Recent law graduates in California are gearing up to take the state’s bar exam, which will run July 26 to 28 and is given locally at the Los Angeles Convention Center as well as in Culver City and Pasadena. However, a majority of the newly minted lawyers might not pass if recent trends hold.

For the past two years, test takers’ passage rates dipped to historically low rates – only 47 percent passed the California bar last year, down from 49 percent in 2014. Results from this spring’s test, which has a much smaller pool of takers and typically lower passage rates than the summer exam, were even worse, with only 36 percent of examinees passing.

However, California is not alone in this trend.

Kyle McEntee, executive director of Greensboro, North Carolina-based Law School Transparency, a nonprofit that researches issues faced by incoming attorneys, said he anticipates these numbers will continue to drop nationwide.

“I expect bar passage to decline again this year and the next two years based on analysis of LSAT scores and law school attrition data,” McEntee said. “That’s troubling for a lot of people who are paying huge amounts of tuition and face a tough job market.”

This nationwide failure epidemic has sparked serious debate about who is at fault for the decrease in law school graduates’ ability to pass the exam. McEntee said much of the blame falls on law schools themselves. With federal student loan money subsidizing tuition, law schools for many years had little incentive to be more discerning with applicants, leading to bloated class sizes for years until a recent downtick due in part to the difficult job market for young attorneys.

“The law school economic model is broken and (schools are) trying to stay open by taking unjustifiable risks with their students’ futures,” McEntee said.

While a larger debate over legal education rages on, the practicalities of the test are also an issue. The California State Bar last year approved a new format for the exam starting next year. Instead of the existing three-day model, the test will be trimmed and take place over two days.

Tammi Rice, vice president of bar review for Kaplan Test Prep, a subsidiary of Arlington, Va.’s Graham Holdings Co., said the company was also working with law schools to focus on prepping students for the bar as early as the first year instead of waiting until after graduation.

“The hard part right now is you have to cram for the exam – you only have six weeks,” Rice said.

Test prep companies such as Kaplan and Dallas-based Barbri Group are also acutely aware of the psychological toll the test can have on young attorneys, adding “mindfulness” elements to their courses and increased feedback.

“Lawyers face one of the only exams that can keep them from making a living,” said Barbri President Mike Sims. “They have sunk two to three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars into becoming a lawyer. It’s terrifying.”