On the July 2025 Texas bar exam, 75 percent of all examinees passed, and first-time takers passed at 84 percent.1National Conference of Bar Examiners. Bar Exam Results by Jurisdiction Those are the headline Texas bar exam pass rate figures, but the number that actually applies to you depends on three things: whether you sit in February or July, whether it’s your first attempt or a retake, and which law school you attended.
February and July Rates Are Not the Same
Texas administers the bar exam twice a year. July draws the larger crowd, and most of them are recent graduates sitting for the first time. That concentration of fresh, well-prepared candidates pulls the July overall rate up. The February pool includes more repeat takers and candidates who graduated months earlier, both of which pull the winter rate down.
The swing is real, and it is not unique to Texas, though the state’s large examinee volume makes it especially visible. When you compare a “Texas pass rate” you saw quoted somewhere, check which administration it came from before drawing conclusions. The Texas Board of Law Examiners publishes detailed statistics after each sitting, broken down by law school, attempt number, and demographic group.2Texas Board of Law Examiners. Statistics and Analysis
First-Time Takers vs. Repeaters
The single biggest predictor of passing the Texas bar is whether it’s your first try. In July 2025, first-time takers across all law schools passed at 84 percent.1National Conference of Bar Examiners. Bar Exam Results by Jurisdiction That same administration was the first time in over two decades that first-time takers from Texas law schools collectively cleared 90 percent.3Southern Methodist University. SMU Tops Texas Law Schools with 98.52% First-Time Bar Passage Rate
Repeaters face much worse odds. Historical Board data shows repeater pass rates often falling into the 20 to 40 percent range depending on the administration.2Texas Board of Law Examiners. Statistics and Analysis The reason is built into the pool: by definition, everyone retaking the exam failed a previous attempt, and many are studying without a law school’s structure around them.
Texas does not cap the number of times you can sit for the exam. Persistence remains an option even when the statistics look discouraging.
Pass Rates by Texas Law School
Performance varies sharply across the state’s ten ABA-approved law schools. First-time pass rates from July 2025:3Southern Methodist University. SMU Tops Texas Law Schools with 98.52% First-Time Bar Passage Rate
- SMU Dedman School of Law: 98.52%
- Baylor University School of Law: 96.59%
- University of Texas School of Law: 96.00%
- Texas Tech University School of Law: 95.97%
- Texas A&M University School of Law: 95.33%
- South Texas College of Law Houston: 91.67%
- University of Houston Law Center: 89.50%
- St. Mary’s University School of Law: 84.54%
- University of North Texas Dallas College of Law: 82.83%
- Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law: 66.33%
July 2025 was an unusually strong cycle. For context, the July 2021 first-time rate was 77.77 percent overall, with the University of Texas leading at 94.6 percent, Texas A&M at 93.33 percent, and Texas Tech at 90.9 percent.4State Bar of Texas. 2021 The Year in Review Rankings shift year to year, but the top-tier schools consistently cluster above 90 percent for first-time takers, and the spread between highest and lowest performers can span roughly 30 percentage points.
What “Passing” Actually Means
Texas uses the Uniform Bar Examination and requires a scaled score of at least 270 out of 400 for admission.5Texas Board of Law Examiners. UBE Transfer Information6Supreme Court of Texas. Rules Governing Admission to the Bar of Texas – Misc. Docket No. 19-9023 That 270 puts Texas in the middle of the pack among UBE jurisdictions; some states pass at 260, and others set the line at 280 or higher. The three components that produce your score are weighted this way:7National Conference of Bar Examiners. UBE Bar Exam Scores
- Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), 50 percent: 200 multiple-choice questions covering civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, evidence, real property, and torts.
- Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), 30 percent: six essay questions testing legal analysis and writing.
- Multistate Performance Test (MPT), 20 percent: two tasks that simulate lawyering work such as drafting a memo or persuasive brief from a file of documents.
Because the threshold is a scaled score rather than a percentage of questions right, pass rates depend both on how examinees perform and on how the exam scales in a given administration.
The Exam Changes in July 2028
Every pass rate on this page reflects the current UBE. Texas will replace it with the NextGen bar exam starting with the July 2028 administration, under an order the Supreme Court of Texas issued on June 25, 2024. Texas is also developing a graded Texas Law Component to accompany the national exam.8National Conference of Bar Examiners. Texas to Administer NextGen Bar Exam Beginning in July 2028
If you sit in February or July of 2026 or 2027, the current UBE and 270 passing score still apply, and the recent pass rates above are your best point of reference. If you are entering law school in fall 2025 or later, the NextGen exam is likely what you will face at graduation, and today’s pass rates will not necessarily predict yours. The Board of Law Examiners is expected to publish structure, scoring, and passing-score details closer to the July 2028 date.