How to Read an ABA Standard 509 Disclosure Report

What's actually in the report

Because every school reports the same categories in the same format, you can place two schools' numbers side by side directly, which a marketing page's selectively framed statistics generally won't let you do.

The two sections worth reading most carefully

Employment outcomes break results into categories such as full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required positions versus part-time, short-term, or JD-advantage roles — a school's headline employment percentage can look strong while its full-time, long-term, bar-required percentage tells a different story. Read the actual category breakdown, not just the top-line number.

Bar passage data reports both first-time and ultimate pass rates; a school's ultimate rate over multiple attempts is the more complete measure of whether its graduates eventually pass, while the first-time rate reflects how well-prepared graduates are on their first attempt.

What Standard 509 requires, from the ABA's own text

The ABA's 2025-2026 Standards say all information a law school reports, publicizes or distributes must be complete, accurate and not misleading to a reasonable applicant. A school must use due diligence in obtaining and verifying it. Standard 509(b) then lists nine categories a school must disclose publicly on its website. They are admissions data; tuition and fees, living costs and financial aid; and conditional scholarships. They also include enrollment data, with academic, transfer and other attrition, and numbers of faculty, librarians and staff. The rest are class sizes and the number of seminar, clinical and co-curricular offerings, employment outcomes, bar passage data and accreditation status.

Standard 509(c) adds items a school must publish in a readable and comprehensive manner on a current basis. Those are refund policies, curricular offerings, the academic calendar and academic requirements. A school must also publish its transfer-of-credit policy, with the criteria it uses and any institutions with which it has an articulation agreement. Under Interpretation 509-1, current curricular offerings means courses offered in the current and past two academic years. Read the category breakdowns.

Related Standards that give the numbers a benchmark

Standard 509(d) requires a school to give conditional scholarship data to every applicant being offered a conditional scholarship at the time the offer is extended. Interpretation 509-3 defines a conditional scholarship as an award kept only if the student maintains a minimum grade point average or class standing beyond what good academic standing requires.

Two other Standards frame what the disclosed figures mean. Standard 316 sets a bar passage floor. At least 75 percent of a law school's graduates in a calendar year who sat for a bar examination must have passed one within two years of graduation. Interpretation 501-3 says a cumulative non-transfer attrition rate above 20 percent for a class creates a rebuttable presumption that the school is not in compliance with Standard 501. A floor is not a target.

What one year of Standard 509 reports looks like across every school

The compilation the ABA publishes for 2025 lets you read the whole field at once. 196 schools reported 517,099 applications, 137,721 offers of admission and 42,059 first-year enrollees. That is an offer rate of 26.6% across all applications, and 30.5% of offers ended in enrollment.

Acceptance rates vary far more than applicants expect. The middle school offered admission to 35.8% of applicants, 34 schools offered fewer than 20%, and 14 offered more than 60%. The lowest rate was 4.06% and the highest 66.76%. The middle school enrolled 190 first-years, from 67 at the smallest to 629 at the largest.

Read your own school's report against these lines. If its acceptance rate is far under the median and its median LSAT is high, admission is a reach for most applicants. If both are near the middle, the school's own 25th and 75th percentile lines decide your odds.

Reading the bar passage column against the national spread

The bar passage report for the class of 2024 covers 194 schools with first-time takers. Together they had 37,375 first-time takers and 30,949 passers, which is 82.8%. The middle school passed 82.5%, the 25th-percentile school 72.7% and the 75th-percentile school 88.8%.

45 schools were at 90% or higher and 35 were under 70%. The ABA also prints each school's difference from a weighted average of the states where its graduates sat: 115 schools were above that average and 79 below it. That difference is the fairer number, since a school in a hard-exam state is judged against that state's graduates.

The ABA's Standard 316 asks that at least 75% of a school's graduates who sat for a bar exam pass within two years. In the class of 2022 table, 6 of 194 schools show a two-year ultimate rate under 75% and 26 show one under 80%. The standard measures compliance by its own method, so treat this as a rough screen and read the school's own report.

The two-year ultimate rate counts graduates who passed within two years. For the class of 2022 the middle school reached 91.1%, against 82.5% on the first try, and the range ran from 57.5% to 100.0%. A low first-time rate with a high ultimate rate means graduates are passing on later attempts.