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It's too soon to pop the champagne, but early results from the July 2019 bar exam are largely positive. A majority of the jurisdictions that released results in September reported increases in their pass rates. That's welcome news for legal educators, who have been struggling to reverse declining pass rates for the past five years.

Florida's overall pass rate rose to 74% this year, up seven percentage points from the previous year. And while Florida is the only large jurisdiction to report results thus far, plenty of smaller states have also notched gains—though increases have not been across the board.

North Dakota saw the biggest jump in its pass rate thus far. Among July's test takers, 73% passed. That's up from 63% the previous year. Alabama's overall pass rate rose six percentage points from 2018, landing at 61%. And Connecticut's pass rate rose from 55% in July of 2018 to 60% this July.

"It is very good news," said North Dakota law Dean Michael McGinniss, noting that 84% of the school's first-time bar takers passed in July. "We've been working on our academic success and bar pass initiatives. This class that just graduated is the beneficiary of some of the innovations we put forward a few years ago. It's very encouraging to see them be so successful, and we want to continue to build on that success."

Among the changes North Dakota implemented after seeing its pass rate plummet is additional academic advising for struggling first-year students, as well as an intensive legal writing and analysis course for students who need extra help.

Officials with the National Conference of Bar Examiners had predicted that pass rates would rise due to an increase in the national average score on July's Multistate Bar Exam, which is the 200-question multiple-choice portion of the exam that accounts for half of a test-takers score in most jurisdictions. (States can assign different weights to the MBE.) The average MBE score this July was 141.1, up from 139.5 the previous year. That 1.6-point increase is the largest single-year jump since 2008, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

"Most jurisdictions, but not all, will see an improvement in scores and pass rates," said Judith Gundersen, president of the national conference.

Most large jurisdictions have yet to report their pass rates. California—which saw a dismal overall pass rate of 41% last July—is not scheduled to release results until Nov. 15. New York, which had a 63% pass rate in 2018, typically does not release scores until November. Texas generally releases results in late October, while Illinois tends to release results in early October.

But not every jurisdiction has good news to celebrate. Vermont's pass rate fell nine percentage points to 61% this July. Maine also saw a decline of four percentage points, landing at 52%. Idaho's pass rate fell from 69% in 2018 to 64% in 2019. Relatively few people took the exams in those three jurisdictions, however. Thus far, the pass rates in Washington and Iowa held steady, at 69% and 80%, respectively.

New Mexico, Oklahoma, Alabama and Oregon have also reported modest gains in their overall pass rates for the July 2019 bar exam.