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Belmont Law rocks bar exam (You may need to Google Belmont)

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Belmont University College of Law?

That’s in Belmont, California, in the Bay Area, right? Nope, it’s not. Hey, maybe it’s in Texas. No, that town is called Beaumont …

Belmont, Belmont, Belmont … Well, this is embarrassing, given we’re a legal education publication and all …

Oh, we just kid. We’ve written about illustrious Belmont Law in Nashville, Tenn., before … 

But this time we do so with a blazing SHOUT-OUT! Belmont Law finished sixth in the nation for first-time bar passage rates for 2019, according to statistics recently released by the American Bar Association (ABA). It notched a 96.2% pass rate. 

Guess what other schools did well? That would be Harvard, Yale and Duke along with the University of Virginia. (Those you heard of, right … ) 

It even beat another Nashville school, Vanderbilt University Law School, which had a 94.15% pass rate. (Vanderbilt Law is ranked 18th by U.S. News & World Report.) 

Of the 80 alumni who took the bar last year, 77 Belmont grads passed the exam on their first attempt for that stellar success rate, besting the statewide average of 80.56% for first-time pass results.

That kind of a showing is pretty notable. A number of schools have struggled with bar passage of late. And when you top Stanford Law School — with a 95.32% — that’s pretty heady stuff. (Stanford is in the Bay Area …) 

But Belmont’s showing shouldn’t be a huge surprise. It’s been on the cutting edge of bar exam preparation and performance for several years now. It was one of three schools that the ABA Journal profiled in a 2016 article called “Schools Add Bar Exam Class to Curriculum and Find Success.”

What’s Belmont’s secret?  In part, it’s the school’s Bar Refresher course. Belmont Law students must take the five-credit, letter-graded course during their final semester. It focuses on the seven subjects tested on the Multistate Bar Exam and offers a host of other preparation support systems.

“Belmont’s course is rigorous, and if students do not perform at a certain level, the consequences are severe,” the paper said. “If a student fails to earn 60% of the possible points, the student will not pass the course.”

Belmont Law Dean Judge Alberto Gonzales said, “We are very proud of our graduates’ success on the bar exam. Every faculty and staff member at Belmont Law is unequivocally committed to preparing our graduates to be practice-ready attorneys.”

With the national average for 2019 for first-time test takers at 79.64%, Belmont Law graduates are performing significantly higher than students from most of the nearly 200 law schools reporting to the ABA.

Belmont is affiliated with Belmont Univesity, a private Christian institution. The law school was founded in 2011 and recevied ABA accreditation in 2013. Four of its grads sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. (Oh, we just kid some more … Congrats Belmont …) 

 

 

Mike Stetz

Mike Stetz

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