Georgia Cancels September Exam, Moves Online

September date is off.

While many law students around the country are still staring down a bar exam next week because Mola Ram demands his ritualistic sacrifice, some states had already pushed the bar exam to September.

Alas, a date that was once seen as an abundance of caution is now looking as dangerously optimistic and the bar examiners in Georgia have seen enough to know to call it.

The new plan is for an October online exam as many jurisdictions are adopting. Online exams aren’t a panacea and kick up concerns over technology infrastructure, examinee privacy, and proctoring procedures. But it does come with the perk of not exposing examinees to a deadly virus so that’s fair enough comparative advantage at this point.

While UBE jurisdictions have been reticent to move online given the NCBE’s hostage-taking arguments, Georgia doesn’t have that problem. The next step will be the various UBE jurisdictions realizing that they also aren’t beholden to the NCBE’s mandates. If they want a portable bar exam score, they can approach professional licensing authorities in nearby states and negotiate reciprocity themselves. It’s literally how we used to do it all the time.

If state legislatures could be bothered to clear the document of bills banning Sharia law, or requiring high school sports athletes to stand for the national anthem, or any one of the hundreds of nonsense distractions they debate daily and just consider how to best regulate the legal profession in an economically intertwined regional and national market we could get attorneys portable licenses from well-regulated law schools without requiring antiquated bar exams at all.

Dare to dream.

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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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