Today's 1L's Destined For Bar Exam Trouble?

The passage rate for Michigan's bar exam has been the subject of attention since its plunge a year ago. The 2013 July bar passers are announced online today after noon, and the data on Michigan's passage rate is expected shortly thereafter. (SBM Blog will post.) Are recent low passage rates an anomaly, or the new normal? A University of St. Thomas law professor writes at Legal Whiteboard that an overall decline in the LSAT scores of admitted law students may portend a drop in the passage rate nationwide in 2016.  He calls the entering class of 2013's LSAT profile “almost certainly the weakest of any class going back to fall 2002." But TaxLawProf's Paul Caron points to a new study that says that law school grade point averages,not LSAT scores, are the best predictor of bar exam passage success.