How to read a 509 disclosure without getting fooled

An ABA Standard 509 disclosure is the single best public document on a law school, but it is built to be skimmed and mis-skimmed. Reading it correctly means separating first-time from two-year ultimate bar passage, reading employment by job type rather than the headline rate, and weighing the multi-year trajectory over any single year.

Separate first-time bar passage from two-year ultimate

Two different rates both get called bar passage. The first-time rate is the share of a class that passes on the first attempt; the two-year ultimate rate counts everyone who eventually passes within two years and is almost always higher. Compare the same one school to school.

Read employment by job type, not the headline rate

An employed rate counts any job. What matters is full-time, long-term, JD-required (FTLT) work. Read employment by category, because a job is not necessarily a JD-required job.

Treat single-year tuition jumps with suspicion

Some tuition jumps are real resets; others are semester-versus-annual reporting quirks. Flag any one-year swing before reading a trend into it.

Most of all, watch the trajectory

One year is noise. A school whose bar pass and FTLT rates have climbed for five years is telling you something a single ranking snapshot cannot.