FIU Law bright spot in dismal bar exam pass rate

A scene from a Florida bar exam. Image via Tampa Convention Center.

Here’s the good news: Florida International University College of Law had the highest bar exam passage rate of the state’s 11 law schools, according to results released Monday.

But much of the rest of the results were otherwise depressed, as Florida joins a national trend of bar exam scores taking a nosedive.

Scores from the state’s July examination were released by the Florida Board of Bar Examiners. Of first-time test takers, FIU Law came in first with 89 percent passing.

In second place, was the University of Florida College of Law at 87.3 percent and Florida State University College of Law with 80.3 percent passing, the board said.

The rest of the pack, though, passed at or less than 75 percent.

The important numbers are these: The July test’s overall pass rate was 68.9 percent. Last year’s was 71.8 percent. In 2013, it was 77.2 percent.

The trend looks worse the farther back one goes. In 2012 and 2011, 80.2 percent and 80.1 percent of first-time test takers passed, respectively.

Over the last four successive tests, then, the overall passage rate declined by more than 11 percentage points.

As Bloomberg Business put it last week, “American law graduates are increasingly getting a taste of failure before they start their careers. Performance on the bar exam has continued to slip, early results show.”

About a dozen states have published their pass rates, and the numbers are even worse than last year, when graduates performed historically badly. Pass rates for students who took the test in July were down in most states that have reported results.

Part of the problem: “Law schools have been admitting students with lower qualifications who ‘may encounter difficulty’ when taking the bar.”

The Florida Supreme Court has approved 1,621 graduates to be sworn in as new attorneys, further adding to the rolls of the state’s 83,000 practicing lawyers.

Here’s the entire list from Monday:

• Florida International University College of Law, 89 percent
• University of Florida College of Law, 87.3 percent
• Florida State University College of Law, 80.3 percent
• Stetson University College of Law, 75.1 percent
• University of Miami School of Law, 69.6 percent
• Florida A&M University College of Law, 67.9 percent
• Nova Southeastern University College of Law, 66.7 percent
• Florida Coastal School of Law, 59.3 percent
• St. Thomas University College of Law, 57.4 percent
• Barry University School of Law, 50.7 percent
• Ave Maria School of Law, 47.8 percent

Of test takers who went to law school outside Florida, 63 percent passed and lawyers from other states who also want to be licensed in Florida passed by nearly 70 percent.

The exam was given on July 28-29 in Tampa.