There’s An Apparent Repair For Washington’s Bar Examination Debacle

[READ MORE HERE: About bar exam horrors in Missouri and Maryland]

Yesterday, Washington called off its entire July bar exam after the NextGen debut collapsed in a Yakima conference middle — six hours of lifeless WiFi, not a single query answered, a complete administration scrapped. The Washington State Bar Affiliation handed the roughly 600 stranded examinees three choices, each considered one of which quietly payments them for a failure that they had nothing to do with: a September make-up in Tacoma, a switch to February 2027, or a withdrawal-and-refund that may be a nonstarter for anybody who, you recognize, wish to follow legislation this yr.

There’s, after all, a fourth possibility. And in case you have learn Above the Regulation for any size of time, you didn’t want me to inform you that, as a result of the moment you heard “bar examination catastrophe,” a tiny Joe Patrice materialized in your shoulder and whispered, “What about diploma privilege?”

He has been whispering it — hell, he’s been yelling — for years. He has, the truth is, been yelling straight at Washington.

Again in February 2021, when the state walked back the emergency diploma privilege it had granted months earlier and herded its graduates towards a distant examination as a substitute, Joe laid out your complete case in a paragraph that reads right this moment prefer it was written for Tuesday:

[S]tates aren’t within the enterprise of providing the “greatest” bar examination, they’re within the enterprise of licensing professionals. If the bar examination was one of the best ways to do this, then so be it, however we’ve seen diploma privilege work for years and we’ve seen legal professionals cross the bar examination and run large shopper frauds. A strong reevaluation of licensure ought to dominate skilled discussions for the subsequent few years. However within the meantime, there’s zero cause to ram a take a look at down the throats of graduates who would’ve been waived in a mere six months in the past.

Swap “six months in the past” for “in 2020” and the argument lands with no scratch. The graduates Washington is now asking to ebook a second set of bar examination journey preparations are the identical class of graduates the state as soon as waved straight into the occupation.

Joe’s broader case in opposition to treating the bar examination as holy ceremony of passage is a whole genre at this level, full with a standing problem for any courtroom that defends the take a look at on “public safety” grounds:

Is there proof {that a} one-time examination constitutes significant oversight of a profession? … right here’s my query to all these courts: “What are the subsequent 10 phrases of your reply?” As a result of if anybody is prepared to get previous “we’d like it for public safety and sustaining skilled integrity,” it will assist quite a bit.

And each time a state truly tries another path — Utah, most recently — it seems the sky isn’t falling.

Which is what makes Washington’s predicament virtually too simple. The state doesn’t should invent something, convene a activity drive, or pilot a program. In June 2020, the identical Washington Supreme Court docket that now holds these graduates’ careers in its fingers granted emergency diploma privilege to graduates of ABA-accredited legislation faculties, admitting them to the bar with out an examination. Grads who needed a transportable rating might nonetheless sit for one later; everybody else bought to start out their careers. The republic survived. This isn’t historical precedent a courtroom must blow the mud off… it’s six years outdated, from the identical establishment, and it labored.

The individuals who run Washington’s legislation faculties are on board. Seattle College Faculty of Regulation Dean Tony Varona wrote to the state Supreme Court Tuesday night urging precisely this, branding the September rescheduling “unwise” and the entire episode a catastrophe. “No altogether good choices,” he wrote, “however fairness and equity require diploma privilege.”

College of Washington Faculty of Regulation Dean Tamara Lawson despatched her personal letter. Per UW legislation professor David Ziff, who shared excerpts, Lawson requested the courtroom to grant “diploma privilege . . . to keep away from any extra harms to those graduates, particularly to forestall any delay of their careers or admission to the follow.”

And she or he didn’t hedge about who’s presently absorbing the price of the NCBE’s large debut:

This resolution is the one equitable treatment that will make sure that the monetary, skilled, and emotional burdens of this catastrophic failure are usually not shifted to the take a look at takers.

The one query left is whether or not Washington takes the humane, already-tested route out, or makes a category of graduates who did all the things proper pay in time, cash, and lodge reservations for a catastrophe that was by no means theirs to repair.

Earlier: Washington Just Called Off Its Entire Bar Exam
Washington Grants Diploma Privilege To Graduates Of ABA Accredited Schools
State Retreats From Diploma Privilege Policy Despite EVERYTHING WORSE NOW!
Yes, It’s Time To Eliminate The Bar Exam As We Know It