The bar exam’s badness is extensively discussed. But you know what gets less of a bad rap? The waiting. Did I pass? Did I get that weird question wrong? Nothing will truly sate you until you get your final score, but there is a small bit of information that may calm you in the meantime. Overall, everyone did better than usual! Reuters has coverage:
Law graduates are awaiting results of the July 2024 bar exam, but early data on the multiple-choice portion of the test indicates that pass rates will be higher this year.
The national average score on the Multistate Bar Exam was 141.8—up 1.3 points from July 2023, the National Conference of Bar Examiners said on Thursday. That’s the highest average MBE score since 2013, with the exception of 2020 when the attorney licensing exam was modified due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Does everyone scoring higher on average mean that you probably did better than you thought you’d do? Not necessarily, we don’t want to fall in to the fallacy of composition. But the bar doesn’t test actual reasoning capacity, it tests how good you are at tests — and part of that is keeping your cool until the grades come out! That said, if a delusion keeps you afloat, hang on to your floatation device! You won’t have to wait much longer — you will know where you ended up on the bell curve somewhere between the start of September and the end of November.
Best of luck!
Bar Exam Results For July On The Rise [Reuters]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.