As the bar exam itself fades into the rearview mirror, New York’s confused handling of a genuine medical emergency shouldn’t. In case you missed it — perhaps because you were taking the bar exam yourself and promptly crawled under a rock for the last week — an applicant taking the NY bar exam at the Hofstra location went into cardiac arrest. While other applicants called out for help, the proctors reportedly responded by telling people to be quiet and keep taking the test. Some witnesses have come forward to say the administrators seemed reluctant to call emergency services at all. The test was not stopped until the scheduled lunch break and resumed on time afterward. The bar examiners have defended their actions… and witnesses dutifully called bullshit.

Thankfully, the woman survived despite the delayed medical response. One of her classmates has set up a GoFundMe to help with medical costs.

But what lessons should we take away from this debacle? When the bar examiners sit down to think about how this went awry, what new protocols should they implement? Or does the problem run far too deep for quick fixes?

1. Emergency medical resources on-site

A former Florida bar exam proctor reached out to tell me that they’ve actually thought ahead about this:

City firefighter paramedics are on-site from 8:00 am from when the test takers are coming in until all have left at the end of the day. They are in uniform, with a full gurney with their orange medicine and equipment boxes, defibrillator, etc. set on the gurney in the area right outside the entrance to the main hall. Their ambulance is parked outside. Fortunately I’ve never seen them called to a situation, but they are always there and could be anywhere needed within seconds.

How is it possible that FLORIDA is better prepared to deal with… anything? Florida’s top policymakers are passed out drunk and naked on the floor of a Waffle House getting sniffed by a live gator and yet somehow they figured out that EMTs should be on hand whenever tons of people are crammed into a venue. Concerts have paramedics, why wouldn’t a bar exam?

2. More testing locations

This might seem to conflict with the idea that the exam should pony up for two days worth of paramedics, but it’s an alternative solution. If the examiners persist in the delusion that stopping the test for thousands of test-takers to deal with an emergency is too onerous, then don’t have a location with more than 50 examinees. If we have to pretend that every single test must be collected before temporarily suspending the test to deal with someone maybe dying then have more, small locations that make it easier to collect tests.

3. Proctor flexibility

The key reason why proctors appeared befuddled is that they’re handed a rulebook by the bar examiners — influenced by the NCBE’s nonsense rules about preserving the purity of their precious test — and told never to deviate. Medical emergencies should be covered in those rules, but also proctors need to be free to improvise when the unexpected should arise.

4. Get over yourselves

This is a more fundamental issue but… if the difference between passing and not passing is a trip to the bathroom, then your test sucks. Any good educator will tell you that the goal is to develop a test where the students either know it or they don’t. If there’s an insight they can gain in 60 seconds that alters their outcome on the test, then it’s not doing its job. Or, conversely, just let examinees do research during the test since researching legal questions is what actual practicing attorneys do. Either way, stop acting like the sanctity of the test is the highest value.

5. End the bar exam

It’s a generalist memory test for a profession that lacks generalists and where working from memory would amount to malpractice. Bar exam supporters claim it “protects the public” and yet there’s no difference in the number of disciplinary issues in states with the bar exam and those without. Because protecting the public from an unscrupulous litigator does not turn on making sure they know the Rule Against Perpetuities. The dumbest, most unethical lawyer you know… passed a bar exam.

The exam is also the tool that enables destructive diploma mill practices. Law schools are incentivized to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars and turn people loose knowing that the bar exam will filter out — maybe — the people incapable of practicing. If law schools were held to stricter guidelines and benchmarking, we could trust that anyone who passed three years of iterative testing is ready to practice (and pay off their loans).

Make optional practice-area specific certification exams if the state wants to provide more guidance to the public. If a tax lawyer wants to bill themselves as a certified expert, they can take the affirmative step of taking and passing a… tax law exam. That does a lot more to communicate to the public that their lawyer is (a) competent for the task and (b) confident enough to have taking the extra step of getting certified.

Conclusion

All of these suggestions boil down to a single philosophical problem. Bar examiners consistently fail in viewing examinees as actual humans. It’s why we always have stories of examinees facing religious harasment, or forced to sit in their own urine, or screwed over because they’re menstruating or lactating during the exam. There’s just no minimum contacts between the exam cultists and humanity. Interpersonal Shoe, if you will.

But it’s why no one thinks of EMTs. Or the practicalities of a testing site. Or why the humanity of the examinees matters. It’s all tradition and the uncritical acceptance of the exam as a false idol.

As of this writing, the GoFundMe has just passed two-thirds of its goal and the classmate who organized the fundraiser told me “I am thankful for the support so far.” The most consistent question I received from readers over the weekend was if we knew of any way they could contribute to help out. Which is the ray of hope in this mess. While bar examiners offer bland statements without acknowledging how the refusal to give up on putting the test first could’ve ended in tragedy, the normal, rank-and-file lawyers out there are stepping up and helping out. Because lawyers are, ultimately, humans.

Most of them anyway.

Earlier: Bar Exam Taker Suffers Apparent Heart Attack
Bar Applicants Call B.S. On Examiner’s Account Of Test-Taker Suffering Cardiac Arrest

The post 5 Crucial Lessons From The Bar Exam’s Near Deadly Failure appeared first on Above the Law.