photo by: Meg Kumin/KU Marketing Communications

This photo from 2019 shows Green Hall, 1535 W. 15th St., home to the University of Kansas School of Law.

KU’s law school has been ranked among the best in the country — especially among public schools — for graduating students who pass the bar exam on their first attempt.

The University of Kansas Law School ranked 11th in the country — and second among public universities — for its first-time bar exam pass rate, according to an analysis performed by the media company Reuters.

KU had a 95.92% first-time pass rate, which put it behind Harvard’s 99.44% rate, which was tops in the country. The schools ahead of KU include some of the most prestigious law schools in the country, including NYU Law School, Yale, the University of Chicago, Stanford and Columbia.

The University of Michigan was the only public school to rank higher than KU, ranking No. 6 in the analysis.

KU law school leaders credited the high first-time pass rate, in part, to a donor-funded bar exam preparation program. KU’s “Free Bar Prep Program” allows all recent graduates to enroll tuition free in a program that includes structured studied and a simulated bar exam. As part of its regular curriculum, KU also offers a bar exam preparation course to all third-year law students. First-year law students also are given a diagnostic exam to help them understand the core concepts of the bar exam.

The KU law school touts itself as one of the few in the country that provide the post graduate bar exam class, which normally costs several thousand dollars, free of charge to students.