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44 ¦ OCTOBER 26, 2020 EXPERT OPINIONS

After the Bar Exam:
Examining the Bar

By Mark Dubois

Most of the 2020 bar exams are now done
and off for grading, with some unusual
happenings, such as the test taker who
claims to have wet himself because he couldn’t
leave the camera on the laptop he was using for
the remote access, and the much-celebrated Chi-
cago taker who went into labor on day one, had
her baby and then returned to finish day two. I bet
she’ll get some offers simply because she clearly fits
the “superwoman” mold. In any event, it’s prob-
ably a good time to look at the question of how we
keep the gate to the profession.
Test takers in many states were worried that
tech issues would result in a disaster. It seems that,
with a few glitches, the system worked, and the bar CLT columnist and former state Chief Disciplinary
exam joined most of the practice of law as an online Counsel Mark Dubois.

enterprise. That’ll probably save courts and bars a anyway, some coming from newly admitted law-
lot of money on venues, proctors, bluebooks and yers who pointed out that practicing law wasn’t
such. It’ll also allow takers to avoid distractions at all like the skills they had to learn to take the
like the guy who sat down next to me when I took exam. Can you imagine if a lawyer sat down with
it. The dude laid out two watches, about a dozen a client, listened to her problem for five minutes,
pens and pencils, a schedule of time and where asked no questions and then, without looking at a
he wanted to be on the questions, some Twinkies book, a case, or a rule or speaking with a partner
and several ampules of some sort of substance he or anyone else laid out the answer to the problem
was going to use if he grew faint. He looked at me without any qualifications, shading or nuances? If
funny when I asked him if they were amyl nitrate they avoided malpractice, it probably only be by
“poppers” (popular at the time to enhance gay sex sheer luck.
pleasure), put the whole mess back into a bag and I was at a Zoom symposium of ethics guns the
moved elsewhere. I can’t imagine taking the exam other day where Judith Gundersen, executive di-
with that sort of show next to me. rector of the National Counsel of Bar Examiners,
Many law grads were so concerned about the was on a panel discussing just this problem. She
process this year that they petitioned courts to admitted that these concerns are real, and that the
suspend the test and adopt diploma privilege re- NCBE is half way through a two-year re-examina-
gimes. Though a few states and jurisdictions went tion of the whole process. I’ll be very interested in
this way, most stuck with the tried and true. The what they come up with.
whole drama did spark a lot of discussion about According to the ABA, most states’ exam con-
whether the examination process really worked sists of four parts, the Multistate Bar Examination

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