A steep decline in bar exam scores on the most recent test has led to an outbreak of finger-pointing over who's to blame for the downward swing.

In a sharply worded letter, the dean of Brooklyn Law School on Monday reproached the head of a national bar exam group for suggesting to law school leaders that their graduates who took the July exam were less prepared than students who sat for the test in previous years.

The dean's letter came in response to an October memo by Erica Moeser, the president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, addressed to law school deans across the country in which she defended the integrity of the group's exam and raised concerns about the ability of the would-be lawyers who took it.

The NCBE is a national Wisconsin-based non-profit that prepares widely used standardized portions of the bar exam, including the Multistate Bar Examination, a multiple choice test that typically counts for half of a test-taker's score.

"I...want to take this opportunity to let you know that the drop in scores that we saw this past July has been a matter of concern to us, as no doubt it has been to many of you," wrote Ms. Moeser.