The State Bar of California's Committee of Bar Examiners reported today that 61.7 percent of the applicants passed the July 2008 General Bar Examination (GBX). If the 5,330 people who passed the July 2008 exam satisfy other requirements for admission, they will become members of the State Bar.
Preliminary statistical analyses show that of the 8,637 applicants who took the GBX, 72.4 percent were first-time takers. The passing rate for 6,257 first-time applicants was 75.0 percent overall. The passing rate for the 2,380 applicants repeating the examination was 27.0 percent overall.
Preliminary statistical analyses show the first-time and repeater percent passing the GBX (rounded to whole numbers) by law school type as follows:
 School Type First-Timers Repeaters
California ABA 83% 35%
Out-of-State ABA 75% 28%
CA (but not ABA) Accredited 37%
17%
Unaccredited 33% 15%
All Others 50% 30%
All Applicants 75% 27%
The applicants not included in the above totals either were attorneys admitted in other states who either chose or were required to take the GBX, attorneys admitted in foreign jurisdictions, law students in the Law Office/Judge’s Chambers Study Program or law students who qualified to take the GBX through four years of law study.
More detailed statistics, including passing rates by individual law schools, will be made available in approximately four to six weeks and published on the State Bar’s Web site at www.calbar.ca.gov/admissions
The pass rate on the general bar examination is the highest it has been since the July 1997 administration of the examination. As is standard, an analysis of the examination will be prepared by the Committee of Bar Examiners’ psychometric consultant, but that report will not be available for several weeks.
Gayle Murphy, Senior Executive, Admissions, noted that the bar exam passing rates for many other jurisdictions were higher in July than in the recent past. "The increase could be explained in part by the high MBE (the national 200-item multiple-choice portion of the examination) scores that were achieved by applicants taking the examination," she said.
"The MBE is scaled to ensure the difficulty of an examination remains the same from administration to administration; thus, one could assume that the applicants taking the July 2008 bar examinations were better prepared to take it," said Murphy.
The three-day General Bar Examination is given twice a year, in February and July. The exam consists of three sections: a multiple-choice Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), six essay questions, and two performance tests that are designed to assess an applicant's ability to apply general legal knowledge to practical tasks. The mean scaled MBE score in California was 1475 compared with the national average of 1456.
In addition, the Committee announced that 154 (43.6 percent) of the 353 lawyers who took the Attorneys' Examination passed.
The Attorneys' Examination, which consists of the essay and performance test sections of the GBX, is open to lawyers who have been admitted to the active practice of law in good standing for at least four years in another United States jurisdiction.
Successful applicants who have satisfied other requirements for admission – those who have not been reported by local district attorneys for being in arrears with family or child support payments, who have received a positive moral character determination and who have passed the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination – may either take the Attorney's Oath individually or participate in admissions ceremonies held throughout the state during December 2008.
During the morning session of the first day of the July 2008 administration of the California Bar Examination, an earthquake struck the Southern California area. There was approximately 15-20 minutes time left in the session. Timing at the test centers continued as scheduled, although the examinees at one test center were given an additional 5 minutes to complete the session.
Following conclusion of the morning session, staff proceeded to ensure that all those taking and administering the examination were safe and each test center was inspected by the facilities’ engineers to confirm that the buildings were structurally sound.
The afternoon sessions began on time without any further major seismic incident. Immediately following conclusion of the examination, the Committee asked its psychometric consultants to investigate whether the earthquake may have had an impact on examinee scores. The Committee’s consultants found that the earthquake appeared to have impacted some of the nine Southern California test centers differently.
Based on the calculations and recommendations of its experts, the Committee decided to adjust the scores of some examinees, by test center, with additional points as a function of how much, if any, the test center where they were taking the examination was impacted.
The report of the study can be found on the Admissions’ portion of the State Bar’s Web pages at www.calbar.ca.gov/admissions
The Committee believes that the process by which the scores were adjusted for the July 2008 California Bar Examination is the fairest for all examinees and that it has taken appropriate steps to adjust the scores of those who were impacted by the earthquake.
Reprinted from the California Bar Journal
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