Law Practice
May 31, 2001
February Pass Rate Is State's Lowest In More Than a Decade
LOS ANGELES - In the state's lowest bar-passage rate in 11 years, 37.2 percent of those who took the bar exam in February passed, according to the State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners.
That figure is down from the 40 percent passage rate of those who took the exam at the same time last year.
The three-day General Bar Examination is given twice a year, in February and July. Of those who took the July exam this year, 55.3 percent passed.
Generally, those taking the exam in the summer pass at a higher rate, according to Marlon Villa of the California State Bar, because the applicants tend to be fresh out of law school, and because so many of those taking the test in February are repeat takers who failed the first time in July.
First-time takers have higher rates of passing the February bar exam, and the rate has been more consistent over the last 10 years, Villa said. 52.5 percent of first-time takers passed the February exam this year, while 51.3 percent passed last year's February exam. Of the 4,488 aspiring lawyers who took the exam this year, 1,534 were taking it for the first time.
Stacey Pruitt, a Loyola Law School graduate now working in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, took the bar for the first time in February and passed. She graduated in May, but was ill in July and had to wait to take the exam.
Pruitt said she was so nervous taking the exam that she became sick and missed 45 minutes of the exam during the third day.
"All I can say is prayer changes things," Pruitt said.
Pruitt wasn't the only lawyer to take a brief break - or take a pass altogether - from February's bar exam. Shawn Williams, a litigation associate in the San Francisco office of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, said he noticed the ranks thinning as he took the test in a jampacked Oakland facility.
"Some people around me that were there on the first day weren't there on the last day," Williams said.
And he thinks he might know why. Williams, who practiced for four years in New York before joining Milberg Weiss in July, said the three-day California bar stacks up as "grueling" next to New York's two-day exam.
Pruitt's road to the bar has been long. She began undergraduate school at the University of Southern California in 1982 as a public administration major, and took classes part time until transferring to the University of West Los Angeles in 1995.
In 1997 she graduated with a paralegal studies degree, and at the urging of her professors, began law school at Loyola. She choose Loyola because it is an ABA-approved, accredited school, which she thought would help more when she applied for the bar.
Pruitt may have been right.
Of the first-time exam takers who passed the exam, 49.8 percent were graduates of California law schools approved by the ABA.
For Pruitt, passing the bar means fulfilling a long-term dream. She said she had always wanted to be a lawyer, but working at a variety of jobs and raising her son, Joshua, kept her from entering law school right away.
"Finally, I thought, how can I tell [Joshua] to shoot for the stars if I don't go back and do the things I aspired for?," Pruitt said.
Pruitt now plans to stay in the District Attorney's office, where she has been clerking while awaiting the bar exam results.
For the 2,954 applicants repeating the bar exam, the passing rates were 29.3 percent. Of those second-time passers, 37.8 percent were graduates of in-state ABA-approved law schools and 38.1 percent were from out-of-state ABA-approved law schools.
Robert Diaz, a corporate associate with Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker in Los Angeles, says those who checked their bar results online for the second time Friday were probably plenty nervous.
"As it gets closer and closer to the time you find out, you start getting a lot more anxious and wondering how secure your future is going to be," Diaz said.
Diaz, a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, has been with Paul Hastings since November of 2000 - but hadn't yet passed the bar.
"It was the second time, which made me all the more nervous," he said.
When he found he made the cut, Diaz and his girlfriend celebrated in the classic way, with champagne.
The Attorney's Examination offered recent lawyers another opportunity to celebrate - assuming they passed it. A shortened version of the General Bar Exam, the test is open to lawyers who have practiced at least four years in another jurisdiction. Of the 257 applicants took the Attorney's Examination, 66.9 percent of the applicants passed.
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