cut score would be more attorneys admitted to California, which would increase availability of attorneys and, potentially, lower costs and increase access to justice for those unable to secure representation. But it’s not clear that’s been the effect, at least not yet. Certainly, in 2020, we saw a surge in passers. But this year yielded 5568 attorneys between the February and July 2021 bar exams, across all law schools, the general bar exam and the attorneys exam, you name it. That’s down from 6906 last year, and it’s even below the 5825 in 2019.

I want to be careful here. It’s of course not all the bar exam. The economy of California, the legal market of California, cost of living concerns—there are many reasons why attorneys might be inclined to take the bar exam elsewhere. Additionally, it’s not clear how many attorneys who took the bar exam in 2020 did so to take a secondary bar (e.g., to be admitted in a state outside of the state where they primarily practice) out of convenience.

In short, there are many reasons why the legal market in California may behave outside of the bar exam. And undoubtedly, the surge in passers in 2020 is great news for law schools, for students facing debt and the delayed practice of law, for those who would ultimately pass but now are admitted on the first attempt and need not spend more time studying, and so on. Many of those who would have been admitted in 2021 on a repeat are put into the 2020 first-time bucket, essentially an acceleration of admitting attorneys that will work its way out through fewer repeaters passing later.

But it’s worth watching to see whether there’s a demonstrable increase in licensed and practicing attorneys in the state of California after the lowering of the cut score. On that, we’ll have to wait and see.