Drexel Kline Law’s first-time bar passage rate sits at about 76%, right in the national band of 75 to 80%. A middle-of-the-pack rate is neither a warning nor a selling point; it is an invitation to look one level deeper, because at this range the state mix and the incoming credentials explain almost everything.
MetricFigureContextFirst-time bar passage76%2 pts below the national midpointNational first-time average~75 to 80%Annual benchmarkPrimary jurisdictionPennsylvaniaConfirm in the 509U.S. News rank#80Peer-tier context
It is solidly average, 76% sits inside the national 75 to 80% band. At this range, the state being measured and the credentials of the entering class explain most of the picture, which is why the 509 breakdown matters more than the headline.
For calibration: 76% is 2 points below the national midpoint, a gap small enough that state difficulty alone could account for it.
Decompose the number and it stops being mysterious. Inputs: the credentials of admitted students, which track bar results closely. Program: how hard the school works its middle of the class, rigor and writing predict passage better than prestige. Denominator: attrition decides who even sits for the exam, so two schools with identical teaching can post different rates by graduating different fractions of their entrants. The 509 disclosure exposes each piece.
Withheld Tip: trend beats snapshot. Pull three consecutive years of the school’s 509 bar data before believing any single figure, one strong year is a cohort, three is a program. Rates that swing widely year to year are telling you about the denominator, not the teaching.
Drexel Kline Law’s bar prep apparatus will resemble the industry standard, commercial course partnerships, a readiness program, advising, and the differences that matter live in the details: what is subsidized, what is required, and when it begins. Make admissions name all three.
Keep one eye forward: the licensing exam itself is in transition, with states adopting the NextGen bar exam on a rolling basis through 2028. The emphasis shifts toward applied lawyering skills, which rewards exactly the habit the LSAT should have taught you: training the underlying skill under feedback rather than memorizing around it. Ask any school how its bar curriculum is adapting; the question itself signals you understand what you are buying.
The rule: no jurisdiction, no judgment. Until you know which state’s exam a rate describes, the figure cannot be compared, contextualized, or trusted, and any school materials that present it bare are asking you not to check.
Roughly 76% on the first attempt, in line with the national 75 to 80% average. Treat the figure as jurisdiction-specific until the 509 says otherwise, and read it across years, not in isolation.
Different inputs, different exams, different denominators. Admitted-student medians drive much of it; state difficulty drives more; and attrition policy quietly shapes who gets counted. Strip those out and the remaining gap, the part that is actually about teaching, is smaller than the raw numbers suggest.
Partly, but it equally reflects who was admitted and who persisted to graduation. Read it alongside the LSAT median and attrition data: when all three are strong, the rate means what it appears to mean.
The bar exam is the final feedback loop of a process that started with your diagnostic LSAT. Schools with honest numbers survive the questions on this page; schools with marketing numbers don’t. Reading outcomes data skeptically isn’t cynicism, it’s the first legal skill.