Dozens of law interns demonstrated Tuesday evening outside the home of Justice Minister Yariv Levin, protesting the results of the Israel Bar Association's June 2026 bar exam.
The protesters argued that the exam was unusually difficult, resulting in an exceptionally low pass rate. According to them, only about one-third of those who took the exam passed, prompting calls for the Justice Minister to intervene.
The interns said that over the past several days, all relevant officials had agreed to meet with them, but that Minister Levin had yet to respond to their request. They also called for Levin to come outside, speak with them, and lead a review of both the exam itself and its results.
During the demonstration, protesters chanted, "We will not, not, not allow - justice now!" and repeated their demand for the exam and its pass rate to be reexamined.
"It is unacceptable that only one-third of the candidates passed the exam," the protesters claimed. "We demand justice."
In 2018, just 32% of the law graduates passed the bar exam. Later that year, the Shoresh Institute published a paper noting that, "Some 72% of graduates from four institutions, which accounted for 14% of all examinees, passed the exam. And there were three additional institutions where between half and two-thirds of their graduates passed the exams."
That paper posited that the problem was not the exam itself, but rather that among examinees from the ten remaining institutions from which 71% of the examinees graduated, only 20% of examinees passed the bar exam.
December 2017 was the first time that among examinees taking the exam for the first time, the passage rate was 49%. However, the overall passage rate of all examinees was 34%.