California Bar Exam Flagged A THIRD Of Applicants As Cheating

And rather than say, 'well then this filter was obviously overly aggressive' they're sending tons of Chapter 6 notices.

Remember when we said that the online bar exam’s “cheating” algorithm was going to be a problem? It already flagged Black and Brown folks for merely existing, but it didn’t stop there and managed to key in on all sorts of people as likely cheaters.

And this was kind of the point. The algorithm is designed to flag people for “suspicious” activity and then leave it to the humans to parse through the video to make sure it was a false positive. But maybe that’s a Herculean task….

Indeed, this video shows the California Committee of Bar Examiners revealing that of the 9,301 people who took the exam, 3,190 of them were flagged by the software. That’s 1 in 3!

Put aside whether or not software that flags a third of applicants is really doing its job — which is a good question! — when bar examiners are told that “it looks like 33 percent of the applicants cheated” the reaction should be “that’s obviously poppycock.” Instead California seems to be rolling with the “order to show cause” approach of asking a bunch, if not the bulk, of people flagged by the software to prove they weren’t cheating.

This is lunacy. The “Chapter 6” notices that California is sending around say stuff like “Facial view of your eyes was not within view of the camera for a prolonged period of time” which should be an invitation for the examiners to watch the goddamned video to see if it’s valid before bringing the applicant into it. This description is so generic that it’s clear the examiners never even bothered to look into these flags. Someone who looked at it and detected something suspicious would say “hey, the camera shows you repeatedly looking at your lap” not this vague garbage.

One notice sent around was “no audible sound was detected” which is a real trick because PEOPLE WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO MAKE NOISE. I get that they’re alleging that someone turned off their microphone or something, but that’s something that could be verified with further investigation. Why add unnecessary stress?

If California wasn’t ready to actually deal with the flags then they shouldn’t have gone with an online exam. It’s part of the deal. You make the exam online and that means more post-hoc proctoring. Farming it out to “prove us wrong” is utterly unacceptable.

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Worse, reports are emerging on social media that applicants are being told that they have to respond to these vague allegations without seeing the video for themselves which sounds like an issue spotter. Hopefully these are just rumors because if the bar examiners are really trying to tag applicants based on a hastily composed algorithm that we already know creates false positives without access to the only relevant evidence… well that would be a new low.

Unfortunately, this exam cycle has taught me to not expect much.


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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