Law Schools

Michigan Joins Indiana In Administering Online Bar Exam

Common sense breaking out all over the place.

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Who cares who owns Blackacre?

No one feels comfortable sending law school grads into a packed conference center to take a bar exam in a little over a month, but offering a common sense plan for staggering administrations gets law school deans swinging wildly at straw arguments, so that’s a tricky road too. An emergency diploma privilege plus regime might move the whole profession toward needed law school reforms… and nobody has an interest in that! Massachusetts mused about an online bar exam, only to be told by the NCBE that they would not be providing an online option and that if Massachusetts dared to go it alone, the students taking the exam would be forever locked into practicing in Massachusetts.

Earlier this month, Indiana stood up to this nonsense and announced a fully remote bar exam for the July sitting, and now Michigan has joined its (other) state down south and will offer an online bar exam according to a Michigan Supreme Court order issued yesterday.

With Michigan joining its neighbor, the NCBE’s “hostage taking” arguments should start to lose their grip. These self-administered exams only lack portability as long as the states allow them to. If Indiana and Michigan cobble together a limited reciprocity agreement recognizing that passing either exam allows the candidate to apply in the other state — at least for the July 2020 administration — it could light the way for other states to forge similar compacts and open the door to a fully online bar exam in 2020 that would allow grads to move forward on the path to practice without delay. If states really don’t trust their neighbors to effectively test minimum competency, that actually smacks of baseless protectionism unlike asking out-of-state grads to take the second administration of the test.

It’s in everyone’s best interest to keep the pipeline of licensing moving.

Earlier: Indiana Orders Remote Bar Exam In Fit Of Reasonableness
With NCBE Quibbling Over Online Bar Exams, Massachusetts Says They’ll Just Write Their Own

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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