It has been difficult to project much about the bar exam given changes in administration and the pandemic. The July 2022 bar exam would reflect three potentially significant things: the decision of law schools to move to pass-fail grading in their courses (particularly affecting 1L courses) in the Spring 2020; the decision of law schools to significantly reduce academic attrition for 1Ls in the summer of 2020; and the decision of law schools to have a number of remote learning options for the bulk of law students taking the bar in July 2022.

Now the MBE scores have been released, and the scores are a a slight drop from July 2021—but still consistent with scores between 2014 and 2019, and certainly not an all-time low.

The score is comparable to last summer’s scores, but it remains near recent lows. It appears that these disruptions did not materially affect bar passage rates (of course, it’s impossible to know how rates may have differed without these variables—perhaps they would have improved markedly, or remained just the same!). Of some interest: test-takers declined somewhat notable, from 45,872 to 44,705.