{"id":129478,"date":"2025-08-04T15:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T23:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/08\/04\/bar-applicants-call-b-s-on-examiners-account-of-test-taker-suffering-cardiac-arrest\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T15:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T23:44:07","slug":"bar-applicants-call-b-s-on-examiners-account-of-test-taker-suffering-cardiac-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/08\/04\/bar-applicants-call-b-s-on-examiners-account-of-test-taker-suffering-cardiac-arrest\/","title":{"rendered":"Bar Applicants Call B.S. On Examiner\u2019s Account Of Test-Taker Suffering Cardiac Arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Good news: the woman who collapsed during the New York bar exam<\/a> at Hofstra reportedly survived. That\u2019s worth saying up front because nothing that follows should overshadow that.<\/p>\n

But now that we know she\u2019s alive, we can get back to the other glaring issue: What in the actual hell is wrong with the people running this exam? <\/p>\n

When we first covered this story, we called the Board of Law Examiners seeking a statement and learned that they weren\u2019t answering their phones because \u2014 apparently \u2014 they\u2019re out of the office the rest of the week after the bar exam. Because why might anyone need to contact the people running the bar exam immediately after the bar exam? However, the Board eventually did make a statement<\/a> claiming that their \u201cpriority\u201d was the candidate suffering a medical emergency.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

This sounds a lot like a lawyer-advised statement. pic.twitter.com\/tmafrk1er4<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Sean Silverman: Silverman Bar Exam & LSAT Tutoring (@BarExamTutor) August 1, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The passive voice\u2026 the last refuge of the scoundrel.<\/p>\n

Witnesses \u2014 plural \u2014 disagree with this assessment. Several examinees took to social media to describe the situation and while details differ, the consistent theme is that test-takers sounded the alarm that someone needed help and the proctors seemed temporarily reluctant to act and in all events refused to stop the test as if firing up the defibrillator and yelling \u201cclear\u201d was just another ambient noise on par with a cough or dropped pencil.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Note that the test-taker they got on camera appears to be using a pseudonym. Bar examiners signaled during COVID that they were willing to retaliate against critics<\/a>, making people reluctant to call them out. Aside from everything else, the fact that examinees even entertain the idea that speaking up for someone who almost died<\/em> might cost them their license amounts to a genuine legitimacy crisis. If the bar examiners can\u2019t be trusted to accept \u201cperhaps don\u2019t let people die\u201d as a note, their reputation as a good faith actor is shot.<\/p>\n

Writing on LinkedIn, another examinee shared their experience<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

On day two of the bar (MBE day) about 15 minutes before the end of the AM session a young woman sitting about ten feet from where I was sitting collapsed. Initially, people around her thought she was experiencing a seizure, but it soon became clear that it was more serious than that. The proctors urged everyone in the area to continue their exam and began to attend to her, but there was nobody on hand with medical expertise. The proctors did not make an announcement asking if there was a medic in the room (of which there almost certainly was given that there were over a thousand examinees in the room) as they would on an airplane. Examinees did not have their phones and so could not call 911 and proctors were hesitant to do so for some reason, only calling for help after students begged them to. It took about ten minutes until campus security arrived and began to administer CPR and another couple of minutes until a defibrillator was brought. All the while, examinees were told to continue their exam and stay in their seats. I literally saw students scribbling away on their exam papers at the table right behind the young woman, just inches away from where medics were administering chest compressions to try to save her life. Proctors didn\u2019t bother moving the examinees in the immediate proximity to clear space for the medical personnel once they arrived. Only after the session was over did they allow people to leave their seats.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So when the Board says the tests were \u201cquickly collected and the candidates were dismissed for lunch\u201d it\u2019s like saying the Titanic \u201cconcluded its journey early.\u201d It\u2019s trying to create the impression that the proctors put a stop to the test as opposed to the event happening close to the scheduled end of the session. That\u2019s just clumsy ass-covering because it\u2019s an easily discoverable detail. It\u2019s also such a stupid deception. A breakdown that delays medical attention carries series legal implications so they can be expected to spin that<\/em> response, but the decision to stop the test for everyone else during the emergency is a separate matter. If they said, \u201cwe think our proctors dealt with the medical emergency appropriately, but we acknowledge that in the future the test should have been immediately suspended for the other examinees and will develop new protocols for this\u201d they wouldn\u2019t be conceding anything while showing at least some sense of the gravity of the situation. <\/p>\n

But they couldn\u2019t bring themselves to do that because it would require admitting \u2014 for even a second \u2014 that something might be more important than this dumb test. <\/p>\n

