North Carolina released its bar exam results yesterday with a worse passage rate than before. The state does not publicly publish the number of people who have taken its exam, much less its overall passage rates, as it will only reveal their mediocre passage rates to law school students and graduates.
The February 2017 passage rate for first-time takers was 44.44 percent, while the overall passage rate was 36.73 percent. The average pass rate for first-time takers in February 2016 was 51.10 percent, which shows a severe decline in passage rates by 6.66 percentage points, according to Above The Law.
This time, three North Carolina law schools observed a decline in first-time and overall passage rates below 30 percent. The law schools included in the list are Elon University School of Law, North Carolina Central University, and most certainly, Charlotte School of Law.
While the passage rates are insultingly overwhelming, the problem is also dealing with other law schools whose first-time takers can't pass the exam at all. That includes first-time and repeat takers who are failing in such large numbers that they likely had a hand in causing the state's overall passage rate to plummet, according to ABA Journal.
Let's take some time to look into Charlotte Law. The law school which was recently placed on probation by the American Bar Association (ABA) and is obligated to do better in bar exam passage rates, lest its accreditation be revoked by the ABA. However, the passage rate in February 2016 for first-time takers was 34.70 percent, a decline of 9.7 percent, which is hardly any better and yet again, its worst bar exam results ever.
Will the law students be fooled again with promises of improvement, and does it even matter? Perhaps what many care about, rather than answering the question, is the comparative breakdown of bar exam results for all law schools in the state, which makes some better - but only to make all bar exam results look even more depressing.
