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2008/11/25

The Bar is Passing People By

Having talked with a number of sources at a few more top law firms in China, the anecdotal evidence is starting to add up to more than a small anomaly. The bar exam pass rate at China's top 4 firms this year seems to be around 75% with some offices being as high as 90%. If this was the US, this wouldn't be so surprising, but considering that even at T4 firms, the pass rate last year (and typically) is lucky to reach 50%. I've yet to see any official data released stating the overall pass rate, but from mainly anecdotal evidence and the few stories I've seen, it's much higher than the typical 10-15% and possibly even higher than last year's pass rate (though there were also 20% more test takers this year). The pass rate over the past few years looks like this:

2002 - 8%,
2003 - 11%
2004 - 11%
2005 - 14%
2006 - 15%
2007 - 22%

Does anyone else have any anecdotal stories about the bar (US or China) this year? Any theories as to why the pass rate has been slowly rising and if this will be a permanent thing?
Will we eventually see US style (or something closer to California style) pass rates? Would love to hear some theories on this.

*its a slow morning (wait, its almost noon already) and my brain isn't really functioning, so forgive the title, its an admittedly weak reference to this classic joint, law and old school hip hop, don't they just go together?

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