Alabama Law dominates most Ivy League schools when it comes to passing the Bar

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March 10, 2016

University of Alabama quad (Photo: University of Alabama)

Passing the bar exam is probably like having to fight a dragon after you just climbed up Mount Everest. It’s not something law students look forward to, but it’s inevitable.

Some law schools blow the rest away when it comes to their students passing the bar exam. Most would assume that Ivy League law students usually pass the bar on their first try. But one Alabama school beat many of those Ivy League schools on this statistic.

The University of Alabama School of Law ranked number six on Start Class’s list of schools with the highest percentage of students who pass the bar exam on their first try. More than 96.4% of Alabama law students pass the bar with just one shot. Alabama’s percentage is better than prestigious law schools like Yale (96.2%), Vanderbilt (95.6%), Duke (95.4%), and Cornell (94.4%).

The University of Wisconsin Law School takes the number one spot on this list, boasting that 100% of their students pass the bar the first time.

The percentage of students who pass the bar on their first try is not necessarily the best measure of the quality of a law school, but it does show how well a school prepares its students to become lawyers.

The study also found that Alabama law school graduates have a 93.6% employment rate, and many of those careers have been long and successful. Alabama’s law school has produced a number of governors, Congressmen, and even a Supreme Court justice. Hugo Black graduated from the Alabama School of Law in 1906 and was appointed to the Supreme Court by FDR in 1937. Widely considered one of the most influential Supreme Court justices of the 20th century, Black served from 1937 to 1971.

The University of Alabama isn’t the only Alabama law school that has produced famous graduates. Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law has turned out the fourth highest number of Supreme Court justices in the country. Two justices graduated from Samford: Howell Edmunds Jackson, who was nominated President Benjamin Harrison and served from 1893 to 1895, and Horace Harmon Lurton, who was nominated President William Howard Taft and served from 1909 to 1914.

Unsurprisingly, the Ivy League takes the top three spots of this list. Harvard has produced 15 Supreme Court justices, followed by Yale (6), and Columbia (4).