Aerial view of Stanford University in Stanford, California, U.S. in 2021. Photo by Reuters
Stanford Law School posted the highest bar exam pass rate of any U.S. school in 2025, new data from the American Bar Association shows, in a year when exam results improved nationwide.
All but one of the Bay Area school’s 176 graduates who took the attorney licensing exam for the first time last year passed, resulting in a pass rate of 99.43%. Yale Law School had the second-highest rate at 98.54%, followed closely by Duke Law School at 98.23%.
Harvard Law School and Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law rounded out the top five with pass rates of 97.90% and 97.75%, respectively.
Percentage of JD graduates who took and passed the bar exam for the first time in 2025.
No. | Law School | Pass Rate |
1 | Stanford Law School | 99.43% |
2 | Yale Law School | 98.54% |
3 | Duke Law School | 98.23% |
4 | Harvard Law School | 97.90% |
5 | Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law | 97.75% |
6 | New York University School of Law | 96.94% |
7 | Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School | 96.85% |
8 | University of Chicago Law School | 96.73% |
9 | UCLA School of Law | 96.65% |
10 | Belmont University College of Law | 96.49% |
11 | University of Texas School of Law | 96.39% |
12 | Boston College Law School | 96.19% |
13 | Texas Tech University School of Law | 95.52% |
14 | University of Minnesota Law School | 95.31% |
15 | Texas A&M University School of Law | 95.28% |
The ABA on Wednesday released a trove of bar exam data detailing national results and figures for the 198 individual U.S. law schools it accredits. Passing the bar exam is a critical step for aspiring lawyers, as nearly all states require the exam in order to become licensed and practice law.
The new figures show that 84% of juris doctor graduates from ABA-accredited law schools who took the bar for the first time passed, up one percentage point over the 83% first-time pass rate in 2024.
In 2024, no law school’s first-time pass rate was above 98%. Harvard topped the list that year with a pass rate of 97.86%.
The “ultimate bar pass rate,” which reflects the percentage of 2023 law graduates who passed the bar exam within two years of graduation, increased to 92% from 90.5% the previous year, according to the ABA data. The ABA’s law school accreditation standards require schools to maintain an ultimate bar pass rate of at least 75%.
Elite law schools in the so-called T-14, which refers to the top 14 schools in U.S. News & World Report’s influential law school rankings, took seven of the top 10 spots on the list of schools with the highest first-time pass rates in 2025. But No. 43-ranked SMU; No. 28-ranked Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School; and No. 84-ranked Belmont University College of Law also landed in the top 10.
Texas law schools had a particularly strong showing in 2025, occupying four of the top 15 spots for first-time bar pass rates. In addition to SMU, the University of Texas School of Law had the 11th-highest first-time bar pass rate at 96.39%, Texas Tech University School of Law had the 13th-highest at 95.52%, and Texas A&M University School of Law was 15th with a first-time pass rate of 95.28%.
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