For those of you who are still questioning the correlation between LSAT Scores and Bar Passage Rate, I recently compiled some statistics on the three InfiLaw schools which are extremely telling.
I looked at the Median LSAT score of the admitted matriculated students for five classes (2010 to 2014) at all three InfiLaw schools (Arizona Summit, Charlotte and Florida Coastal) and then looked at the first-time bar passage rate of the graduates of these schools three years later (2013-2017) in the state where the schools were located, which was where the majority of the graduates took the bar exam.
ARIZONA SUMMIT SCHOOL OF LAW – Arizona Bar Exam
| Year Matriculated | Median LSAT | Year Graduated | First-time Pass Rate |
| 2010 | 151 | 2013 | 70.1% |
| 2011 | 148 | 2014 | 54.7% |
| 2012 | 145 | 2015 | 41.6% |
| 2013 | 144 | 2016 | 32.4% |
| 2014 | 144 | 2017 | 28.5% |
CHARLOTTE SCHOOL OF LAW – North Carolina Bar Exam
| Year Matriculated | Median LSAT | Year Graduated | First-time Pass Rate |
| 2010 | 149 | 2013 | 60.4% |
| 2011 | 148 | 2014 | 57% |
| 2012 | 146 | 2015 | 45.6% |
| 2013 | 144 | 2016 | 42.6% est.* |
| 2014 | 142 | 2017 | 29.1% est.* |
FLORIDA COASTAL SCHOOL OF LAW – Florida Bar Exam
| Year Matriculated | Median LSAT | Year Graduated | First-Time Pass Rate |
| 2010 | 149 | 2013 | 68.6% |
| 2011 | 147 | 2014 | 60.8% |
| 2012 | 146 | 2015 | 61.6% |
| 2013 | 144 | 2016 | 47.4% |
| 2014 | 143 | 2017 | 41.7% |
I will let these numbers speak for themselves. But I can’t help noting one other statistic from the two administrations of the Bar Exam in Arizona this year. In July 2017, Arizona Summit had 17 of its 94 repeaters pass for an 18% rate. In February 2017, 19 of 110 Arizona Summit repeaters passed for a 17.2% rate. So any claims from InfiLaw that their students have a high “ultimate” pass rate should be taken with a large grain of salt.
Note – I extracted this data either from the school’s ABA Standard 509 report or from the State Bar’s published statistics, or both.
*These numbers are estimated because the North Carolina bar released only the February and July pass rate, not the exact number of takers and passers, so I had to estimate the ratio of summer takers to winter takers. I assumed three July takers for each February taker in 2016 and a 1:1 ratio in 2017 based on the best information available. The February 17 rate was 25% and the July 17 rate was 34.1%.
Is all this tainted because David is focusing so much on Florida Coastal and InfiLaw?
NO! It would juvenile and sort of silly to constantly question David about "Why do you pick on Florida Coastal and Infilaw?"!
David is simply pointing out true facts, and using these schools as examples to make a point.
Interesting – if you just scatterplot all 15 values, you can get an R-squared value of 0.78 using a parabola, which looks darn-near like a straight line over this set of values.
Yeah, yeah, correlation is not causation and all that jazz, and I attach no significance to a parabola as opposed to something else being a good fit to this set of data, but still – things that make you go "hmm."
Didn't pass the bar? No worries, mate. Just heard on the radio that the unemployment rate among non-high school graduates has hit a low of 5.2%. Thanks to the greatest jobs President God ever created and Burger King. They will hire Juris Doctors, right?
These statistics overlook transfers. The best students from schools like Fla Coastal and Arizona Summit transfer to better schools in state after the first year. So if you are going to judge a school by its admissions policies and bar pass rates, it is not enough to look at the bar pass rates of the people who graduated. YOU HAVE TO INCLUDE THE PEOPLE WHO TRANSFERRED. Otherwise, the whole discussion is FAKE NEWS.
ML- While you are correct that bar passage numbers do not reflect students who transferred to other schools and may have passed at higher rates at other schools, it is an overstatement to suggest that these bar pass rates are meaningless or "fake news".
First of all, all but the very top few law schools experience some level of transfer attrition, and yet all law schools are required to report the bar passage rates of their graduates. Schools with high transfer rates are still required to meet ABA Standards. Schools with marginal bar pass rates and high transfer attrition rates can ill afford to lower their admissions standards if they wish to maintain acceptable bar pass rates.
Second, although the InfiLaw schools did have high rates of transfers, it is also important to note that they also had very high rates of academic and other attrition. So for each student from the top of the class who transferred, they tended to lose one or more struggling student to academic or other attrition. In that way, the bar pass rate actually overstates the "success rate" of students who attend that school, because many students never even earn a J.D. so they are eligible to sit for the bar. For example, at Charlotte School of Law, according to their 2014 ABA Standard 509 report (which reports on the previous year) they had 47 students transfer out, but lost 98 to academic attrition and 27 to other attrition. And from the second year (presumably this included some part time students), they had 5 transfers, 11 academic attrits, and 14 other attrits. According to Florida Coastal's 2014 Standard 509 Report, they had 51 transfers, 25 academic attrits and 13 others in the first year, and 3 transfers, 9 academic attrits and 1 other in the second year. Even with these very high rates of academic attrition designed to weed out the weakest performers, the school still posted very poor bar passage results.
So, the general principle remains true: the weaker the LSAT profile of your entering class, all other things being equal, the lower your bar passage rate is likely to be.
ML, if you want to say it's fake news due to not counting transfers, and noting that the later pass rates are ca. half the earlier pass rates, do you conclude then that in the data set of the earlier matrics, very few transferred, while in the later data sets, the numbers of transfers smoothly increased year-by-year, and in significant enough numbers to cause this result?
Oh, hey, do you still have that ocean-front property in Missouri? I finally have managed to scrape together the down payment, if it should still be available.
Thanks!