TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Dec 29, 2021

Technical glitches plagued many bar exams in 2021 after roughly 30 states were forced to administer the test remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bloomberg Law reports. Test takers reported computer crashes, being locked out of the exam or being wrongly flagged for cheating. The chaos prompted a National Conference of Bar Examiners task force to issue recommendations for a new bar exam that better reflects “real-world practice and the types of activities newly-licensed lawyers perform.” While those recommendations were approved by the examiners, they will take four to five years to be enacted. After the 2021 exams, states are determined to return to in-person testing, but with the omicron variant causing a spike in infection rates, states could possibly be forced to improvise again.