Bar exam passers, pass rates down in 2020.

Byline: Bill Cresenzo

The number of applicants taking and passing North Carolina's February bar exam declined notably in 2020 as compared to 2019, according to figures released by the North Carolina Board of Law Examiners. Pass rates dropped notably as well, but still remain significantly higher than what they were before the state began to administer the Uniform Bar Exam last year.

402 applicants sat for the February bar exam, down from 520 the previous year. Of those, 204 passed the exam, down from 336 last year. And the pass rate for this year's exam was just 50.75 percent, down precipitously from a 64.62 percent pass rate last year.

Pass rates are consistently lower for the February exam than for the July exam because many of the applicants for the February exam are taking the exam again after having failed it at least once before. Unlike in past years, the NCBLE didn't provide an exact count of the number of first-time test-takers and repeat test-takers for the February 2020 exam.

But the NCBLE did provide a breakdown for test-takers from North Carolina law schools, and the numbers revealed a sharp divergence in fortunes between first-time test-takers and repeat test-takers. For those taking the test for the first time, pass rates inched up from 69 percent in 2019 to 72.4 percent in 2020. But for repeat test-takers, pass rates plummeted from 59.2 percent to 26.3 percent.

The drop was so sharp that it caused overall pass rates to drop even though there were more first-time test-takers from North Carolina law schools this February than repeat test-takers, whereas in 2019, it was just the opposite. The February 2019 exam was also the first time the NCBLE administered the UBE, which caused pass rates to soar compared to previous Februarys.

Duke University School of Law's pass rate was 87.5 percent, exactly the same as in 2019, and the highest in the state. (Duke had only eight test-takers.) Wake Forest University School of Law's...