- law dawg
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We haven’t heard any reports whether there were any problems at the Plaza, but the NextGen bar exam was a disaster across the country yesterday–Washington even went so far as to completely cancel the bar exam this week. You can find some links and coverage at Above the Law. This is as good of time as any to trot out your old bar exam horror stories. What went wrong during your exam? What do you think should be done in Washington? Would you represent those takers in a class-action suit? What else is going on out there today?
The true bar exam nightmare is passing and then spending the rest of your life as an attorney.
This is funny and many attorneys think this way. But remember, the grass isn’t really greener. Almost every job sucks as much as ours and usually pays way worse. Two things can be true at the same time: it sucks to be an attorney and attorney is one of the best jobs you can get.
To quote Galaxy Quest: those poor people.
My laptop battery made a popping sound and died a week before the exam. I luckily found one that worked over off of Spring Mountain Road. I can’t imagine how I would feel if it had happened during the exam.
We had to drive home (July 2007) from Texas Station to get an online connection to upload our examsoft files. Does anyone else remember that? Did we just not have wifi or was the worry about everyone trying to do that all at once?
I had to do that when I took the bar in a state that shall not be named in the 2010s. I think by the time I took the Nevada bar a few years ago, I could upload onsite.
I took the bar on an IBM MagCard I Selectric Typewriter and I thought I was ahead of my time!!!
I rented an IBM Selectric and brought a backup portable typewriter. Took the CA bar 100 miles from home so that I would not have to see anyone I knew.
I wrote in blue books. A proper bar exam.
I was a typist, but there was a blue book strategy that some of my handwriting peers advocated. Scribble illegibly except for buzz words and underline those. Don’t know if that really worked.
I had to buy a typewriter the morning of the exam, as my two typewriters didn’t work when I tested them right before driving down.
Nightmare
…AND spare ribbons for each AND your favorite pens in case you had to write in a blue book.
I am barred in 3 states. The CA bar was the most stressful. Large number of takers, some became so distraught during the exam that they had to leave. Half a dozen threw up, one right in the exam room.
i pooped my pants
That’s okay, Donald. We’re all used to it now.
The true disaster is the now trending politically correct “let everyone in” bar exam.
It’s scary how much judges are relying on AI for their rulings and how obvious it is. They read long, detailed rulings from the bench, but not smoothly as if they wrote it or are familiar with it. Before AI, these long pronouncements from the bench were not a thing. AI will rule in different ways based on the same briefing and facts, depending on how the question is framed. But we never see that question, nor to we get to advocate for the framing (like with jury questions).
Great point about the framing.
A judge told me they use AI as a law clerk and they run both briefs through the program and have it generate questions.
I mean they could be reading a summary by their clerks too. So maybe clerks are using AI. With some departments I know they have the law teed up for certain issues and they just issue the same blanket minute order (applied to the facts of the case) for those issues.
Cookie-cutter justice, brought to you by robots.
Yes. And yet an attorney was sanctioned for using AI this morning. Dean Kajioka got destroyed by Eckley Keach for doing what judges are probably doing.
Was he “destroyed” or was he “slammed?” Were judges shocked by this one weird trick that left attorneys speechless?
Where is my clickbait link!?!!
And what was the sanction?
I feel so bad for the people who spent the last 90 days putting their life on hold for this exam. Giving the takers their money back, reimbursing for travel costs, and letting them take it for free is the only sensible option.
20 years ago, taking the bar in Reno and the guy sitting directly in front of me brings in a 2 liter of Walmart brand diet root beer. Warm. He then drinks exactly 1/3 the first day. Second day, same 2 liter. Drinks another 1/3. Final day, brings in the nearly empty off brand diet root beer and finishes it off. I could not look away. That’s my nightmare.
“The May FLE results have been released. The unofficial pass rate for the May 2026 FLE is 76%. To pass the Foundational Law Exam, applicants must achieve a Scale Score of 75 or higher.”
There’s no pass list anymore? And it’s the highest pass rate on an exam I am aware of in decades in Nevada? Soft
https://nvbar.org/licensing-compliance/admissions/bar-exam/exam-results/
Notice that the scoring is scaled, meaning on a curve, so many may not have achieved an actual 76%.
I am old enough that typing the exam meant typewriters (because computers could not be trusted yet). I believe it was the 1997 exam where a bartaker finished packed up and then hit another taker in the head with their typewriter.
Just saw a tiktok that the Univ of WA law school is asking the Supreme Court to give their grads diploma privilege for this debacle.
Not the first time this nonsense has been requested, won’t be the last.
The Chinese kid I paid to take the bar exam in my place never showed and I ended up having to take it myself. That was a nightmare. And I was out $250! It ain’t right.
That’s okay, Donald. We’re used to it by now.
Sorry, I paid her $350 and passed!
You bastard!
Give yourself some grace. Then, extend the same salve to someone who absolutely doesn’t deserve it.