Of note in the otherwise dismal July 2016 California bar exam results is that San Joaquin College of Law in Clovis, California held its own against several ABA-accredited schools on the bar exam. It tied three ABA schools in bar passage rate (31%) and beat one by a wide margin. In addition, it beat five ABA-accredited schools in terms of its average score on the bar. Although a higher average score does not necessarily translate into a higher bar pass rate, it arguably is a better measure of overall performance. It is interesting that with all the advantages ABA accreditation affords that a school not accredited by the ABA could perform so well.
Lincoln Law School of Sacramento, another school not accredited by the ABA, also did quite well (31%), considering the headwinds such a school faces in the California legal market.
As noted in my post here, many other states have much lower required passing scores for the bar exam than does California. It is likely that these two schools that do not have ABA accreditation have significantly stronger graduates than a dozen or more ABA-accredited schools in other states.
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