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NEWS SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 ¦ 17

Is Online Bar Exam Testing Fair?
Some Software Analysts Say No

By Karen Sloan

With the recent news
that Connecticut Su-
preme Court Chief
Justice Richard Robinson has
rejected the proposition that
the state’s 2020 law school
graduates should be granted
diploma privileges due to con-
cerns over safety and logistics
in taking the state’s bar exam,
the only remaining option
is online testing, which will
take place Oct. 5 and 6, but
that hasn’t stopped some from
expressing open disapproval
of the remote format on the
grounds that the exam may be unfair to some par- The association stopped short of saying that on-
ticipants. line bar exams are destined to fail, but president
A national software testing organization has iden- Eric Proegler said in an interview that jurisdic-
tified several potential technical problems with the tions should get more detailed information from
online bar exams, echoing concerns raised by many software vendor ExamSoft about the capacity of
who are slated to sit for the exam. its system and how it has tested the ability of large
Giving the test online almost certainly means that numbers of people to log in at the same time—a
a percentage of examinees will face internet connec- factor that is known as “point load” in the software
tivity issues that could derail their exams, according industry.
to a statement released this week by the Association An analysis of the online bar exam was launched
for Software Testing, a nonprofit group that stud- at the request of United for Diploma Privilege, a
ies the science of software testing. Plans to have national group of law graduates advocating for juris-
thousands of exam takers log into the exam simul- dictions to adopt diploma privileges and bypass the
taneously could overwhelm the testing system and bar exam during the COVID-19 pandemic. United
lead to examinees getting locked out, the organiza- for Diploma Privilege has raised concerns about the
tion said. fairness and equity of an online bar exam, and has
“No candidate should fail an exam other than asked ExamSoft to publicly disclose more data to
on merit,” reads a statement issued by the associa- back up its claims that its system can handle the de-
tion. “Failure grades because of equipment barriers, mands of administering thousands of bar exams on
power outages, the widely known unreliability of the October 5 and 6.
Internet, or inherent racial and class biases in algo- ExamSoft, which is now the only software ven-
rithms and examination methodologies are unfair dor that jurisdictions are using to deliver the online
to both the candidates and society as a whole.”
¦ Continued on PAGE 18

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