Jason Boleman at Virginia Lawyers Weekly follows up on this summer’s ugly bar results, which we covered in bar pass rates fall in 37 states. Virginia’s July pass rate dropped to 72.48%, its lowest in nine years, and UVA law professor Kevin Cope raises AI cognitive offloading as a possible factor, while stopping short of blaming it.
For legal departments this is a supervision question. The new lawyers joining your team learned with AI on tap, so build review steps that test their reasoning, not just their drafts. It is a skill that sets in-house leaders apart, and our future-proofing guide has more on training lawyers in the AI era.
The national picture, per the article: “Per data from the National Conference of Bar Examiners, 35 of the 42 U.S. jurisdictions that have reported results so far from both July 2025 and July 2026 saw declines, while the national mean score declined for the first time in four years from 142.4 to 140.7.”
Read: Bar exam scores are down. Is artificial intelligence to blame? – Virginia Lawyers Weekly at Virginia Lawyers Weekly