News Releases

State Bar Announces July 2025 Bar Exam Results

The State Bar of California reported Friday that 54.8 percent of exam takers passed the July 2025 General Bar Examination (GBX). In addition, the State Bar also announced that 43.4 percent of those who completed the one-day Attorneys’ Examination passed. If the 4,032 individuals who passed the GBX, along with the 164 who passed the Attorneys’ Exam, satisfy all other requirements for admission, they will be eligible to be licensed by the State Bar to practice law in California. 

This GBX pass rate is higher than the 2024 July bar exam (53.8 percent) and the 2023 July bar exam (51.5 percent). A total of 967 exam takers received the scoring adjustment authorized by the Supreme Court for achieving at least 28 correct answers on the November 2024 special session, resulting in 41 passing the July 2025 bar exam.

“The State Bar commends all those who passed the July 2025 bar exam,” said Executive Director Laura Enderton-Speed. “This achievement is the result of your tremendous effort, determination, and perseverance, marking a significant step forward in your professional journey. We celebrate this important milestone with you and look forward to your entry into the legal profession.”

Preliminary analyses show that of the 7,362 applicants who completed the July 2025 GBX, 73.9 percent were first-time exam takers; the pass rate for these first-time takers was 69.7 percent. The pass rate for the 26.1 percent of applicants who were repeating the exam was 12.4 percent. This marks a significant decline compared to July 2024 (23.6 percent) and July 2023 (24.2 percent). In July 2025, the average number of attempts recorded for applicants who were repeating the exam was 5.1, representing an increase from the average number of attempts in July 2024 (4.9 attempts) and July 2023 (4.8 attempts).

For the July 2025 Attorneys’ Exam, the 43.4 percent passing rate is lower than the July 2024 result (48.9 percent) and the July 2023 result (47.8 percent).

The two-day GBX is given twice a year, in February and July. In July, the State Bar returned to using the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) for the multiple-choice section of the exam, along with the State Bar’s five essay questions and a performance test that is designed to assess an applicant’s ability to apply general legal knowledge to practical tasks. The mean adjusted scaled MBE score in California was 1405 compared with the national mean score of 1424. Without the scoring adjustment related to the November 2024 special session, the mean scaled MBE score would have been 1399.

Preliminary analyses show the first-time and repeat percent passing the GBX (rounded to the nearest tenth) by law school type as follows:

School Type	First-Time Unadjusted	First-Time Adjusted	Repeat Unadjusted	Repeat Adjusted
ABA Accredited - California	83.8%	84.4%	21.6%	22.8%
ABA Accredited - Out-of-State	78.1%	78.1%	17.6%	17.6%
California Accredited	34.2%	35.2%	6.7%	7.3%
California Unaccredited	37.5%	37.5%	2.2%	3.3%
Not Registered/ Closed*			1.4%	1.4%
All Applicants	69.2%	69.7%	11.7%	12.4%

*Data displayed only for categories with 11 or more applicants who completed the exam.

Note: These are preliminary statistics. Law schools will be required to confirm the students allocated to their law school, and as a result, these statistics may change.

The Attorneys’ Exam, which consists of the written section (i.e., essay and performance test) of the GBX, is open to lawyers who have been admitted to the active practice of law in good standing for at least four years in another U.S. jurisdiction.

The publicly available pass list will be posted on Sunday, November 9, at 6:00 a.m.