The course registration screen is open, and there is one spot left in your schedule. A clinic could give you experience with real clients. An elective could help you explore a career. Another bar-tested subject might help you sleep at night. Which choice will help you pass?
An AccessLex Institute study offers a useful starting point: Pay closer attention to what you are learning in the courses you take. Simply adding another subject to your transcript has a much smaller relationship with bar success than how well you perform in class.
Researchers Jason Scott, Rob Hunter and Andrea Pals examined records for 13,115 graduates from 36 ABA-approved law schools who took the bar exam between 2015 and 2023. Their report, “What Matters for Bar Success: Doctrinal Performance, Coursework Exposure, and First-Time Bar Passage,” found that performance in doctrinal courses was the strongest and most consistent predictor of passing on the first attempt.
Doctrinal courses teach substantive areas of law, such as contracts, torts and evidence. For students, the findings put everyday academic work at the center of bar preparation. They also challenge the idea that a schedule packed with bar subjects is enough to address academic trouble.
Use grades to start a conversation
The difference associated with academic performance was substantial. In the researchers’ model, graduates whose overall doctrinal GPA was at the 75th percentile had a 93% predicted probability of first-time passage, compared with 57% for those at the 25th percentile, holding other measured factors constant. The corresponding gap for first-year GPA was about 34 percentage points.
Those figures describe patterns in the study, not a personal forecast. The research was observational, so it cannot establish that raising a GPA by itself causes a particular increase in the chance of passing.
Still, the findings give students a reason to take disappointing grades seriously while there is time to respond. Rather than filing away a final exam, use it to start a conversation with a professor or academic support advisor. Ask where your work fell short: Did you miss issues, misunderstand rules or struggle to explain how the law applied to the facts?
That review can turn a broad concern about grades into a specific plan for improvement. It also fits the report’s emphasis on sustained development of reading comprehension, legal analysis and writing.
The researchers did not test particular tutoring programs or study techniques. Their findings support paying attention to academic development throughout law school, but they do not identify a single intervention guaranteed to improve bar results.
Choose courses with a learning plan
The study also examined detailed course records for 3,674 graduates from six schools.
Researchers considered seven upper-level subjects: business associations, criminal procedure, conflict of laws, evidence, family law, secured transactions and trusts and estates.
Completing those courses generally had a relatively small relationship with first-time passage. Among students who took them, however, higher course grades were consistently associated with a greater likelihood of passing.
That distinction matters when registration arrives. A course can expose you to material without resolving the difficulty you have applying it. Before adding another bar subject, talk with an advisor about what you need to learn and how you will get feedback on your progress.
For example, if your exams repeatedly show weak legal analysis, ask how your proposed courses and academic support work will help you practice that skill. A longer list of completed subjects does not tell you whether the underlying problem has improved.
One finding requires particular care. Completing Evidence was associated with a lower likelihood of passage, but the authors explicitly warn against treating that result as a reason to avoid the course. Students already at greater academic risk may have been encouraged to enroll, and the analysis may not fully capture those differences. Stronger performance within Evidence was positively associated with passage.
Keep career experience in the picture
Students weighing a clinic or externship should also resist drawing the wrong conclusion from the findings. Credits in those courses showed little direct relationship with bar outcomes. The authors caution that this does not mean experiential education lacks value.
The study measured first-time bar passage, not every benefit a course might offer. A clinic may still belong in a schedule built around professional interests and learning goals. The practical question is how to balance that experience with the academic work and support you need.
First-year performance deserves attention in that planning. Overall doctrinal GPA had a slightly stronger association with passage than first-year GPA, but the difference was modest. The authors interpret later doctrinal performance as largely reinforcing the academic trajectory established early in law school.
For a 1L, that makes an early request for help especially sensible. For a 2L or 3L, the findings offer a reason to revisit persistent gaps with an adviser rather than assume that taking additional courses will resolve them.
Read the findings with their limits in mind
The sample was not nationally representative, and graduates of highly ranked schools were underrepresented. The researchers also acknowledge that motivation, study strategies and access to informal academic support could influence both grades and bar outcomes. Grades themselves are an imperfect measure of learning.
The data also predates the NextGen Uniform Bar Exam. The report suggests that relationships between coursework and passage may change as testing places greater emphasis on applied competencies, but it does not measure performance on the new exam.
For students choosing their next steps, the most useful question may come before course registration: What do my exams show I still need to learn? Bring that question to an advisor, then build a schedule and support plan that gives you opportunities to work on the a
