ASU Law No. 1 in state for bar passage

By Janet Perez |
October 22, 2015

ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law is once again No. 1 in Arizona for bar passage. Its graduates also placed first and tied for second on the latest bar exam.

Results of the July 2015 Arizona bar exam show ASU Law first-time test takers with an 83.7 percent passage rate. This is well above the state’s overall first-time taker passage rate of 65.7 percent.

ASU Law graduate Kyle Thomas Orne scored the highest on the exam, while his fellow graduates Robert Andrew Clarke and Christopher Jacob Waznik tied for second. All three graduated in May 2015.

“I was very surprised to have the top score — I’m not going to lie,” said Orne, who works as an associate in the Phoenix offices of Quarles & Brady. “Much of the bar exam focuses on what you learn as a 1L (first year). The ASU Law professors I had as a 1L were all really good, and I felt that I was prepared for the exam.”

Orne was also pleasantly surprised to learn that his former classmates tied for second place. “It looks like we studied together, but we didn’t,” he joked.

Among all bar exam test takers, ASU Law had a passage rate of 81.8 percent, far above the state average of 56.6 percent.

ASU Law ranks No. 14 among all law schools and No. 5 among public law schools in placing graduates in real lawyer jobs. Within 10 months of graduation, 87 percent of ASU Law's Class of 2014 graduates found employment in long-term, full-time positions where bar passage is required or a Juris Doctor (JD) is preferred. The national employment average is 71 percent, according to data collected by the American Bar Association (ABA) on the nation’s 204 ABA-accredited law schools.