Graduating from law school and passing the bar exam is quite a feat for a young person to achieve who is striving to be a professionally accomplished practitioner in the legal field.
Many people may not realize that the person who scored the highest on the bar in the whole world is a Jamaican-born woman of African descent. This woman is named Jo-Anne Jackson-Stephens, an associate attorney at the Higgs & Johnson law firm in the Cayman Islands.
Jackson-Stephens began practicing law at Higgs & Johnson in October of 2015. According to LoopJamaica.com, Jackson-Stephens was thrilled, yet humbled to hear that she achieved the world’s highest score on the highly-contested bar exam.
“I was competing with very smart and capable people from across the world including the UK, Europe and the Caribbean,” Jackson-Stephens said, according to LoopJamaica.com. “It demonstrates that hard work and dedication are truly the keys to success,” she continued.
At a young age, Jackson-Stephens started aspiring to be an attorney because of the opportunity to find solutions to tough situations in the legal field. “I wanted the challenge of finding wealth management solutions for my clients in an ever changing legal and regulatory global environment,” Jackson-Stephens also said.
Jackson-Stephens is also a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP). This world-class organization consists of membership of 20,000 estate attorneys, accountants and trust specialists who come from 95 countries from across the world.
STEP professionals get special consideration when it comes to being awarded certain career opportunities in the fields of accounting and law. Jackson-Stephens is also the daughter of a prominent economist named John Jackson. She graduated from law school at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and Barbados.
Jackson-Stephens received her Continuing Legal Education at the Norman Manley Law School in 2006 and her Master of Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Oxford in 2012.
