State Bar changes how it calculates bar exam pass rate

In the midst of scrutiny and criticism about falling passage rates on the bar exam, the State Bar earlier this year changed how it calculates the success rate in a way that will slightly increase the figure.

The agency’s Committee of Bar Examiners decided that those who start, but do not complete the attorney licensing test, will no longer be included in the pass rate calculation.

The change was approved in April and first applied to the February 2017 exam, for which the results were released in May. Bar officials said the new policy was designed to boost the accuracy of the statistic.

The pass rate on the July 2017 general bar exam, which was the first two-day rather than three-day test and was taken by 8,545 applicants, rose to 49.6 percent. State Bar spokesman Jonah Lamb said 66 people did not complete the test.

The success rate would have dropped to 49.2 percent, a .4 percentage point decrease, if the non-completers were included in the pass rate calculation.

If the 78 people who did not complete the February general bar exam were included in the statistics for that test, the pass rate would have fallen from 34.5 to 33.9 percent.

The pass rate entered the spotlight after it was revealed last November that only 43 percent of test takers passed the July 2016 exam, which was a 32-year low.

Law school deans and others highlighted the decline in calling for the nation’s second-highest passing standard to be lowered to be more in line other states. The state Supreme Court decided this fall to maintain the status quo.

Karen M. Goodman, a member of the Committee of Bar Examiners, was the panel’s chair when the decision was made to change how the pass rate is calculated.

She denied that close scrutiny of the pass rate led to the new approach and said the goal of the change was presenting a fair measure of the success rate.

“It seemed like if people did not finish the test, they should not count against the pass rate,” Goodman said. “I don’t know why they were included in the first place.”

Lamb said that on every exam there are a number of applicants who do not complete all sections “for various reasons” and therefore automatically fail.

“Including only those who actually completed the examination in the statistics is a more accurate measure of those who actually made an attempt at passing the exam,” Lamb wrote in an email.

James Schiavenza, dean of state-accredited Lincoln Law School of Sacramento, said the bar’s revised policy for calculating the pass rate could have been an attempt to make the “numbers look a little more acceptable.”

“All of a sudden we are changing the rules a bit, perhaps in an effort to raise the overall passing rate without changing the passing score,” he said.

The Committee of Bar Examiners decided that for an exam to be considered complete, test-takers must have achieved a grade of at least 40 on their answers to the five essay questions and one performance test.

A test-taker must identify the subject matter of the question in order to receive a minimum score of 40, Lamb said. Applicants can earn up to 100 points on each of their essay answers.

The bar’s Board of Trustees did not take any action on the pass rate calculation change, Lamb said.

Judith Gundersen, president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, said her organization does not make a recommendation to states about how to calculate pass rates.

There are usually a very small number of test-takers who do not complete exams, sometimes due to sickness, she said.

“Jurisdictions may have policy reasons to include all who sat, even those who didn’t complete the exam, in their pass-rate calculation,” Gundersen said.