Just to recap, the Florida Board of Bar Examiners watched Indiana and Nevada both fail to run their bar examinations on time thanks to irresolvable technical difficulties. Nonetheless, the FBBE told all bar examinees that the test was going to go forward with the exact same provider, ILG, that failed to run the prior two tests. Then ILG forced the cancellation of multiple proposed test runs the week before the exam and the FBBE — incredibly — kept telling nervous applicants to sit tight and trust that everything would shake out. After stringing applicants along through the whole weekend, Florida canceled the bar exam with a scant notice and no plan.
Now the same people who managed that process are asking applicants to just accept that everything is going to be fine because NOW they’re using ExamSoft.
You know, the people who claim they were victims of a “sophisticated” cyberattack. Or maybe a straightforward DDoS attack? Or maybe just couldn’t handle the simultaneous load of one mid-sized state bar? How can this possibly go wrong?!?!?
The new and improved Florida bar exam will be held on October 13, so all those people who crammed for months for the August test… just keep it up! Or, don’t. Because the studying you’ve been doing for the first test doesn’t really apply because the new test is going to be three essay questions and 100 multiple-choice questions and different subjects!
All multiple choice questions will be based on Florida law, and will test the following seven subjects: Florida Rules of Civil Procedure; Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure; Torts; Business Entities; Evidence; Wills; and Trusts. The three essay questions will test Federal Constitutional Law and the following six subjects (all based on Florida law): Torts; Real Property; Florida Constitutional Law; Ethics; Contracts; and UCC Article 3. Other subjects that are normally available for testing under the current Bar Admissions Rules will not be tested in October.
Emphasis added.
So that money on prep courses was certainly well spent.
Look, it’s admirable that bar examiners aren’t trying to force applicants into in-person exams during a pandemic (which, as it happens, was the FBBE’s plan as recently as MAY!), but this is getting ridiculous. These folks have been grinding away for months to make sure they have every scrap of information about doctrines that will inevitably have zero bearing on their practices ever again and now they’re being asked to accept a different date, fraught with different tech issues, covering different subjects.
Just stop.
These folks have been through enough. There are better ways to “protect the public.” This just needs to end.
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.