A Perfect Bar Exam Score for Baylor Law Students

One-hundred percent of Baylor law students who took the Texas State Bar Exam in February passed it on their first try, according to results released by the Texas State Bar examiners. This was the highest pass rate among students from the nine Texas law schools.

All 37 Baylor students who took the rigorous three-day exam passed on their first try. The overall state pass rate was 79 percent, with a total of 258 successful candidates among the 326 law students who took the exam.

Additionally, two Baylor students who took the exam in other states, one in Tennessee and one in Arizona, also passed.

Baylor Law School has an unsurpassed record of success on the exam, which is given twice a year and qualifies a candidate to practice law. The Law School also had the highest pass rate for the exams given in 2006.

"Our faculty members regard themselves as having a duty that not only extends to our students, but also to those whom our students will serve once admitted to the profession, which is, indeed, a serving profession," said Brad Toben, dean of the Baylor Law School and The M.C. and Mattie Caston Professor of Law. "The rigor of our program, our expressed expectations of our students to perform beyond the ordinary and our sense of fealty to our truly great profession all converge to create such impressive results.
"We all work together toward a common goal of best preparing our students for the practice of law toward a common goal of making Baylor Law School, as a venerable institution, a very felt presence in all venues in which we work and serve as faculty members and lawyers."
This year has been a notable one for Baylor Law School. Its mock trial team won the national championship at the AAJ/ATLA mock trial competition; two of its professors - Gerald Powell and Jim Wren - were honored recently by the Texas chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates; and Baylor Law alumnus Harper Estes was selected President-Elect of the Texas State Bar Association, one of the largest bar associations in the United States.