New lower passing rate for Washington’s bar exam opens possibilities, but also leads to questions

Mariah Welch made it through a stressful few months of finishing law school and taking the bar exam.

She decided to celebrate with a trip to Italy, where her boyfriend surprised her and proposed. The two were looking toward to their future when Welch got devastating news: she didn’t pass the bar exam.

Five months of anxiety, uncertainty and financial woes ensued, Welch said, before she found a job in Montana, where the score needed to pass the bar was four points lower than in Washington.

Last week, Welch found out all that struggle was in vain when the Washington State Supreme Court lowered the score needed to pass the exam from 270 to 266.

“It was such a surreal moment,” Welch said.

Welch was one of 32 applicants who spent months thinking they failed the exam only to find out they could get licensed following the score reduction, according to the Washington State Bar Association.

Nineteen states consider a score of 266 or above passing, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners. A score of 270 is the minimum requirement to pass in 19 states. There are 11 states that have their own bar exams.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington temporarily accepted a score of 266. The requirement returned to the previous requirement at the start of 2023.

The new minimum score was one of a handful of major changes to lawyer licensure announced last week.

Alternative pathways

Along with changes to the bar exam, the state Supreme Court announced the creation of three alternative pathways to become a licensed attorney without taking the exam.

All three, while slightly different, center around 500 hours of legal work under the supervision of a licensed attorney and a portfolio showing proficiency.

The details of the pathways and their implementation remain up in the air, the bar association said. The Spokane County Bar Association declined to answer questions about how the changes would affect Spokane attorneys.

Jeffry Finer, a longtime civil rights attorney in Spokane and instructor at Gonzaga University School of Law, said he thinks opening up the profession to a more diverse group of people is great, but the alternative pathways are just one part of that process.

He doesn’t expect the new processes to be a breeze. A lot of law students drop out or need multiple attempts to pass the bar exam, and Finer expects similar difficulties in the alternative programs.

The alternative pathways could be good for people who plan to focus on a niche area of law, he said.

“There’s not a lack of lawyers, there’s a lack of people doing specific types of work,” Finer said.

There is a dire need for public defenders, prosecutors and people practicing family law, he said.

Those are all areas of the law that often require courtroom work, which Finer said is also diminishing.

The legal profession is already known for “a kind of snobbery” that looks down on certain types legal work, even for attorneys who have passed the bar exam, Finer said.

Ultimately, the most important thing is an attorney’s understanding of the law and willingness to work hard to learn the practicalities of the profession, he said, which often aren’t taught in law school.

“It is really difficult to situate yourself in the culture of legal thinking,” Finer said. “It’s more like learning a language, where there is an entire history and culture that comes with it.”

The bar association plans to work closely with the court, Washington law schools and other stakeholders to propose specific amendments and new rules for admittance to the bar, Sara Neigowski, chief communications and outreach officer for the bar association said in an email.

The Bar Licensure Task Force already took feedback and comments from the legal community, Neigoswki noted, before making recommendations to the Supreme Court.

The task force received about 70 comments on the proposed pathways. More than half were in favor of alternative pathways, while about 20 were in favor of keeping the bar exam as the only way to become licensed.

The bar association has not done any surveying or study of how law firms feel about hiring attorneys who used an alternative pathway to get licensed.

Washington has long allowed people to complete a law clerk program where they are mentored by an attorney, then pass the bar and get licensed without completing law school.

There are 182 active attorneys in the state who received their license this way, and about 100 people in the law clerk program currently.

While the task force, which included representatives from more than 30 legal groups, was supportive of the changes, some attorneys are concerned.

The bar exam is a tradition of ensuring some minimum competence in a broad area of law, said Steve Graham, a Spokane attorney.

“It seems like a little risky move to throw the whole system out of bar exams,” he said.

Graham said it’s established that the bar can be an impediment to more diversity, especially with the financial burden of taking six weeks off to study for it. Graham said it’s basically impossible to work while studying for the exam and still pass.

People are already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and have to pass the exam to make it into the profession, Graham said.

“Psychologically, it weighs heavily on young people,” he said.

Still, the exam is a huge part of ensuring competent attorneys, he said.

“It just seems a little bit like the Marine Corps without boot camp,” Graham said.

He prefers a solution in the vein of financial aid to help lower-income bar applicants survive the summer after law school.

“That would seem to be a better solution,” he said.

NextGen Bar Exam and reduced passing score

Since 2020, a Bar Licensure Task Force has been examining the bar exam and licensure requirements.

The task force found that the traditional exam “disproportionally and unnecessarily blocks” marginalized groups from becoming practicing attorneys and is “at best minimally effective” for ensuring competency, according to a news release from the Washington Administrative Office of the Courts.

The exam focuses on specific legal questions in varied areas of the law not on practical skills, which the National Conference of Bar Examiners hopes to fix with the NextGen Bar exam set to debut in July 2026. The exam will focus more on demonstrating practical skills than memorization.

So far, 17 jurisdictions, including many states, have announced their intention to adopt the exam.

In Welch’s mind, that’s a step in the right direction.

She always wanted to be a lawyer. And with a civil rights organizer for a mother and a father who was very involved in his union, it made sense.

Welch worked hard to achieve that goal, volunteering and serving in student government while an undergraduate at the University of Montana. From there, she attended Gonzaga Law School.

Welch, who is Northern Cheyenne, got high-profile internships, including one at the Native American Rights Fund in Washington, D.C.

Then came graduation and six brutal weeks of studying for the bar exam.

“Planning for it was absolutely awful,” she said. “It was really difficult and very cost prohibitive.”

But Welch said it all felt worth it after accepting a job at the Washington Attorney General’s Office, where she became a law clerk. The offer was conditional on Welch passing the bar.

Welch took out loans to pay for normal expenses during exam preparation and the two months after the test waiting for her grade.

During her trip to Italy in September, she got her results: a 266, four points lower than the 270 needed to pass in Washington.

”That was heartbreaking,” Welch said. “I immediately had to call my boss and tell him to fire me.”

When she got home, one of the first things she did was apply for food stamps.

“I have a doctorate degree and I’m applying for food stamps,” Welch said. “I had to take an additional bar study loan to pay for my life.”

She applied to 70 jobs, from attorney positions to waiting tables, and signed up to take the exam again in February. But studying again felt like an impossible mountain to climb, she said.

“Honestly, after the first time studying, your mentality is not there,” Welch said. “I would cry every time I studied because I thought I had failed. I was not in the space to take it again.”

She finally got an interview and eventually a job offer from the Montana Office of the Public Defender, which she accepted.

Welch and her fiancé are now in the midst of selling their home as he looks for a new job. Their rent in Montana is double what their mortgage was in Spokane, she said.

“There’s a lot of really big decisions that had to be made due to me not passing in Washington,” she said.

Even after getting the job in Montana, it took four months to transfer her score. Welch also had to pay to go before the Montana character and fitness board, something she had already paid for twice in Washington.

Hearing about the score reduction, Welch was happy for her friends who were in the same boat but also was upset it took this long to see change.

“It’s about time that Washington lowers the score and makes the bar more accessible and makes the legal field accessible,” Welch said.

She hopes the Washington State Bar Association will offer some kind of financial support or an apology to people in her position.

After the ordeal of the last few months, the great irony, Welch said, is that all the things she studied for to pass the bar, she hasn’t used.

“There’s not a single thing that I restudied for the bar that I’ve actually used in practice,” Welch said. Emma Epperly can be reached at (509) 459-5122 or at emmae@spokesman.com.