After Washington adopted diploma privilege, it became hard to believe that Oregon would cling to an in-person bar exam. The two states are too professionally intertwined to not look to the other for guidance on best practices and crafting COVID licensure procedures turned out not to be an exception.
The deans of the law schools joined the cause for diploma privilege and yesterday the Oregon Supreme Court agreed, voting 4-3 to waive the bar exam requirement on an emergency basis for Oregon law school graduates and ABA-accredited law school grads where the bar passage rate is over 86 percent.
Those left in the cold under that model will have access to an online exam in October that would not count for portability. UPDATE: A prior version of this story assumed that would be the only exam offered by Oregon. But the Oregon State Bar wrote us to confirm that they plan to hold an in-person UBE exam for people who still need it, which if good! But they said they’re doing it in July, which is absolutely insane!
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Still, welcome news for graduates who were up against it with a state still mulling a July in-person administration until yesterday.
Joe 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.