An August 5, 2020 webinar organized by the University of Miami received a great deal of attention for remarks made by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) president Judith Gunderson suggesting that NCBE critics might encounter difficulties with their character and fitness evaluations. I was equally struck, though, by a remark made later in [...]
Voter suppression, which represents the dark underbelly of the American experiment, has reared its head throughout our history, particularly beginning at the cession of the Civil War. After the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, former slaves got an all-too-fleeting taste of emancipation when they not only came out to vote in droves, but [...]
I graduated from law school in 2017, have taken the Florida Bar Exam four times, and did not pass each time. Just reading that one sentence about me, can you deduce that I do not have the technical nor minimal competence to become an attorney? I am a 48-year-old, female Latina, chasing her lifelong dream [...]
Since March 2020, the American legal community has been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the nation sits on the brink of financial and housing, healthcare, election, and immigration crises, state supreme courts and bar examiners insist on implementing the bar exam, further delaying the licensure of thousands of incoming attorneys. Their ostensible reason? To [...]
At the height of a global pandemic, and shortly after the expiration of the CARES Act which provided a temporary safety net to millions of Californians, the Supreme Court of California issued an order denying retroactivity of the 1390 Cal Bar Exam (CBX) cut score to February 2020 applicants who had already met this standard. [...]
As a minority, female, “non- traditional” bar applicant I have never felt so disenfranchised as I do now at the hands of Florida Bar Examiners and the deafening inaction of the Florida Bar and Supreme Court. I have failed this exam by just a few points more than once. I lost a lucrative job over [...]
What do bar exams have in common with elections in the age of COVID-19, aside from the obvious implication that both are related to justice and the rule of law? Technology. While elections have been dealing with the pressures of technology for decades, state bar exams are traditionally huge in-person testing rituals relying heavily on [...]
2020 has been one hell of a year for all of us, and for once bar applicants aren’t left out of the summer action. Lucky us. A global pandemic, important social changes, homeschooled kids, housemates loudly participating in Zoom meetings from the living room, family members filming TikTok videos of their bread baking efforts from [...]
India’s $265 billion COVID relief package has been criticized by many experts as falling short of expectations. In a speech before releasing the package, the Indian Prime Minister declared that the package will focus on land, labor, liquidity, and laws. The majority of the discussion has been around the proportion of fiscal and liquidity relief [...]
Throughout the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for protective equipment, hand sanitizers, and other disinfecting materials has been on a steady rise, ushering an increased effort for mass production both in the United States and around the world. While many domestic and international factories shift from manufacturing consumer goods to medical-grade supplies, there [...]
