Bar Exams, Kids, Politics, Trusts and Estates, Weirdness

Further Update on the South Carolina Bar Exam

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For those of you who followed the South Carolina bar exam controversy, previously discussed here and here, we bring you an update.
The South Carolina Supreme Court recently issued a supplemental statement on the matter. According to the Court, the elimination of the Trusts and Estates section from the scoring process had nothing to do with complaints from the kids of prominent public figures.
An excerpt from the court’s statement, after the jump.


The court’s statement is rather long-winded. Here’s the money quote:

On October 31, 2007, the examiner of the WTE [Wills, Trusts and Estates] section reported to the Clerk’s Office that he had made a scoring error in his report of the examinees’ scores. This was not a “re-grade,” but merely an error in transcription that was discovered as the examiner prepared to transmit the examination books to the Court. The error was that an examinee who had previously been reported as having passed the WTE section, had in fact failed the section.

The Clerk of Court then reviewed the examinee’s other essay section scores and discovered that the examinee’s WTE failure, coupled with the examinee’s failure on one other essay section resulted in the examinee not receiving an overall passing score. The examiner’s initial report of a passing score was a scrivener’s mistake. The scoring error and its consequence was reported to the full Court at its conference on November 1, 2007, at which time the Court was faced with determining what action, if any, to take with regard to the error.

After deliberation, the decision was made to eliminate the entire WTE section from consideration. In making this decision the Court determined that it would be inappropriate to reverse the affected examinee’s previous notification of successful completion of the examination. See Rule 402(i)(5) (“The results reported by the Board of Law Examiners is final…”). This decision then raised the question of fair and equitable treatment for those examinees, who, like the examinee affected by the reporting error, had failed the WTE section and only one other section, thus resulting in an overall failing score. It was against this backdrop that the Court made the decision to eliminate the WTE section from consideration so as to provide equal treatment to those in exactly the same position as the affected examinee. The Clerk advised the Court that this action would result in an additional twenty examinees receiving overall passing scores on the examination.

No consideration was given to the identity of any examinee who would stand to benefit from this action. Moreover, the action was not influenced by any appeal, campaign, or public or private outcry. It was simply deemed the best choice among several problematic alternatives.

This still strikes us as a bit… odd. But we’ll take the court at its word.
Additional Statement Regarding the July 2007 Bar Examination [South Carolina Judicial Department]
Earlier: Update: What’s Up With the South Carolina Bar Exam?
What’s Up With the South Carolina Bar Exam?

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