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Data · Bar pipeline

How many new lawyers each state admits

The overall bar exam pass rate and the number of new lawyers admitted in every US jurisdiction in the latest year, how that count has moved over the last several years, and how much of it comes from transferred exam scores and from lawyers moving in. Derived from the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ published statistics.

Checked October 28, 2026 · CC BY 4.0 · Not legal advice

What is in this dataset?

For every US jurisdiction that reports to the National Conference of Bar Examiners (the 50 states, DC, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands): the overall 2025 bar exam pass rate, how many new lawyers were admitted in 2025 (by examination, by transferred UBE score and on motion), how admissions by exam or transferred score changed since 2021, and how much of the total came from transferred scores and from motion. NCBE reserves its published tables, so this dataset republishes none of them: every figure is one we derive from them (a rate, a sum, a change, a share), credited to NCBE with a link to the table it comes from. Each jurisdiction's rows add up to NCBE's own totals row before anything is published.

Use it to size the new-lawyer market in a state: how many people are licensed each year, how many arrive by passing the exam, by moving a score or by moving their license, and whether that supply is growing. A state with a falling count and a low pass rate is losing new lawyers to its neighbours. Read it beside the lawyer wages and law-offices datasets before you decide where to recruit or advertise to new lawyers.

Records
56
Look up by
56
jurisdiction
Primary source
56

The letters are explained in what P, S, D and U mean.

Where does the data come from?

Each figure is derived from three tables in NCBE's yearly statistics (persons taking and passing the bar examination, admissions by examination and by transferred UBE score, and admissions on motion): a pass rate is passers divided by takers, admitted is the sum of the pathways NCBE shows, and the change since 2021 is like for like on exam and transferred-score admissions. The rows add up to NCBE's totals rows before anything is written, and NCBE's raw counts are not published.

Period covered
2025
Places
The whole US and states
How often we refresh it
Once a year
Records read
October 28, 2026

Official sources

  • National Conference of Bar Examiners, by official web pages. NCBE website terms (ncbex.org/website-terms-use): content is reserved and copying or derivative works need NCBE's permission. Only figures we derive are published, with credit to NCBE..

The sources the records cite most

What does a record look like?

The full records add the dates, the quoted source text and every field in the CSV and JSON files below.

What each of the 10 main columns means
year
The year the figures are for
pass_rate_pct
Overall bar exam pass rate for the year (February and July together), in percent: passers divided by takers, as we compute it from NCBE's table. Empty when NCBE shows no results for the jurisdiction.
admitted
New lawyers admitted in the year: the sum of the pathways NCBE shows (by examination, by transferred UBE score, on motion). Where NCBE shows a dash for a pathway it is left out and named in admitted_pathways_reported.
admitted_pathways_reported
Which admission pathways are in the admitted figure
admitted_change_2021_2025_pct
Change in admissions by exam or by transferred UBE score between 2021 and 2025, in percent. Like for like: motion admissions are left out because several jurisdictions do not report them every year.
transfer_share_pct
Share of the admitted figure that came by transferred UBE score, in percent
motion_share_pct
Share of the admitted figure that came on motion (from another jurisdiction's license), in percent
unit
What the value measures
sourceLabels
The NCBE tables the figures are derived from
sourceUrls
Links to those tables

How do I use it in my own tools?

barpipeline_lookup
For one jurisdiction (a two-letter state code, DC, GU, MP, PW, PR or VI): the overall bar exam pass rate, new lawyers admitted, the change since 2021 and the shares by transferred score and by motion, derived from NCBE statistics.
barpipeline_compare
The same figures side by side for up to 10 jurisdictions (two-letter codes).
barpipeline_search
Records whose text matches the words given, such as a state name ("Texas") or a phrase ("transferred UBE score").

How to cite this dataset

You can reuse, adapt and republish this data, including commercially, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). The only condition is that you credit Probative and link to the source.

Version
1.0.0, released October 28, 2026
Every version
10.5281/zenodo.23721442 (always points to the newest)
License
CC BY 4.0

Download the data

Free, no email or login. The files are hosted on this site and Zenodo, a public research archive.

Suggested citation

Probative. (2026). The new-lawyer pipeline by jurisdiction: bar exam pass rates and new admissions, 2025 (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23721443

Credit line for a chart, table or article

Source: Probative, The new-lawyer pipeline by jurisdiction: bar exam pass rates and new admissions, 2025, version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23721443, licensed CC BY 4.0.

Add to a reference manager (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote)

Not legal advice. This is a plain-English summary of public sources, kept for marketing and recruiting planning. The figures are derived from the National Conference of Bar Examiners' published statistics, not copied from them; for the original tables, go to NCBE.

What changed recently?

  • 2026-10-28 · Pass rates and new admissions by jurisdiction for 2025, derived from NCBE's published tables. NCBE's own tables are not republished. (source)

The full log is in changes.json.

What are the limits?

  • The National Conference of Bar Examiners reserves its published tables, so this dataset republishes none of them. Every figure is one we derive, with credit and a link to the table. For the original counts, go to the Bar Examiner.
  • Admitted means the pathways the Conference shows for that jurisdiction. Where it prints a dash for a pathway, the pathway is left out and the record says so. Some jurisdictions also leave out admissions by other routes, such as diploma privilege or a portfolio program; the record notes it.
  • A pass rate is passers divided by takers for February and July together, and it covers everyone who sat, first-time and repeat takers alike. Small jurisdictions have very few takers, so one person moves their rate a lot.
  • Admissions in a year are not the same as lawyers starting to practice that year, and they do not show where a new lawyer ends up working.
  • The Conference publishes these tables once a year, so the figures are for the latest year it has printed.
  • Records older than 400 days since their last check are marked stale in the files until we re-check them. Every confirmed error we fix is listed in the data corrections log.

Found a wrong value? Report an error with the record id and the source that shows the right value.

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