Should Big Firms Worry About Plummeting Bar Scores?

Bar passage rates continued their downward spiral with only 61% of test-takers passing the New York bar this July. These dismal results set off a fresh round of speculation about the deterioration of the legal profession. Do big law firms need to worry that their lawyers are getting dumber?

Probably not. The impact of the lower pass rate on large law firms “should be close to zero,” says Barry Currier, Managing Director of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, who believes “firms are still quite happy with caliber of applicants.”

“In my lay opinion, I ...