By Matt Chandler
Buffalo Law Journal

The results are in and the wait is over.

More than 11,500 aspiring lawyers who took the New York State Bar Examination in July - nearly a third of whom took the exam in Buffalo - learned today via e-mail whether they were among the 72 percent who passed the exam and are now eligible to become practicing attorneys in New York.

The state Board of Law Examiners released statistics about the 8,297 test-takers who earned passing marks on the exam. For a full list of candidates who passed, click here. Executive Director John McAlary said the board saw an increase in overall test-takers from last July, a trend he says has been consistent for the last several years.

"The most important number that we look at is the first-time passage rate for graduates of ABA-approved law schools," he said. "They are the largest group of people that take our exams, and that number (88.2 percent passage rate for first-time takers of the July exam) is the second-highest number in recent memory."

The passage rate for first-time takers for the July 2008 exam was the highest ever, at 91 percent.

As for what's accounting for the increase in passage rates, McAlary said "it is probably a combination of factors."

"We raised our passing score back in 2005," he said, "and I think that resulted in candidates studying more. Law schools are doing more to assist their students in preparing for the bar exam, and also the average mean score on the Law School Admission Test has been going up. You've been getting better students, and that plays a key factor in this as well."

McAlary speculated that law schools now having the ability to give students credit for exam-preparatory classes may be a contributing factor as well. One thing he didn't think played a pivotal role in test results was the influx of students taking the test on a laptop rather than on paper.

In a July interview, Buffalo lawyer Diane Bosse, Board of Law Examiners chair, said there was a greater demand this year for people wanting to take the exam on a laptop, saying that played a factor in Buffalo becoming a major test site in 2009. More than 1,800 of the 3,200 registered test-takers in Buffalo, she said, had signed up to take the test via laptop.

McAlary doesn't see that as a factor in the test results, but with more than half of test takers now taking the bar exam on laptop, it is an issue the board plans to review.

"There was some thought early on when we were testing a few hundred people (that laptop test-takers might have an advantage), but what we always felt was that the people who tended to use a laptop were more of your brighter people anyway," he said. "It comes down to performance, and it isn't much different between laptops and hand-writers." The board's analysis of the July results showed that graduates of American Bar Association-approved law schools taking the test for the first time had the highest passing rate, 88.2 percent, while foreign-educated test-takers had the lowest success rate, 38.5 percent.

Passing rates for the July exam, by category:

• All candidates: 72 percent

• Graduates of ABA-approved schools: 83.6 percent

• Graduates of ABA-approved schools taking exam for first time: 88.2 percent

• Graduates of New York ABA-approved law schools: 83.2 percent

• Graduates of New York ABA-approved law schools taking exam for first time: 88.1 percent

• Graduates of out-of-state ABA-approved law schools: 84 percent

• Graduates of out-of-state ABA-approved law schools taking exam for first time: 88.3 percent

• Foreign educated takers: 38.5 percent