The Israel Bar Association on Tuesday, 1 Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan announced the scores of the last bar exam, citing 70% of those who took the exam failed! The average test grade was 57.3%. The current reality represents a 24% increase in the amount of failures as compared to the last exam in May.

Hebrew University boasts the most number of students passing the latest bar exam (73%), followed by Tel Aviv University (65%), Bar Ilan University (59%), Haifa University (53%), Sapir (50%) and Michlalah L’Minhal (36%). Shaar Mishpat and Ono College, which includes many chareidim and datil leumi students, 17% and 16% respectively.

Those taking the exam insist it was much harder than in the past and clearly, this was intentional to fail many in an effort to reduce the number of new lawyers.

2,481 people took the exam, including 1,422 taking it for the first time. Among those taking the exam for the first time, only 42% passed.

83% of all those who took the test graduated from a college as opposed to a university. The number of persons graduating college taking the exam for the first time and passed was 33% as opposed to over 70% among the first-time test-takers graduating from a university.

Among the 248 people taking the bar exam for the second time, 21% passed and passing rate among those taking it for the third time was a mere 4%.

The message from the Israel Bar is “The results speak for themselves and strengthen the theory that there is a real advantage to attending a university over a college.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)