The American Bar Association on Tuesday notified the Vermont Law School, the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law and Florida’s Ave Maria School of Law of their noncompliance with bar passage standards.
Standard 316 requires that 75% of an accredited law school’s graduating class pass the bar exam within two years, according to the ABA Journal.
For the three schools mentioned above, their 2019 graduating classes have fallen short of the mark. The institutions have been asked to submit reports on the causes by Feb. 1 and also to appear before a meeting of the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar from May 11-13.
According to the ABA Journal, the failing rates for the three schools were:
- At the Ave Maria School of Law, 67.21% of 2019 graduates passed in two years compared with 83.58% of 2018 graduates.
- At the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law, 67.24% of 2019 graduates passed in two years compared with 75.38% of 2018 graduates.
- At the Vermont Law School, 67.54% of 2019 graduates passed in two years compared with 82.84% of 2018 graduates.
The Ave Maria School of Law called its 2019 class an “anomaly” and told the ABA Journal that immediate steps had been taken to rectify the situation, with the 2020 class having an 89.7% passage rate.
Twinette Johnson, acting dean of the UDC law school, told ABA Journal that 2019 graduates who did not pass on their first attempt faced complications from 2020 COVID-19 restrictions.
“I believe some of our class of 2019 lost the opportunity to take the bar,” Ms. Johnson said. The 2020 class, she told Reuters, will comply with Standard 316.
The UDC law school also faced censure in May 2020, when its 2017 class failed to meet Standard 316. The school was determined to have come back into compliance by August 2020.
Vermont Law School also called its 2019 class an “anomaly”, telling ABA Journal, “We were surprised and disappointed to learn in the fall of 2019 that our July bar passage had dropped.”
The school has since increased resources to its academic success program and reviewed its admissions standards.
“Even though 2019 appeared to be an anomaly, we treated it as if it were not and immediately implemented measures to assist graduates who were unsuccessful on the bar,” the school told Reuters.
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