Law Schools

Protesters To Descend On State Supreme Court Over Bar Exam Delays

Taking it to the streets.

By  
on

(Image via Getty)

The Florida bar exam has been delayed three times. So far.

The first delay came after the state realized it would be impossible to hold the in-person July exam they were planning to show the world that COVID was Dr. Fauci’s made-up threat because, as it turned out, COVID was not Dr. Fauci’s made-up threat. At that point, the state with the nation’s second-highest number of infections — though Texas should pass them before the week is out — scheduled an online exam for today before remembering that there’s an election in Florida today and people need to go to the polls because mail-in balloting is for the communists. The second delay pushed the exam to Wednesday, where it was slated clear up until Sunday night when online exam technical challenges forced the state to push it off to an as yet unspecified October date. That’s a lot for applicants to deal with.

And a number of examinees are taking their frustration to the streets.

Tomorrow, bar exam applicants will gather at the state supreme court to protest the continued delays and demand a resolution to the ordeal.

“They need to give us some sort of bar exam or give us (diploma) privileges and get on with it,” [Florida International University law graduate Michael Ellis] said. “It’s gone on long enough — I myself have been studying since January.”

Studying since January is pretty extreme but maybe this is why FIU keeps dominating the Florida bar exam. But even a more traditional “since May” study period becomes unreasonable when authorities are holding applicants hostage to an unknown test date that could be three full months after the test was originally scheduled. Studying for the bar exam isn’t like studying for a regular test — it forces examinees to memorize everything in niche practice areas they’ll never touch again and then spit it out before purging it all and going about the real job of being an attorney which involves not a goddamned thing from the exam. Telling applicants to retain that information for an unexpected extra week is nerve-racking… an additional three months would be torturous.

Sponsored

The uncertainty surrounding the exam means recent graduates seeking employment may have to tell firms they can’t accept offers in the often cutthroat industry, Ellis explained.

And “many qualified students I know have already had their job offers (rescinded),” he said. “And it’s 100% because of the delay, and the way the delay was handled.”

Which is why the protest is on and why, ultimately, diploma privilege in some form is the only answer to the challenges of 2020. Even if the diploma privilege option was cabined by setting an arbitrary grade point average — and simply waiving in practitioners with licenses in other states — dispensing with a large chunk of examinees would make any future test more manageable.

In Pulp Fiction, Marsellus explains, “The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.” And while Marsellus is certainly a bad dude, the failure to follow his advice really put a crimp in Bruce Willis’s day, so there was something to this wisdom. To the Florida state supreme court — and licensing authorities everywhere — emergency diploma privilege might give you a slight sting, but that’s pride. Your bar passage wasn’t special… you aren’t better or worse at your profession because you endured it… and you aren’t making anyone better off by living off that accomplishment.

Pull the plug on this thing. This has gone on long enough.

Eager to test, law students plan protest over latest postponement of Florida bar exam [Tallahassee Democrat]

Sponsored

Earlier: Florida Promises Most Packed July Bar Exam Ever To Own The LibsFlorida Calls Off Wednesday Bar Exam… Just Like Everyone Knew They Would

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.

Topics

, , ,