There is no way that the bar passage this year says anything about the quality of anything except luck: That your [online exam] happened to not crash, that you happen to be in the right jurisdiction, that you happen to not have COVID in your family. A wait-and-see approach ups the pressure on schools. This feels like a cavalier and short-sighted response. We’re just saying, ‘Suspend it for the year.’
— Catherine Grosso, president of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and Michigan State University law professor, in comments given after the American Bar Association’s Standards Review Subcommittee recommended that the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar take no action on bar passage standard 316, which requires that at least 75 percent of a law school’s graduates pass the bar within two years, lest the school lose accreditation. SALT had previously submitted a letter to the ABA arguing that the bar pass standard was unworkable during the pandemic.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.