New to Bar Admissions? Introducing NCBE Services: Bar Passage Report Transmittal from Jurisdictions to Law Schools

This article originally appeared in The Bar Examiner print edition, Summer 2025 (Vol. 94, No. 2), p. 42.

NCBE offers a free bar passage reporting service, transmitting pass/fail information from jurisdictions to ABA-accredited law schools, following each bar exam administration. This provides law schools with the data they need for ABA Standard 509 reporting and alleviates some work for bar admissions offices and their staff.

Participating jurisdictions securely send bar passage information to NCBE staff following each exam. Certain information is required (examinee name, law school, and pass/fail status); however, we also provide custom reports to ensure law schools receive the data a jurisdiction wants. For example, many jurisdictions include the number of exam attempts by an examinee, although it is not required. Other participants only use the service for law schools outside their jurisdiction while continuing to manage their own transmittal to in-state law schools. In these cases, we provide records for the in-state schools noting that bar passage information will come directly from the jurisdiction.

Prior to an exam reporting cycle

• NCBE staff contact the participating jurisdictions (currently 27) to share the dates that bar passage reports will be sent to law schools;
• jurisdictions respond with the date they expect to send bar passage data to NCBE; and
• from this information, NCBE staff contact law school deans and share the dates the latter can expect bar passage reports and which jurisdictions will be included with each bulk transmittal.

Reports are sorted, formatted, and sent in batches (per the predetermined dates) to law schools. If a law school had no candidates sitting for the exam in a jurisdiction, we create a “no candidates” report to avoid confusion about missing reports. By the end of the reporting period, a law school can expect a report from each of the participating jurisdictions.

Shortly after a jurisdiction’s reports go to law schools, jurisdiction staff receive a receipt report showing when their data was transmitted, as well as who received invitations to access the data files.

The projected schedule following the July 2025 exam is as follows:

Twenty-seven jurisdictions currently participate in the bar passage report transmittal service.

Jurisdictions can opt into the service at any time by emailing Shalon Holbeck at sholbeck@ncbex.org.

Contact us to request a pdf file of the original article as it appeared in the print edition.