States Making Decisions Sooner to Administer Remote Bar Exam

California and Maryland on February 26 became the most recent jurisdictions to announce that their July 2021 bar exams would be administered remotely on the same dates that the in-person bar exam would have taken place.

To date, eight jurisdictions have already made the decision to skip the in-person administration of the bar exam and offer a remote bar exam as a result of the continuing potential risks of COVID-19 (California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee). All eight of these jurisdictions also made the decision to administer a remote bar exam in lieu of the July 2020 bar exam and the February 2020 bar exam, which took place just a few days ago.

This list of eight jurisdictions is by no means complete. Some of the other jurisdictions that only offered a remote bar exam for July 2020 and February 2020 could also decide to go remote again for July 2021. Those jurisdictions that offered a remote exam for July 2020 and February 2020 include: Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Ohio, Vermont, and the Virgin Islands. Time will tell whether these jurisdictions will administer their bar exams remotely for a third time this July.

But the eight jurisdictions that have already announced their decisions for the July 2021 should be welcoming news for examinees, as these announcements have been made more than five months before the scheduled administration of the July bar exam and, in many cases, before the application period for the July exam has even opened. For example, the first jurisdiction to make the announcement was Connecticut, which made the announcement 166 days before the scheduled July 2021 bar exam. Both California and Maryland, in making their announcements yesterday, did so 151 days before the July 2021 bar exam. On average, the eight jurisdictions have announced their decisions to go remote 159 days before the July 2021 bar exam.

Compare that to the July 2020 bar exam. These same eight jurisdictions made the decision to reschedule the July 2020 bar exam, not once, but twice—from July 2020 to either Sept. 9-10 or Sept. 30-Oct. 1, and then again from that rescheduled fall date in September to eventually the Oct. 5-6 remote bar exam.

In making their first announcements in rescheduling the July 2020 bar exam to either the Sept. 9-10 or Sept. 30-Oct. 1 test dates, these same jurisdictions made their announcements, on average, 87 days before the July 2020, when graduates were already deep into their summer bar preparations. Maryland was the latest of the eight jurisdictions to inform their examinees of the exam date change—63 days before the originally schedule July exam.

In making their second announcements—when these jurisdictions decided to cancel the rescheduled Sept. 9-10 or Sept. 30-Oct. 1 exams and, instead, only administer the Oct. 5-6 remote bar exam—the time frame was even shorter, on average. The eight jurisdictions made their announcements, on average, just 77 days before the rescheduled exams in September were supposed to take place. California was the latest of these jurisdictions to inform their examinees of the exam date change, at just 55 days out.

The early announcements by these eight jurisdictions provide certainty and reduce anxiety to examinees for what is generally an overwhelmingly stressful situation in the best of times.