Aspiring attorneys taking the Florida Bar exam for the first time in February passed at a rate 3% lower than last year’s winter administration of the exam.
Of the 537 people who took the exam for the first time in February, 332 passed.
Of the students who attended an accredited Florida law school, 61.3% passed, a rate similar to the total pool of first-time test takers, who passed at 61.8%.
Florida State University saw the highest pass rate, nearly 86%, but also had the fewest test takers, passing six of seven students.
Barry University sent the most students, 48, passing 28 of them, or 58%.
The University of Miami saw the worst passage rate, with 11 of 28 first-time test takers passing for 39.3%.
The exam was administered in Tampa on Feb. 24-25.
Last year, 359 of 553 students passed the February iteration of the exam, 64.9%. Then, Barry University had the lowest success rate. Ave Maria School of Law had the highest pass rate with seven of eight first-time takers passing.
More than 2,000 students took the exam in July and 78.4% passed.
The Florida Board of Bar Examiners, an administrative board of the Florida Supreme Court, administers the test.
READ MORE: After governor's urging, Florida Supreme Court opens doors to new law school accreditors
Earlier this year, the Florida Supreme Court agreed that students from schools accredited by organizations other than the American Bar Association could sit for the exam. A Supreme Court workgroup questioned the ABA’s “accreditation standards on racial and ethnic diversity in law schools and about the ABA’s active political engagement.”
The Supreme Court determined that “it is not in Floridians’ best interest for the ABA to be the sole gatekeeper deciding which law schools’ graduates are eligible to sit” for the exam.
“The ABA is a very, very partisan activist organization, and you have a right to be that, but you should not then be the arbiter of legal education,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said in January.
New accrediting agencies would have to be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and by the Florida Supreme Court.
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