Trust, Transparency, Results: The How and Why of Themis Pass Rates

After ten years in the bar prep industry, Themis remains the only company to publish comprehensive, transparent, and trustworthy pass-rate data. If you have yet to check out our pass-rate information, you can find the numbers here. Themis calculates pass rates because we value transparency and student success, and to prove to students that our methodology works. In this post, we want to give you a chance to understand how we get the data for our pass rates and what that data means.

Themis wants to see you pass the bar exam. When students are unsuccessful, everyone loses. Students are unhappy because they have to retake the bar, and our pass rates decrease. Part of our desire for transparency comes from the idea that our publishing pass rates means your success is just as important to us as a company as it is to you as a new lawyer. Everything we do behind the scenes is geared towards your success.

Statistics by themselves are informative, but let’s go beyond the numbers and look into the data-collection process to see how we get those numbers. When states release their bar exam results, the first thing we do is match up the list of students who passed in each state with our list of Themis students. Then, we begin to determine which students did not, for whatever reason, sit for the exam and which students were unsuccessful. Themis reaches out to students directly via email, text messages, and phone calls. We reach out with consideration and compassion, recognizing that this is a sensitive time and people may not want to discuss their results. If after three emails, two text messages, and two phone calls we do not have a response, we count that student as unsuccessful. This means that our pass rates are potentially slightly higher than what we report. That’s fine--our goal here is honesty about the actual success of our product, not an attempt to inflate our numbers.

To maintain the integrity of our process and product, we require proof that the student was unsuccessful before setting up access to the free repeat. Our free-repeat policy applies to the directly following administration of the exam, but there are no restrictions on how much of the course a student must complete to meet eligibility requirements for a free repeat. Every student who uses Themis and does not find success is entitled to a free repeat with us.

The transparency of our process extends to the published data. We always include three numbers for each jurisdiction: the jurisdiction’s first-time taker rate, the first-time taker rate for students using Themis, and the first-time taker rate for students using Themis who completed at least 75% of their coursework. If a state or jurisdiction only publishes an overall rate, and does not officially release a first time taker rate, then we only use the overall rates when releasing our pass rate data, as well. We use the aforementioned 75% completion threshold because it is a constant statistical landmark where an overwhelming majority of students pass.

To recap: Trust. Transparency. Results. We build trust by having a system of data collection that is as fair and accurate as possible. We are transparent about our process, and transparent in releasing all of our pass rate data, even if it is not wholly in our favor. Results speak for themselves: once a student completes 75% or more of the Themis course, that student’s chances of passing the bar exam increase significantly. We at Themis stand proudly behind our mission of helping students overcome the final challenge of becoming a lawyer.

Click to see our July 2021 pass rates!