Should more states adopt the Uniform Bar Examination?
Law school application trends seem cloudy for the upcoming academic year, one of the Trump children prepares for law school, and bar exam passage rates in California vary greatly. Check out the latest headlines for aspiring lawyers.
Bar exam passage rate
Last month, California released its overall bar exam passage rate, which stood at a mediocre 62 percent. Just as a reminder, there is little you can do with your JD until you pass the bar exam. So in terms of building a successful, long, lucrative career in the legal industry—passing is essential.
Now we have a more detailed breakdown of the numbers to look at, which shows that not all bar exam passage rates are created equal. It turns out that graduates of certain law schools are more likely to pass the bar exam than others.
Here’s what we know: Top-ranked Stanford Law School’s bar exam passage rate was an impressive 91 percent. Law schools that went unranked by U.S. News, for a variety of reasons, faired much lower. Whittier Law School, for example, only had a bar passage rate of 22 percent. Note: California has one of the hardest state bar exams in the country. (Above The Law)
Uniform bar exam
Yes, you first have to take the LSAT and finish law school before you take the bar exam, BUT things might be changing rapidly in this area. California is among the shrinking number of states that continue to administer a state-specific bar exam. A majority of states, including large jurisdictions like New York and New Jersey, have adopted the Uniform Bar Examination, which is essentially a national licensing exam for would-be practicing attorneys to practice law across multiple states without having to take multiple state-specific bar exams.
A new Kaplan survey of nearly 1,000 recent law school grads finds increasing and overwhelming support for all U.S. states to ditch their own bar exams for the universal one. (The ABA Journal)
Law school application trends
Thanks to some analysis from a professor at Pepperdine University School of Law (located in beautiful Malibu), we have some idea of where application trends stand. According to the numbers released by the Law School Admission Council, there were approximately 81,700 applications submitted through the first week of December by roughly 14,900 applicants for the upcoming academic year. This translates to a 5.1% decrease in applicants and nearly 2% drop in applications from last year.
But before you worry too much, Kaplan’s own Jeff Thomas, our executive director of pre-law programs, has some important context as to why comparing this year to last year is not apples to apples: “In 2015, the fall LSAT administration—the most popular administration each year—was October 3rd. This year’s fall administration date was September 24th. Many students, particularly undergraduates, will ramp up their LSAT preparation after Labor Day when the semester is earnestly in swing. This year given the early administration date, we are finding many students shifting their desired test date to December, rather than the traditional fall.”
In other words, wait until December. The number of LSAT takers might make up for October’s number. (TaxProf Blog)
Trump daughter considers law school
Tiffany Trump, President-elect Donald Trump’s youngest daughter, wants to cut a different professional path from her real estate mogul dad: She’s looking to enroll in law school. The 23-year-old, who recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, was recently spotted touring both Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School.
As one Harvard student said, “We were sitting in the lounge area in the student center, and I saw a tall blond girl walking through and I recognized her,” amid a slew of Secret Service agents. Tiffany reportedly took the December 3 administration of the LSAT. Scores won’t be back until early in the new year. (Times-Picayune)
Planning your pre-law path? Take a free online LSAT practice test today and get insight into how you’d score on Test Day.