A child of Chol and Peleliu, Ms. Matsutaro is believed to be the first Palauan to have passed the California Bar Exam. This is not the first time Ms. Matsutaro has broken records for Palau.In 1996, while an 8th grader at SDA Elementary School, she became the first Palauan to win the regional spelling bee in Guam and represented Micronesia at the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.A proud alumni of Palau Mission Academy,Ms. Matsutaro graduated in 2000 and went on to earn her Bachelor of Arts degree in English at Dominican University of California in San Rafael, CA, where she delivered the commencement address for the Class of 2004.
She then attended law school at Lewis and Clark in Portland, Oregon for three years, during which she spent one of her summers as an intern at the Palau Supreme Court.Ms. Matsutaro successfully obtained her Juris Doctor degree with a Certificate in Environmental Law this past spring.At the time of her graduation, Lewis and Clark was ranked no.1 in the United States for its environmental law program.Following her graduation in May 2008, Ebil studied intensely for three months before sitting for the California Bar Exam on July 29th, 30th, and 31st of this year. The state of California took four months to grade the exams, as there were over 8,000 people who took the bar exam.The California Bar Exam is one of the hardest in the United States.California has an exclusionary bar, which means that rather than merely trying to screen out people, the exam is used to regulate the number of lawyers in the state. Only 61% of those who sat for the July 2008 bar exam passed.Ms. Matsutaro plans on getting legal experience in the States and intends to return to Palau shortly thereafter.“Such a feat,” says Ms. Matsutaro, “is not just a personal victory, but one that all Palauans share, for it proves that a child born and raised in our islands can be successful abroad.”
