The Best Laid Plans Of The Texas Bar Exam....

Gang aft a-gley and all that.

(Image via Getty)

It never seemed like a great idea when Texas decided to go forward with its bar exam by shoving applicants into a hotel “bubble.” Sure it was better than forcing folks to take it in a convention hall, but logistical hurdles always seemed to crop up at every turn. The examiners put out their intense and only slightly unintentionally hilarious training video, and it certainly gave the impression that they’d thought of everything. It turned out they had not.

As you may recall, a core tenet of the plan involved asking applicants to put all of their personal belongings in the closet and using a ziptie to keep the closet shut for the duration of the exam. Apparently, no one considered the floorplan before pitching this idea:

The zip tie plan for the closets didn’t work for several rooms because they were sliding closets. As a result they had to put tape on the doors which had the potential to fall off.

Well, there you go. We’ve finally found a problem duct tape can’t solve.

Another questionable strategy from the video was the keying starting and stopping off a WWI trench charge whistle. It turned out about as well as the first day of the Somme.

The whistles were an awful idea. People on my floor started the Procedure and Evidence section early because the sound of whistles carried from floors above and below. After proctors realized what happened, they switched to manually going around and telling people that the exam started.

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Yet the only thing worse than hearing errant whistles was not hearing whistles at all:

We couldn’t hear any whistles, and on the first section of the exam, they forgot to give us test booklets. We were told we would get extra time to compensate, but they changed the amount of extra time twice, first saying ten minutes, then five, then ten again. One BLE employee came around our corner several times to hang out with her phone, with her mask off. The other employee in our area wore his mask below his nose. They also left test materials in our section long after the sections ended because they forgot to collect them.

At least everyone could use the hotel alarm clocks to keep on schedule…

Also, the BLE told us that each room had an alarm clock that we could move since there was no mass timer we could all see. However, we could not move the clocks as they were bolted to the nightstands. My room was so large and oddly shaped that I couldn’t even see my nightstand from my desk. I asked the hotel for a clock multiple times, and they never delivered one. So for the MBE, I ended up getting a screw driver from my apartment and unscrewing the clock from the nightstand so I could relocate it to my desk. I screwed it back on after the test! But some people literally did not know what time it was until the 15 minute warning was called on the second day.

All in all, it seems as though the test went as well as could be expected. Unfortunately, logistical screw-ups are inevitable and at least Texas didn’t actively try and kill everybody. But, as with all of these stories, we have to ask, “Was this all worth it?” Is this test so necessary that we have to put everyone through this expensive and error-filled production? Could everyone just take a couple of weeks to consider if maybe there’s a more effective way of guaranteeing that licensed attorneys are up to snuff throughout their careers than a one-off generalist exam?

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Earlier: Texas Bar Exam Procedures Video Is Intense


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.