Georgia law school graduates who sat for the February bar exam did not fare quite as well as the cohort the previous year.

Of the 65 first-time test-takers from Georgia's six law schools, 60% passed. That compared with a pass rate of 67.2% for the 66 first-time test-takers in February 2019, according to pass rate statistics released Thursday from the state's Office of Bar Admissions.

The overall pass rate for all 242 test-takers from Georgia law schools, including repeaters, was 40.1%. That was down slightly from those schools' 43.1% overall pass rate in February 2019.

The slight drop in the overall pass rate for Georgia law school graduates, from 43.1% to 40.1%, was consistent with the performance trend of test-takers nationally, said Georgia Office of Bar Admissions' director, Heidi Faenza.

Because the number of people sitting for the February bar exam is much smaller than for the July one, the results can be more inconsistent, Faenza said, explaining that having just a few more students pass or fail can markedly skew the percentages.

For example, Mercer University School of Law and Savannah Law School each posted a 100% first-time pass rate, but only two graduates of each school took the exam for the first time.

Mercer's overall pass rate was 44.1% and Savannah Law's was 52.9%

By contrast, the University of Georgia School of Law had only a 25% first-time pass rate, but only four first-time test-takers sat for the exam. UGA Law's overall pass rate was 31.3%.

Georgia State University College of Law fielded 18 first-time test-takers, of whom 88.9% passed. GSU Law's overall pass rate was 84.2%.

That was followed by Emory University, which had 16 first-time test-takers with a 50% pass rate. Emory Law's overall pass rate was 40.6%.

Atlanta's John Marshall Law School had 23 first-time test-takers, with a 43.5% pass rate. However, repeat test-takers pulled down its overall pass rate to 21.9%. 

John Marshall Law graduates accounted for a full 43%, or 105, of the 242 graduates of Georgia law schools who took the February exam. The pass rate for its 82 repeaters was only 15.9%.

Total Results

Overall, 536 people, including out-of-state law school graduates and attorneys barred in other states, took the February exam, which Faenza noted was just over 100 fewer than the February 2019 exam.

Of those, 43.5% passed. That was slightly lower than the February 2019 overall pass rate of 44.3%.

The overall February pass rate for all 246 first-time test-takers, including graduates of out-of-state law schools and attorneys barred in another state, was also down slightly, at 62.6%, compared with the 65.6% pass rate for all first-time test-takers in February 2019.

Attorneys already barred in another state were the best-performing cohort, with an 84% pass rate. That was up from an 80.7% pass rate for that group in February 2019.

Out-of-state law school graduates had a pass rate of 51%, which was up from the 47.7% pass rate for that group in February 2019. 

"I'm just grateful that we all got out of the exam without people getting sick," said Faenza, noting that this year's exam took place from Feb. 25 to Feb. 26, right before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.