Diploma privilege, July bar exam administration, and law school employment outcomes

We saw a lot of variance in how the bar exam was administered in 2020. That assuredly affected employment outcomes for the Class of 2020, specifically the 10-month employment figures publicly released this week. (The underlying data is here.) Employment figures dropped. But the drop was not evenly distributed. And I think we can learn some things from decisions to introduce a version of “diploma privilege,” and decisions to maintain a July administration of the bar exam—I think. Maybe.

Most graduates of most law schools take the bar in the state where the law school is. There are obviously huge outliers (Yale, among others). And most of the “emergency” diploma privilege jurisdictions—Louisiana, Oregon, Utah, and Washington—particularly favored in-state law schools. (Please note, I exclude the District of Columbia, because its “diploma privilege” is really a lengthy supervised practice requirement.) It’s only four jurisdictions with only about 5.1% of all law school graduates. Yes, some of them take other bar exams, and law school graduates in other states may take advantage of diploma privilege here. But we could compare this cohort to graduates of law schools from other states—the 46 others (there are no law schools in Alaska, and I excluded the law schools in Puerto Rico). (Numbers may not evenly match due to rounding.)

	2020 BPR	2019 BPR	Delta	2020 JDA	2019 JDA	Delta
Emergency diploma privilege (4)	69.9%	68.2%	1.7	7.6%	9.5%	-2.0
Others (46)	70.8%	73.2%	-2.4	7.4%	8.3%	-0.9

The raw numbers are below:

	2020 BPR	2020 JDA	2020 Grads	2019 BPR	2019 JDA	2019 Grad
Emergency diploma privilege	1,221	132	1,747	1,143	160	1,677
Others	22,785	2,382	32,179	23,244	2,631	31,745

Bar passage-required (“BPR”) job outcomes (“full-time, long-term,” for this and all other categories) rose 1.7 points between 2019 and 2020 among graduates from schools in these four states, compared to a 2.4-point decline in the rest of the country. The correlation is of limited value, of course, but I think it’s a good place to start considering the effect the bar exam might have on legal employment.

A related component is to compare J.D.-advantage (or “JDA”) positions—i.e., positions for which passing the bar is not a prerequisite. In the four “diploma privilege” jurisdictions, J.D.-advantage position placement declined 2 points, whereas in the rest of the country it declined 0.9 points. (Yes, those JDA figures are small….)

This inverse relationship between BPR and JDA suggests, I think, that diploma privilege did not inherently improve overall job placement at a school; instead, it may have shifted graduates from less desirable positions into more desirable ones—or, more importantly, shifted graduates from non-practice positions into the practice of law. To that end, diploma privilege does exactly what it’s designed to do (if this correlation is sufficient to suggest diploma privilege is doing something…).

But not all four of these states saw equal changes to job placement. Louisiana saw a 0.9-point decline in bar passage-required job placement, while Oregon saw it rise 0.5, Utah rise 7.9, and Washington rise 5.3. Is there something about the West that saw a better job market than the East? Hold that thought while I address another….

States had significantly different timing for their bar exam administration. About 1/4 of graduates came from 22 states that offered a July administration of the bar exam compared to states that did not. (Not all graduates, of course, took the July test—many may have deferred, or taken a later offering.) Some postponed a week to August, like Indiana; others canceled it entirely, like Delaware. Some had it in July just like normal, others offered a July exam and an additional fall exam. Did jurisdictions that had a July bar exam look any different in employment outcomes? I pulled out the four emergency diploma privilege jurisdictions (but I did keep Wisconsin).

	2020 BPR	2019 BPR	Delta	2020 JDA	2019 JDA	Delta
July 2020 bar offered (22)	72.8%	73.6%	-0.8	7.3%	8.5%	-1.2
No July 2020 bar offered (24)	70.1%	73.1%	-3.0	7.4%	8.2%	-0.8

And the raw numbers are below.

	2020 BPR	2020 JDA	2020 Grads	2019 BPR	2019 JDA	2019 Grad
July 2020 bar offered	6,015	604	8,265	6,035	698	8,198
No July 2020 bar offered	16,770	1,778	23,914	17,209	1,933	23,547

These results show that employment looked better in states with a July bar exam. Placement in bar passage-required jobs declined from 73.6% to 72.8%, a 0.8-point drop in these states. Placement in other states, however, declined from 73.1% to 70.1%, nearly a 3-point drop. And we see the opposite trends in J.D.-advantage jobs again, too—J.D. advantage jobs declined 1.2 points in July bar exam states, but only 0.8 points in other states.

There’s a geographic divide, however, between Eastern and Western states. Western states (16 in total, about 1/4 of all grads) saw a decline of just 0.9 points in bar passage-required placement, while Eastern states (34, 3/4) saw it fall 2.7 points.

Break those down further into states with a July bar exam or without, and the divide becomes starker still—exacerbated, of course, by New York, which did not have a July bar exam, has the largest potential employment market, and was hit hardest by the pandemic.

	2020 BPR	2019 BPR	Delta	2020 JDA	2019 JDA	Delta
West, July 2020 bar offered (12)	74.0%	73.0%	1.0	7.1%	8.4%	-1.2
East, July 2020 bar offered (12)	72.3%	73.4%	-1.1	7.4%	8.7%	-1.3
West no July 2020 bar offered (6)	68.2%	70.0%	-1.8	6.6%	8.3%	-1.7
East, no July 2020 bar offered (32)	70.6%	73.8%	-3.2	7.7%	8.3%	-0.5

Once more, the raw numbers:

	2020 BPR	2020 JDA	2020 Grads	2019 BPR	2019 JDA	2019 Grad
West, July 2020 bar offered	2,022	195	2,734	2,044	234	2,800
East, July 2020 bar offered	4,613	470	6,384	4,550	537	6,201
West no July 2020 bar offered	4,144	401	6,072	4,278	508	6,110
East, no July 2020 bar offered	13,227	1,448	18,736	13,515	1,512	18,311

It’s only a small cache of data that only reflects a sliver of some of the variables at play in the employment outcomes. But it does appear that diploma privilege or sticking with a July bar exam administration had a positive effect on employment. Of course, we can run back around the correlation-causation fights: were those jurisdictions with July bar exams least affected by the pandemic, in which case legal employment was able to hire more, as opposed to anything about the timing of the bar exams. But it’s some data worth considering when examining the costs of changes to the bar exam.