1. S. DeVito (Ave Maria), K. Hample (Furman), and E. Lain (Drake), Examining the Bar Exam: An Empirical Analysis of Racial Bias in the Uniform Bar Examination, Mich. J. of L. Reform (Forthcoming 2022).
From the abstract:
The legal profession is one of the least diverse in the United States. Given continuing issues of racism in our society, the central position the justice system occupies in our society, and the vital role lawyers play in that system, it is incumbent upon those in the profession to identify and remedy the causes of this lack of diversity. This Article seeks to understand how the bar examination, the final hurdle to entry into the profession, contributes to this lack of diversity. Using publicly available data, we analyze whether the ethnic makeup of a law school’s entering class correlates to the school’s first-time bar pass rates on the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE). We find that the higher the proportion of Black and Hispanic students in a law school’s entering class, the lower the first-time bar passage rate for that school, in its UBE jurisdictions, three years later. This effect is not eliminated by controlling for other potentially causal factors including undergraduate point average, law school admission test score, geographic region, or law school tier. Moreover, the results are statistically robust at a p-value of 0.01 (a 1 in 100 chance that the results are due to random variation in the data). Because these results are at the school level, they may not fully account for relevant factors identifiable only in student-level data. As a result, we argue that a follow-up study using data relating to individual students is necessary to fully understand why the UBE produces racially and ethnically disparate results.
2. C. Birdsall (Boise State) and S. Gershenson (American), The Pro Bono Penalty: Extracurricular Activities and Demographic Disparities in Bar Exam Success AccessLex Institute Research Paper No. 22-01 (February 9, 2022).
From the abstract:
Demographic disparities in bar exam pass rates are problematic but poorly understood. We investigate a possible explanation: participation in extracurricular activities, which could either distract from bar exam preparation or motivate and prepare students to succeed. Generally, participation in extracurricular activities while in law school does not play a large role in bar exam success. However, there is a significant, arguably causal, penalty associated with one particular activity{pro bono work{most notably in lower-ranked law schools. This penalty is sizable: pro bono work is associated with a 5 percentage point (6%) decrease in the chances of passing the bar exam on the first attempt. This penalty is largest for Black and female students and may explain as much as 20% of the Black-white gap in first-attempt bar pass rates.
3. L.C. Levin (Connecticut), The Politics of Bar Admission: Lessons from the Pandemic, 50 Hofstra L. Rev. 81 (2021).
From the abstract:
The controversy over how and whether to administer the July 2020 bar examination during the COVID-19 pandemic upended the usual process of lawyer regulation. New actors—including bar applicants—very publicly challenged regulators’ decisions and questioned the safety and fairness of plans for the bar exam. Some advocated for emergency admission without the need to satisfy the bar examination requirement. Joined by law school deans and faculty, the advocacy occurred against the backdrop of the politicization of COVID-19, street protests over police misconduct and racial inequality, and long-standing skepticism about the value and fairness of the bar exam. Regulators throughout the United States reached very different decisions about how to proceed. This article uses eight case studies of states’ responses to explore why these differences occurred. They reveal how a state’s political culture and political attitudes toward the pandemic seemingly informed some regulators’ responses. Institutional relationships among the courts, the bar examiners, and sometimes, the organized bar also affected the decisionmakers. In addition, the courts’ attitudes toward innovation and its desire to maintain the reputation of the bar seemingly played a role. The article sheds new light on the politics of bar admission and the state supreme courts’ role in lawyer regulation.
(Louis N. Schulze, Jr., FIU Law)
