Of UNH Law graduates who took the bar for the first time in New Hampshire in summer 2017, 94.1 percent passed. For calendar year 2017, the first-time pass rate was 91.7 percent.
“I am tremendously proud of our graduates’ success,” Dean Megan Carpenter said. “UNH Law is committed to graduating practice-ready lawyers. Passing the bar marks the crucial final step in students’ journeys to entering the world of legal practice.”
UNH Law emphasizes the importance of bar readiness from the time students arrive at the school. “We integrate the skills necessary for bar readiness across our curriculum,” said Associate Professor Leah Plunkett, who directs the Academic Success Program. “Because of our intimate size and the strong investment of our faculty, we can work individually with every student to ensure she or he has the tool-kit necessary for bar exam success.”
UNH Law also incorporates programmatic-wide initiatives to support bar readiness. Several years ago, the school introduced a new preliminary bar exam requirement for all JD graduates. “This experience of sitting down and taking a microcosm of the bar exam while you’re still in law school helps de-mystify the bar and empower our students to be ready when the real bar exam comes around,” Plunkett said.
On September 29, 2017, the New Hampshire Board of Bar Examiners released the list of passing applicants for the July 2017 bar exam. The February 2017 bar exam results list was previously released. Graduates of UNH Law’s nationally-recognized Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program do not sit for the traditional bar exam; instead, they pass a variant of the New Hampshire Bar exam during their last two years of law school and are sworn into the New Hampshire bar the day before graduation.
New Hampshire was the first state in the Northeast to adopt the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE). UNH Law graduates who take the UBE in New Hampshire earn a portable score that can be transferred to more than 25 states across the country.
