Baylor Law Still On Top

For the sixth straight exam and the 11th time in the past 14 offerings, Baylor law students claimed the top pass rate on the Texas State Bar Exam. During the February three-day exam, 46 of 48 Baylor students passed on their first try--a 95.83 percent success rate, the highest pass rate for students from any of the nine Texas law schools. 
The overall state pass rate was 85.01 percent, with 312 successful candidates out of 367 who took the exam for the first time. Texas Tech University was second behind Baylor with a 92.86 percent pass rate, while SMU was third with a 92.31 percent pass rate.
Baylor Law School has an unsurpassed record of success on the state bar exam, which is given twice a year and qualifies a candidate to practice law in Texas. Baylor Law School had a 97.85 percent success rate on the July 2007 exam, a 100 percent pass rate on the February 2007 exam and also the highest pass rate for the exams given in 2006.
"Baylor Law School and its faculty and staff have our priorities straight," said Baylor Law Dean Brad Toben, JD '77. "We have a genuine fealty to our serving profession and a felt and foremost dedication to preparing our students for the effective and ethical practice of law. My colleagues and I cannot conceive of or imagine a higher calling for a law school that is part of a Christian faith mission-driven university such as Baylor than to effectively and fully prepare our students through our teaching and instruction to serve others in the practice of law. There is no higher or more pressing need in legal education in our nation today."
Baylor Law School graduated 70 students in May. Two of those graduates, Josh Fogelman and Jeff Watters, will join two other recent law grads, Katy Boatman and Ashley Franklin, as clerks for the Texas Supreme Court in 2008-09. Only 18 clerks were hired by the state's highest court, and Baylor Law School has four of them.
That same week, Baylor and Baylor Law alumnus Roland Johnson, BA '73, BS '76, JD '79, was voted president-elect of the State Bar of Texas. Johnson will serve as president in 2009-2010, following another Baylor lawyer, Harper Estes, JD '79, who will begin his term as president of the State Bar of Texas in June.