First-time bar pass rates hit 82%, AccessLex study says
Bar passage rates for first-time examinees hit 82% in July 2024, matching the 10-year record high of July 2020, according the AccessLex Institute’s summer 2025 update of the Legal Education Data Deck.
Tiffane Cochran, the AccessLex vice president for research, attributes the jump to the competitiveness of last year’s graduating class, which enrolled in 2021.
“Those who took the bar in 2024 are the same class who entered in 2021 after the pandemic, and we know that there was a spike in the number of people who enrolled in law school,” she says. “Not only were there more people, but their credentials—their LSAT scores, GPAs—were higher, better.”
She notes that the July 2020 figures included those granted diploma privileges during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, the report—updated twice annually—found 37 jurisdictions with increases in first-time bar passage rates between 2023 and 2024.
Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Michigan each had first-time bar pass rates jump by at least 10%, according to the report, but the rates fell the furthest in Wyoming, where it dropped by 18%.
Many of those states have lower numbers of bar examinees, making each score more heavily weighted, Cochran says.
“Those who took the bar in 2024 are the same class who entered in 2021 after the pandemic, and we know that there was a spike in the number of people who enrolled in law school,” says Tiffane Cochran, the AccessLex Institute’s vice president for research. (Photo courtesy of the AccessLex Institute)
New York had the highest bar pass rates for first-time examinees, at 86%, while Puerto Rico had the lowest, at 52%, the study found.
Of the seven ethnic and racial groups reported, three had first-time bar passage rates below 75%, according to the study.
While white and Asian first-time examinees hit first-time pass rates of 87% and 81%, respectively, those rates were 75% for Hispanic/Latine examinees, 68% for Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, 65% for Black/African American and 64% for American Indian/Alaska Natives.
“Those gaps narrow considerably when you compare on ultimate bar passage rates,” Cochran says, which reached above 75% for all groups.
“That’s a really good sign,” she says, “but it just leads to this lingering question: How do we narrow those gaps for first time?”
The Legal Education Data Deck pulls information from a variety of federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Labor, and organizations, including the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the Law School Admission Council, the National Conference of Bar Examiners and the National Association for Law Placement.
The full study can be found on the AccessLex Institute website.
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