NASHVILLE (AP) — Nashville School of Law administrators say they are surprised by news that just 28 percent of the school's law students who took the Tennessee bar exam this summer passed.

The Tennessean (http://tnne.ws/1W2cfq7) reports that the school is the only one in the state that had a passage rate below 50 percent. The 28 percent rate includes students who were retaking the bar exam. The first-time passage rate for the school's students was slightly higher, at 38 percent.

Nashville School of Law Dean William Koch says he and the school's other administrators were expecting the rate to fall from February's 50 percent passage rate, but he said they weren't anticipating such a steep decline.

Koch says the results reflect the need to prepare students more rigorously for the format of the two-day bar exam.