Postponed: New York Bar Exam Rescheduled for Fall 2020
NEWS: MARCH 28, 2020
After Coachella, the NFL and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the latest victim of the public health crisis is the New York Bar Exam. Summer has just opened up for nearly 10,000 law students.
New York State has postponed its July bar exam until the fall, reads the announcement made on Friday by the Court of Appeals of New York. Moving to a fall bar exam would delay admission for test takers by about two months, the National Conference of Bar Examiners (“NCBE”) noted, but that’s preferable to waiting until the February 2021 exam.
Last week, more than a 1,000 students had signed a letter requesting a diploma privilege system that would have allowed them to practice without sitting for the July bar exam, which was an unlikely prospect. In a paper titled “The Bar Exam and the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Need for Immediate Action“, 11 scholars noted that delaying the Bar Exam will cause a shortage of lawyers at a key time.
Test takers gather at Javits Center in Manhattan for their July bar exam. Photo: Monika Kozak/ALM
A new date has not been selected yet, the NCBE said, noting that the July exam has not been cancelled nationwide. If some jurisdictions do offer the bar exam in July, the national conference will prepare a different test for the fall, president Judith Gundersen specified on Friday.
Moving to a fall bar exam would delay admission for test takers by about two months, and many note that it would also exacerbate the nation’s growing unemployment problem and force new law graduates to take jobs for which they are overqualified while they await the opportunity to take the bar.
“These are unprecedented times: We must work together to ensure we do not leave the talented members of Class of 2020 on the sidelines when we need every qualified professional on the field to keep our justice system moving”
The Javits Center in Manhattan
The New York City convention center, which usually hosts the Bar Exam in New York City, has been transformed into an field hospital that will be used to handle patient overflow caused by the crisis. The national conference acknowledged in its Friday announcement that graduating law students are facing unprecedented levels of uncertainty.
Even though each jurisdiction is different, courts and regulators needed to start moving toward a solution, according to the professors. No other disruptions has been reported. The release of the February Bar exam results is scheduled as usual – toward April – and MPRE Scores are scheduled to be posted in candidates’ NCBE Account File Cabinets on April 9.
The postponement of the bar exam may not sit well with graduating law students and we will make sure, at The International Lawyer, to come up with advice for all impacted students. Already Bar Prep companies such as BarBri have announced they will continue to provide access to the bar review course, at no additional cost.
“We recognize that this is a very stressful time for law school graduates who want the opportunity to take the bar exam,” says the NCBE. “To those graduates, we offer our support and the assurance that we are working hard to find solutions that permit them to sit for a bar exam and become licensed.
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