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If you thought Florida was crazy for forging ahead with an in-person bar exam over the summer, Mississippi is here to up the stakes.
Mississippi — the bar exam that forces you to go back to law school if you fail 3 times — is also going forward with an in-person exam this summer because if you’re the sort of state where people take it as a point of pride to wrestle gators for looking at you funny, you’re not going to let a crowded convention center scare you. But Mississippi has another wrinkle for new graduates taking the test — they’re going to need everyone to sign away their rights! Yes, the bar exam has actually put together a liability waiver that reads like the scary language under a pharmaceutical ad: “Attempting to become a lawyer could result in serious illness, disability and… in some cases… death.” We already knew all that of course, but Mississippi is talking about before you’re the mid-level running a trial.
Please tell me this is just the set up for an issue spotter. For a bar exam that routinely fails upwards of 65 percent of test-takers, adding life or death stakes to the equation seems a bit much, but here we are.
Good luck Mississippi folks!
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.