At 85% first-time passage, William & Mary Law clears the national average with room to spare, a real signal, worth exactly as much as your understanding of what produced it. Pass rates compress incoming credentials, program rigor, and jurisdiction difficulty into one figure, and this page decompresses it.

The William & Mary Law Bar Numbers

MetricFigureContextFirst-time bar passage85%vs. ~77.5% national midpointNational first-time average~75 to 80%Annual benchmarkPrimary jurisdictionVirginiaConfirm in the 509U.S. News rank#27Peer-tier context

Is William & Mary Law’s Bar Passage Rate Good?

By any reasonable benchmark, yes: 85% beats the national band with margin, and rates at that level usually mean strong inputs and a program that holds its middle. Confirm which state produced the figure, then credit it.

For calibration: 85% is 8 points above the national midpoint, margin that survives jurisdiction adjustments in most states.

What a Bar Passage Rate Actually Measures

Bar rates are built, not bestowed, from three materials: who enrolled (medians forecast passage with uncomfortable accuracy), what the program demanded (curves, writing, doctrine), and who remained to be counted (attrition quietly edits the denominator). A school controls each lever differently, which is why the honest comparison is never rate against rate, but rate against inputs, against jurisdiction, against the count of who actually sat.

Withheld Tip: the ABA 509 disclosure is published annually for every accredited school and breaks bar results out by jurisdiction. Pull it, find the state line, and check whether the state you actually intend to practice in appears at all, a New York rate tells a California-bound student almost nothing. Verify the rate for your state, not the school’s headline.

Bar Prep, and the Exam That’s Changing

Like most ABA-accredited schools, William & Mary Law supports bar preparation through commercial-course partnerships, readiness programming, and faculty advising, ask admissions for specifics rather than assuming the label covers the substance.

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.

Hold the line on one standard: a pass rate means nothing until the state is named. Jurisdictions differ by twenty points or more in baseline difficulty; comparing bare percentages across schools is comparing weather reports without locations.

If You Only Do 3 Things

1. Verify the jurisdiction behind the headline rate in the ABA 509, then find the line for the state where you will actually practice.
2. Compare the school’s rate to that state’s overall pass rate for honest context.
3. Ask how the curriculum is adapting to the NextGen exam, the quality of the answer is itself data.

William & Mary Law Bar Passage: Quick Answers

What is William & Mary Law’s bar passage rate?

Approximately 85% of graduates pass on the first attempt, above the national first-time average of roughly 75 to 80%. Verify the jurisdiction breakdown in the ABA 509 before comparing it to any other school’s figure.

Why do bar passage rates differ so much between schools?

Because they compress three things into one number: the credentials of admitted students, the rigor of the program, and which state bars graduates sit for. Comparing rates without comparing states and inputs is comparing headlines, not outcomes.

Does a high bar passage rate mean better teaching?

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.

Related Playbooks

• William & Mary Law LSAT Score: What You Need
• William & Mary Law Tuition: What It Really Costs
• William & Mary Law Employment Outcomes
• The Law School Admissions Timeline
• Is William & Mary Law Worth It? The Honest Math
• William & Mary Law Scholarships
• Best Law Schools in Virginia

Lovare’s Take

Treat every outcome statistic the way a lawyer treats a witness: useful, partial, and improved by cross-examination. The rate is real; what it means depends on facts the headline omits. Pull the 509, ask the four questions, and let the documents, not the brochure, make the case.