The Managing Director’s Office of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar released the latest set of bar pass data last month for ABA-approved law schools showing national ultimate and first-time percentage pass rates based on race, ethnicity and gender, and it revealed that Black test-takers are still passing at a much lower rate as compared to whites and other ethnicities.

Racial imbalances continue to be prevalent in bar passage rates, with this past year’s first-time pass rates for white test-takers 26% higher than Black test-takers—worse than 2021 results, according to an AccessLex Institute spokesperson and ABA 2023 Bar Passage Questionnaire (BPQ) Aggregate Data.