Out of the 11 law schools with more than 100 examinees, the University was hailed as the fifth top performing law school in the 2022 bar examination, results showed by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) on April 14, Friday.

For last year's bar, UST was able to produce 127 new lawyers out of its 159 examinees.

This translates to a 79.87 percent overall passing rate for the University.

UST alumnus Louis-Mari Opina led the new batch of Thomasian lawyers, clinching the 19th top spot with an average of 86.42 percent.

Meanwhile, the national passing rate for the 2022 bar examination was recorded at 43.47 percent, or 3,992 passers out of 9,183 aspiring lawyers.

The 2020 to 2021 bar remains to hold the highest passing rate, where 8,241 examinees out of 11,402 takers passed.

According to PRC, the difficulty in passing the bar can be attributed to "the growing volume of Philippine cases and statutory laws."

The bar examination last November was held at 14 testing centers across the country. Five of these are located in Metro Manila, while three each are in the rest of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.