When I graduated law school 30 years ago I recall that the final hurdle that I and my classmates faced was the bar exam. There is a mythology about the bar exam that it is an extremely daunting obstacle that must be overcome between graduation from law school and actually appearing in a courtroom as an advocate.
Don’t get me wrong. The bar exam is demanding. But it is not as daunting as the folklore around it claims. It is like any difficult project. You approach it with a plan, you do your work with discipline and consistency, and a few weeks after you take it, you should pass it.
But that’s not happening in Connecticut right now. The bar passage rates over the last several exams have been startlingly poor with just a bit more than half of test-takers actually passing. The results from the recent July exam were released a couple of weeks ago. They were not good.
Only 56 percent of test-takers passed. And for those who already failed once and were trying again, the results were even more dismal. Just 16 percent of them passed. But those results were stellar compared to the winter exam results. Of those who took the test in February this year, only 35 percent passed.
For comparison purposes, fifteen years ago, the bar passage rate in Connecticut exceeded 80 percent. My recollection is that when I took the exam the passage rates were similar. As recently as 2017, the passage rate was above 70 percent. But since then there has been a steady decline.
The average total cost of law school today is nearly a quarter million dollars. That is the price of a first home for many young families. But if law schools are not using those tuition fees to prepare students to actually practice law, what good is the degree.
It is still too early to quite understand why bar passage rates are so low. There are some theories though. One of them is that this group of law students was impacted by pandemic rules that shut down schools and forced students into online classrooms. The shuttering of the schools also limited student opportunities to collaborate with each other in study groups, which are essential to the legal learning process. Also, with pandemic shutdowns in place, opportunities for internships and externships were not as abundant as they had been before the pandemic.
Some have questioned the resiliency of this generation of young lawyers who have grown up with participation trophies and fewer demands for excellence. The “everyone is a winner” mindset may have hampered the competitive growth of students. Taking and passing the bar exam requires discipline, resilience, and a stalwart attitude that is not inherent. These are characteristics that must be learned and practiced in childhood so that when adulthood arrives they can be put to use as needed.
Finally, some have blamed the attention span deficits created in an internet generation that is constantly checking screens and moving from one piece of media to the next seconds at a time. The ability to sit and think and reason may not have had a chance to grow in these students.
Whatever the cause, it needs addressing because students and the general public will be at a disadvantage without qualified lawyers available to help solve the daily mundane issues that the legal system addresses for regular citizens on a daily basis.
The Law Office of Eric R. Brown 
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