A fresh set of figures from the American Bar Association paints a striking picture of success for one U.S. law school: Stanford Law School.
In the 2025 bar examinations, the California institution recorded the highest first-time pass rate in the country. Out of 176 graduates attempting the attorney licensing test for the first time, all but one cleared it—delivering a remarkable success rate of 99.43%.
Close behind came Yale Law School with 98.54%, followed by Duke Law School at 98.23%. Two other prominent institutions completed the top five: Harvard Law School at 97.90% and Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law at 97.75%.
The data release covers performance across the 198 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association. Passing the bar exam remains the decisive gateway into the legal profession in the United States, as nearly every state requires the test before granting a license to practice law.
Nationally, results nudged upward. Among graduates from ABA-accredited schools taking the bar for the first time, 84% passed in 2025, a slight rise from 83% the previous year.
The improvement is notable given that just a year earlier no law school managed to cross the 98% mark. At that time, Harvard led the national chart with a pass rate just under 98%.
Another indicator of law school performance—the “ultimate bar pass rate”, which tracks graduates who pass within two years—also climbed. For the class of 2023, the rate reached 92%, up from 90.5%. Under accreditation rules, schools must maintain an ultimate pass rate of at least 75%.
Elite institutions still dominate the results table. Seven of the ten schools with the strongest first-time pass rates belong to the prestigious “T-14,” a shorthand used in rankings by U.S. News & World Report to describe the country’s most influential law schools.
Yet the leaderboard wasn’t exclusively the domain of traditional heavyweights. Schools such as Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School and Belmont University College of Law also secured spots among the top ten performers.
Texas institutions, in particular, turned in a strong showing. Alongside SMU’s high ranking, University of Texas School of Law placed 11th with a 96.39% pass rate, Texas Tech University School of Law ranked 13th at 95.52%, and Texas A&M University School of Law came in 15th with 95.28%.
Taken together, the results suggest a year of rising bar-exam performance across the United States—capped by a near-flawless showing from Stanford’s newest class of aspiring lawyers.
