UC Davis law school graduates who were first-time takers of the July California bar exam ranked first in the state in passing the exam -- with a passage rate of 94.4 percent. UC Berkeley grads were second and Stanford's third in the rankings released recently. The passage rate also set a record for UC Davis law grads, whose previous record passage rate was 93.7 percent in 1989. The outstanding performance of UC Davis grads is "a testimony to the high quality of teaching at the school and to the high quality of our students, who consistently do well on the bar," says Bruce Wolk, law school dean. Of UC Davis' 145 graduates in 1994, 126 took the bar exam, and 119 passed, says Nicole Waterman, law school registrar. For all July 1994 UC Davis bar exam takers, which would include those graduates who took the examination previously, 89.7 percent passed.