Lawyer licensing examination pass rates experienced sharp declines across California and several other major U.S. jurisdictions on the July test administration, according to state results released recently.
In California, fewer than half of the nearly 4,000 examinees passed the July bar exam, bringing the state’s overall pass rate down to 48%. The figure represents a seven percentage point drop from the 55% pass rate recorded a year earlier and marks California’s lowest overall pass outcome since 2018.
The downward trend extended across the nation’s largest legal markets. All six jurisdictions with the largest pools of bar applicants reported overall pass rate declines of three percentage points or more. In New York, the nation’s largest bar exam market with approximately 10,000 test-takers, the pass rate fell to 67%, compared to 70% in July 2025. Florida and Illinois both saw three percentage point decreases, resulting in pass rates of 64% and 71% respectively. Meanwhile, Texas and the District of Columbia experienced five percentage point declines, finishing at 70% and 75% overall.
With nearly all states having published their July figures, California’s 48% pass rate stands as the lowest nationwide. The widespread nature of the score drops has prompted varied explanations from legal educators and tutors.
Some law professors have suggested that potential contributing factors could include an increased reliance on artificial intelligence tools during study periods, as well as a rise in law school student accommodations. However, bar exam tutor Sean Silverman cautioned against reading too much into a single year of data, noting that licensing exam scores naturally fluctuate over time.
“With that said, there was such a lopsided result this year with over 75% of the states that have reported results publicly reporting lower scores in 2026 than in 2025,” Silverman said.
The July test administration also marked the official debut of the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination, which was utilized by six states. The newly designed test, slated to completely replace the traditional national bar exam by July 2028, is shorter by half a day and places greater emphasis on evaluating practical legal skills rather than the rote memorization of laws.
Performance on the newly formatted exam varied among the participating jurisdictions. Four of the six states utilizing the NextGen test posted pass rates that were two percentage points or higher than their results from July 2025, when they administered the legacy exam. By contrast, Idaho saw its pass rate dip by one percentage point to 80%, and Missouri experienced a two percentage point decline to 77%.
Those higher pass rates “might speak to the fact that the NextGen exam is more manageable for students than the legacy exam,” Silverman said, though he emphasized that the current July test sample size remains relatively small.
