The State Bar Board of Trustees wrote to the California Supreme Court on April 15, recommending a delay for the June First-Year Law Students’ Exam and the July Bar Exam, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some students had hoped for possible “diploma privilege,” according to Courthouse News Service, which would have allowed for skipping the exam and getting automatic admittance to the bar, but that will not be the case.
“The State of California invoked diploma privilege after the 1906 Earthquake and during World War II,” Teresa Ruano, principal program analyst with the State Bar of California, said in an email response to the Northern California Record. “In 1998, when a fee bill stalemate occurred that nearly shut down the entire State Bar, the July bar exam was administered as scheduled.”
The board in its letter outlines two options. The preferred option would be to administer the First-Year Law Students’ Exam online with remote proctoring in June, and to delay the California Bar Exam until September 9-10, “online, in person, or both as needed to address social distancing needs in place at that time.”
If an online exam cannot be administered, a “backstop” measure would need to be considered.
“That could be provided by convening a working group to study the development of a provisional certification program, under which eligible individuals would receive certification to be permitted to work under the supervision of a licensed California attorney,” the letter states.
The alternate option would be canceling the exam, and taking recommendations from the working group on how best to proceed.
“The second option suggests that canceling the bar exam could be accompanied by provisional certification,” Ruano said. “As described in the letter, this proposed provisional certification would be narrower than a broad automatic admission and/or diploma privilege.”
She added that, “under California Rules of Court, Rule 9.3, the Supreme Court has the inherent power to admit persons to practice law in California, with the State Bar serving the Court as its administrative arm on admissions, so the decision to postpone or cancel the July Bar Exam is the Court’s to make.”
An announcement on that decision is expected later this month or in early May.
“The court will consider the recommendations from The State Bar of California at its next Administrative Conference (4/22/20) and will then possibly take action by the end of the month,” Cathal Conneely, Public Information Officer with the Judicial Council of California, told the Record by email.
Roughly 9,000 people are expected to take the California Bar Exam.