Things may finally be looking up for February bar takers.

The national average score on the Multistate Bar Exam—the multiple-choice portion of the test—increased by 1.2 points to 134 for the February 2019 test, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners. That represents the first increase in the mean February MBE score since 2013, which was followed by a five-year slide in bar exam pass rates. (Read more about that decline in the first installment of “The Big Fail,” a four-part series on falling bar pass rates and their impact on the legal industry.)

“This is good news,” said national conference president Judith Gundersen in an interview Tuesday. “It should translate into higher pass rates because the MBE is half the exam. We would expect that in jurisdictions that do have a better MBE score, their pass rates will go up. Now, not every jurisdiction had an increase in their MBE mean.”