Citing the ongoing controversy over diversity and inclusion in law school admissions, the Florida Supreme Court has created a workgroup to both reconsider its requirement that law students graduate from an ABA-accredited school to sit for the Florida bar exam and develop options for alternatives.
The percentage of successful first-time bar exam takers in 2024 increased more than 3 percentage points from a year earlier, according to data released Wednesday by the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
Texas will begin administering the NextGen bar exam starting in July 2028, joining 36 of the 56 jurisdictions that test bar candidates, according to a March 11 press release from the National Conference of Bar Examiners.
Employees of “activist organizations” that support activities with a “substantial illegal purpose” should no longer be eligible for a student loan forgiveness program for borrowers in public service jobs, according to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Friday.
A move last month by the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to suspend the accreditation standard originally titled “Diversity and Inclusion” doesn’t go far enough, according to a Feb. 28 letter from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who wants the council to abolish it “immediately” or risk the right to accredit law schools.
Updated: The council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has suspended enforcement of the accreditation standard originally titled “Diversity and Inclusion” until Aug. 31 in the wake of a Trump administration executive order mandating the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and demands by the U.S. Department of Education that academic institutions eliminate DEI polices or risk federal funding cuts.
New York, the jurisdiction with the largest number of bar candidates, will adopt the NextGen bar exam as it considers rejiggering the state-specific part of the exam, too, according to the New York Court of Appeals.
The ABA section that accredits law schools is once again facing pushback by attorneys general in Republican-controlled states over a diversity standard governing legal education.
Sudha Setty, who’s currently the dean of the City University of New York School of Law, will serve as the Law School Admission Council’s president and CEO effective July 1.
Bar pass rates for the July 2024 bar exam are strong throughout the country. The expectations were high for the class of 2024. In 2021, the year that this class entered law school, applications increased by 13%.
Updated: The State Bar of California’s plan to create a new exam enabling the licensing test to be taken remotely, as well as at in-person test centers, has been green-lighted by the California Supreme Court, allowing the first administration of the Kaplan North America-developed test to move forward in February 2025.
The California Supreme Court has rejected the proposal to run a pilot program for a pathway to licensure without taking the bar exam, but it did approve the bar developing “a California-specific bar examination” and offered content areas for a state-specific exam.
Graduates of the Purdue Global Law School, described as the oldest wholly online law school, can now take the bar exam in a third state, as the Connecticut Bar Examining Committee voted Oct. 4 to follow the lead of California and Indiana.
Contentious proposed changes to the ABA’s diversity and inclusion standard go too far and could reverse progress made toward making law schools diverse, according to several legal education groups that wrote to the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
