http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/ ... eckdam.pdf180orRetake wrote:Do law schools run the risk of losing ABA accreditation if they don't maintain a certain bar passage rate? And how do schools like Charleston manage to get even half of their students to pass?
A. A law school’s bar passage rate shall be sufficient, for purposes of Standard 301(a), if the school
demonstrates that it meets any one of the following tests:
1) That for students who graduated from the law school within the five most recently completed
calendar years:
(a) 75 percent or more of these graduates who sat for the bar passed a bar examination, or
(b) in at least three of these calendar years, 75 percent of the students graduating in those years
and sitting for the bar have passed a bar examination.
In demonstrating compliance under sections (1)(a) and (b), the school must report bar passage results
from as many jurisdictions as necessary to account for at least 70% of its graduates each year, starting
with the jurisdiction in which the highest number of graduates took the bar exam and proceeding in
descending order of frequency.
2) That in three or more of the five most recently completed calendar years, the school’s annual first time
bar passage rate in the jurisdictions reported by the school is no more than 15 points below
the average first-time bar passage rates for graduates of ABA-approved law schools taking the
bar examination in these same jurisdictions.
The standards are so lax as to be nearly meaningless. That said, schools have yet to dip to the very bottom of the LSAT range so the standards may have some mild effect which protects the worst potential matriculants from themselves.
