Students wait in line to take the New York State bar exam at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan (Photo: Monika Kozak/NYLJ)

New York’s transition to the Uniform Bar Examination from a statewide exam three years ago has had little impact on the performance of prospective attorneys taking the test, a report from the National Conference of Bar Examiners said Tuesday.

Instead, the small increase in performance among candidates over a three-year period appeared to be attributed to how well they did in their academic career, the report said.

The study looked at performance on the bar exam in New York between July 2015 and July 2017. New York started administering the Uniform Bar Exam in July 2016. 

When the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, voted to transition the state to the Uniform Bar Exam four years ago, New York became the 16th state to do so. As of May, that number had doubled.

The National Conference of Bar Examiners, in the three-year study, looked at performance on the bar exam by race, ethnicity, gender, and other background characteristics. They considered how performance in undergraduate education, law school, and the LSAT correlated with their results on the exam, for example.

Over the year following the first time the Uniform Bar Exam was administered to prospective lawyers in New York, pass rates increased, according to the report released Tuesday. But that likely had nothing to do with the new exam, the report said.

“This is not to say that the pattern was perfect, but background characteristics certainly explained at least a portion of the improvement in bar exam scores after UBE adoption, indicating that improvement in bar exam scores was likely not due to the UBE,” an executive summary of the report said.

Pass rates increased marginally over the three-year period, according to the report. 

The bar exam is administered in February and July in New York. Pass rates for the February test-takers increased from 40.5% to 43.8% between 2016 and 2017, the report said. Pass rates in July, meanwhile, increased from 60.9% to 68.5% between 2015 and 2017.

Average bar exam scores increased from 258.20 in February 2016 to 260.62 the following year, and 273.52 in July 2015 to 281.67 in July 2017, according to the report. 

Scores and pass rates tended to increase for each group, separated by gender and race/ethnicity, between each one-year period, according to the report. 

One notable exception, the report said, was when scores and pass rates for the black/African American group increased less than other groups between July 2015 and July 2016, but then increased more than any other group in July 2017.

Statistically, the Caucasian/white group tended to have the highest average scores on the bar exam, followed by the Asian/Pacific Islander group. Test-takers that identified as male tended to have higher pass rates than their female counterparts, the report said.  

Chief Judge Janet DiFiore said in a statement with the report that the amount of data collected through the study, which is nearly 300 pages, was important for the state court system to understand because of the impact of transitioning to a new bar exam.

“I want to thank the National Conference of Bar examiners for conducting this careful and exhaustive study on our behalf,” DiFiore said. “This is an important component in our examination of the impact of adoption of the UBE on candidates seeking admission to the bar in New York.”

The full report is available on the New York State Board of Law Examiners website.

READ MORE:

‘Old MacDonald’ Had A Tort Claim: NY Judge Remixes Nursery Rhymes for Bar Prep

Minds Over Matters: An Examination of Mental Health in the Legal Profession

ABA Toughens Bar-Pass Standard for Law Schools