California's "baby bar" is not harder than the main bar exam

On the news that Kim Kardashian failed the “baby bar” exam in California, an interview clip relayed the following assessment: “This one actually is harder, I hear, than the official bar.”

One reason this mythology persists is to look at the pass rates. On the June 2020 “baby bar,” 145 first-time test-takers had a 27.6% pass rate, and 134 first-time test-takers in November 2020 (where Ms. Kardashian likely took the exam) had a 29.1% pass rate. Compare that, say, to the October 2020 bar exam, which had a first-time pass rate of 73.3% (after California lowered the cut score), or a 63.7% first-time pass rate in July 2019.

On the raw passage statistics alone, it would appear that the baby bar is tougher.

But the quality of test-takers differs dramatically. Recall that every “official” test-taker from a California unaccredited school, or a correspondence course, or a distance learning course, of a fixed-facility course, is required to pass the “baby bar” as a condition of continuing their legal studies. That means 100% of “official” test-takers from these institutions passed the baby bar. That means, if the baby bar is harder than the “official” bar, we would expect pass rates among this cohort to be at or near 100%.

And that’s far from the case. The first-time pass rate in July 2019 among California unaccredited law school graduates was 24.6%—recall, 100% of these test-takers (ultimately) passed the baby bar. In October 2020, it was 37.9%—again, 100% of these test-takers passed the baby bar. Compare that to the 82.4% pass rate among ABA-accredited law school graduates.

Some additional notes from the interview:

She is then shown being told by Jessica Jackson, a human rights attorney and co-founder of #cut50, where Kardashian is interning, that she needed a score of 560, but got a 474.

"That's extremely close on a test that most people are not taking in the middle of a pandemic," Jackson tells Kardashian.

It’s not accurate that “most people” are not taking the “baby bar” during the pandemic. There were 146 first-time test-takers in October 2019, compared with 134 in November 2020. It’s a typically small group. (First-time test-takers at “law offices/judges chambers programs” actually rose from 11 in October 2019 to 13 in November 2020.)

As to whether it’s “extremely close,” scores of at least 540 are close enough for reappraisal to determine whether it merits pass or fail. Ms. Kardashian may, however, pass the next time around.