A view of the Thomas J. Meskill Law Library at the University of Connecticut School of Law in Hartford. Photo: Peter Morenus/UConn

The percentage of test takers passing Connecticut's July bar exam increased slightly to 60% this year, up from 55% a year ago.

The number, though, is still lower than the pass rate in most years over the past decade, which typically hovered around 70%.

The statistics for July 2019 were released Friday afternoon. They shows 182 out of 303 candidates passed.

The pass rate for first-time test takers also increased from the previous year, inching to 73%, up from 70%.

Among the two colleges with the highest numbers of test takers, one saw a dramatic improvement from the previous year, while the other dipped.

At the University of Connecticut School of Law, which had the most candidates, the overall pass rate zoomed to 76% in July, up from 59% one year earlier. Sixty-five of its 86 candidates passed the bar exam. Meanwhile, 82% of the university's first-time test takers succeeded, compared with 68% in July 2018.

But for Quinnipiac University School of Law, which had the second-largest group of test takers, the results were worse than last year's. The university fell to an overall pass rate of 62%, down from 76% in 2018, as 41 of its 66 candidates passed. Among its first-time test takers, 73% succeeded, compared with 82% one year earlier.

Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts, went from a pass rate of 28% in July 2018 to 20%, with six of 39 people passing in 2019.

Yale University Law School students continued their perfect streak for the second year in a row. All of its eight candidates succeeded, just as the five who sat had done in July 2018.

UConn's winning formula

University of Connecticut School of Law dean Timothy Fisher told the Connecticut Law Tribune Friday that "the meaningful numbers for me are the first-time test takers, because those are the people we had access to and that we were working with this year."

Fisher attributes the improved performance to several factors.

"We did a lot in terms of curriculum here. We have a full-time academic support faculty member who started in that role in 2018," he said.

That faculty member, Mary Beattie, "works with every student who wants extra help on the bar exam," Fisher said. "She also teaches a course on specifically taking the bar exam, and teaches how to understand the writing on the bar exam and the methodology of it."

A recent hire, adjunct professor Samuel Farkas, teaches a new online bar-preparation course for credit, and the university covers the costs. The course, Fisher said, focuses on the bar exam's subject matter and multiple choice section.

John Morgan, a spokesman for Quinnipiac, referred inquiries to interim dean Brad Saxton, who could not be reached by press time.

Connecticut Bar Examining Committee administrative director Jessica Kallipolites told the Connecticut Law Tribune, "We were all hopeful the numbers would go up. If it had gone below 55%, we would have been surprised. I do hope that last year was an aberration."

With the exception of a policy implemented two years ago to allow test takers with law degrees outside the country to take the bar exam here, Kallipolites said "there is nothing to pinpoint to say why the numbers" have gone below 70% for July's exam in the last two years.

Three of nine, or 33%, of the foreign students who took the test this July passed.

 

See the full results here:

 

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Only 40% of Candidates Passed the Connecticut Bar Exam in February