The California Supreme Court on Monday postponed the state bar exam for licensing new lawyers from July to Sept. 9 and 10.
The court also ordered the State Bar of California “to make every effort possible to administer that examination online with remote and/or electronic proctoring.”
About 9,000 new law school graduates had been expected to take the exam on the previous dates of July 28 and 29.
The California high court is the parent agency of the State Bar, which licenses and regulates the state’s more than 250,000 lawyers.
At least 10 other states, including New York and Massachusetts, have postponed bar exams until the fall or indefinitely, and others considering doing so, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners.
In a letter to the San Francisco-based State Bar, the California court said its decision to postpone the exam balanced coronavirus health and safety concerns with the public interest in making sure that Californians have “access to justice through competent and qualified legal services.”
The postponement of the exam was one of two options recommended to the court by the State Bar Board of Trustees in mid-April.
The other option would have been to cancel the exam, while working out a plan for provisional certification of law school graduates to practice law under the supervision of experienced attorneys.
While not accepting the second option, the court said it “will continue to explore other options as circumstances develop or change.” The panel’s letter said that if a September exam is later determined to be impractical, the court will consider amending its directive.
20 comments
Oh, Darn it
The first positive news in the last two months. No new lawyers for at least 60 days.
But, but, but, how will we possibly survive without a fresh crop of essential lawyers?
They should do this more often….like every year..
Ha ha! Everyone seems to have the same thought…Xi Coronavirus is good for something after all. No new Lawyers could be a bumper sticker.
Do you know why sharks don’t eat Lawyers? Professional courtesy.
GAME ON:
What’s the difference between a lawyer and a vulture?
What’s the difference between a lawyer and a leech?
What do you call 25 skydiving lawyers?
What’s the difference between a lawyer and a mosquito?
What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 89?
Lol, excellent
What black and brown and looks great on a lawyer?
A Doberman
What do you call a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand?
Not enough sand
Lawyers! We don’t need no stinking lawyers!
Postponed until Fall? That exposes a gross distrust of our educated elite. These most educated of the land cannot be trusted to practice safe virus procedure during exams?
What is going on?
Why do you bury lawyers more than 6 feet under?
Because deep down, they’re good people
Best Lawyer joke of the day!
Bwahahahahahahahahahaha
This will give Kim Kardashian more time to study.
People like Kim Kardashian don’t study. They pay someone to take the test for them.
In South Korea they are spacing people 5 meters apart and holding exams in outdoor areas.
Employment exam. The video also shows the use of infrared cameras to detect people with fevers. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/south-koreans-take-exam-outdoors-at-football-stadium-to-avoid-spreading-coronavirus-1.4221269
Exam for insurance agents. The article says “Normally, the Insurance Agent Licensing Exam takes place every month, with an average of 20,000 participants hoping to become insurance planners.” https://abcnews.go.com/International/hopeful-insurance-professionals-brave-cold-south-korean-soccer/story?id=70348293
That prompted me to look up California’s numbers. We have about 320,000 insurance agents and insurance brokers in the state. We also have about 200,000 real estate agents and about 95,000 real estate brokers in the state. I suspect at the state wide levels the numbers hoping to join the field are about the same as South Korea. California’s population is 40 million and South Korea has 52 million.
Getting back on topic – We also have about 170,000 lawyers in the state with the good news being that we are down in 10th place in the list of states in terms of the number of lawyers per capita. The good news is that of the 170,000 lawyers in the state, only 97,400 of them are employed.
https://lawschooltuitionbubble.wordpress.com/original-research-updated/lawyers-per-capita-by-state/
More troubling is how many new Commercial Driver’s Licenses are (usually) issued in any month on average, and how many have been issued in the past month. There can never be too few Lawyers, but will there be enough truck drivers to get food from the farm to people?
People like Kim Kardashian don’t study. They pay someone to take the test for them.
Like the world needs more . . . .
Sorry to disappoint, but with a September exam administration, it is likely that the grading process could be stepped up and attorneys-to-be can still be sworn in during the month of December as always.
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