US national bar exam scores hit 12-year high

By Karen Sloan

Aug 28 (Reuters) - U.S. law students awaiting their summer bar exam results have reason for optimism this year.

The national average score on July's 200-question Multistate Bar Exam was the highest since 2013, the National Conference of Bar Examiners said Thursday, excluding results from 2020 when the test was delayed or modified due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The MBE is one of three components of the national bar exam required for attorney licensing and accounts for 50% of a bar taker’s score in most jurisdictions. The average score was 142.4 in July, up 0.6 points over the previous summer.

"Due to this increase in mean we expect to see a small increase in overall pass rates compared to last July,” said Bob Schwartz, the national conference’s managing director of psychometrics.

States will start to release scores and pass rates for the July exam in the coming weeks.

While the national average on the MBE has ticked up each year since 2022 for the July exam, that has not been the case for the February version of the test, which typically has a significantly higher portion of repeat bar examinees.

The February 2025 average MBE score was 130.8, which was the lowest on record since the MBE debuted in 1972. Some of that decline was due to California using its own bar exam for the first time and no longer using the MBE. The California Supreme Court ordered the state to return to the MBE in July after the February test there was marred by technical and logistical problems.

Read more:

National bar exam score hit record low in February

Bar exam results for July on the rise