Important data has been released from a new study commissioned by the New York State Board of Law Examiners and conducted by the nonprofit AccessLex Institute. The data was taken from over 7,000 survey responses from New York bar exam takers between July 2016 and February 2018, with both first time and retaker candidates included.

Some of the major takeaways:

For the first time exam takers, the amount of study time mattered quite a bit. Those who studied more and took their time with their study materials passed at a higher rate.

Those exam takers who reported being happy with their law school experience performed better on the exam, and those who participated in law journal during law school passed at a significantly higher rate then those who did not. This is not surprising, as it correlates with previously existing data showing that those students who performed better during law school generally performed better on the bar exam as well.

Bar exam takers who reported having to deal with major financial challenges during studying such as unemployment were less likely to pass the test on the first try. The conclusion reached was that the extra stress felt by these students may have been a hindrance in their exam performance.

A couple of interesting notes were that taking bar exam-related elective courses did not result in higher pass rates among first-time takers, nor did taking required bar-prep courses during law school.

It is worth noting that all of this data was compiled from students taking the bar exam entirely before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

You can read more about this study here.

If you are a law school graduate who was unsuccessful on your first try at passing the bar exam, we have found that each exam taker is truly unique. The first step to re-taking and passing the exam is to figure out exactly what went wrong on your last attempt, so you can make an intelligent plan to fix it. You can submit your previous score reports to Marino here for an entirely free score report evaluation and guidance from us.