That, more so than even the response in the moment, is the real indictment of the bar exam as an institution. They\u2019ve had time to think about this and they still can\u2019t comprehend a response that might involve stopping the test. The ritual cannot be compromised!<\/p>\n

The woman survived. But the legitimacy of the bar exam remains in the toilet. And if the best the Board can offer is a press release version of \u201cwe did everything right,\u201d then maybe they\u2019re more out of touch than we even thought.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Bar Applicants Call B.S. On Examiner\u2019s Account Of Test-Taker Suffering Cardiac Arrest<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Good news: the woman who collapsed during the New York bar exam<\/a> at Hofstra reportedly survived. That\u2019s worth saying up front because nothing that follows should overshadow that.<\/p>\n

But now that we know she\u2019s alive, we can get back to the other glaring issue: What in the actual hell is wrong with the people running this exam? <\/p>\n

When we first covered this story, we called the Board of Law Examiners seeking a statement and learned that they weren\u2019t answering their phones because \u2014 apparently \u2014 they\u2019re out of the office the rest of the week after the bar exam. Because why might anyone need to contact the people running the bar exam immediately after the bar exam? However, the Board eventually did make a statement<\/a> claiming that their \u201cpriority\u201d was the candidate suffering a medical emergency.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

This sounds a lot like a lawyer-advised statement. pic.twitter.com\/tmafrk1er4<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Sean Silverman: Silverman Bar Exam & LSAT Tutoring (@BarExamTutor) August 1, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The passive voice\u2026 the last refuge of the scoundrel.<\/p>\n

Witnesses \u2014 plural \u2014 disagree with this assessment. Several examinees took to social media to describe the situation and while details differ, the consistent theme is that test-takers sounded the alarm that someone needed help and the proctors seemed temporarily reluctant to act and in all events refused to stop the test as if firing up the defibrillator and yelling \u201cclear\u201d was just another ambient noise on par with a cough or dropped pencil.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Note that the test-taker they got on camera appears to be using a pseudonym. Bar examiners signaled during COVID that they were willing to retaliate against critics<\/a>, making people reluctant to call them out. Aside from everything else, the fact that examinees even entertain the idea that speaking up for someone who almost died<\/em> might cost them their license amounts to a genuine legitimacy crisis. If the bar examiners can\u2019t be trusted to accept \u201cperhaps don\u2019t let people die\u201d as a note, their reputation as a good faith actor is shot.<\/p>\n

Writing on LinkedIn, another examinee shared their experience<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

On day two of the bar (MBE day) about 15 minutes before the end of the AM session a young woman sitting about ten feet from where I was sitting collapsed. Initially, people around her thought she was experiencing a seizure, but it soon became clear that it was more serious than that. The proctors urged everyone in the area to continue their exam and began to attend to her, but there was nobody on hand with medical expertise. The proctors did not make an announcement asking if there was a medic in the room (of which there almost certainly was given that there were over a thousand examinees in the room) as they would on an airplane. Examinees did not have their phones and so could not call 911 and proctors were hesitant to do so for some reason, only calling for help after students begged them to. It took about ten minutes until campus security arrived and began to administer CPR and another couple of minutes until a defibrillator was brought. All the while, examinees were told to continue their exam and stay in their seats. I literally saw students scribbling away on their exam papers at the table right behind the young woman, just inches away from where medics were administering chest compressions to try to save her life. Proctors didn\u2019t bother moving the examinees in the immediate proximity to clear space for the medical personnel once they arrived. Only after the session was over did they allow people to leave their seats.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So when the Board says the tests were \u201cquickly collected and the candidates were dismissed for lunch\u201d it\u2019s like saying the Titanic \u201cconcluded its journey early.\u201d It\u2019s trying to create the impression that the proctors put a stop to the test as opposed to the event happening close to the scheduled end of the session. That\u2019s just clumsy ass-covering because it\u2019s an easily discoverable detail. It\u2019s also such a stupid deception. A breakdown that delays medical attention carries series legal implications so they can be expected to spin that<\/em> response, but the decision to stop the test for everyone else during the emergency is a separate matter. If they said, \u201cwe think our proctors dealt with the medical emergency appropriately, but we acknowledge that in the future the test should have been immediately suspended for the other examinees and will develop new protocols for this\u201d they wouldn\u2019t be conceding anything while showing at least some sense of the gravity of the situation. <\/p>\n

But they couldn\u2019t bring themselves to do that because it would require admitting \u2014 for even a second \u2014 that something might be more important than this dumb test. <\/p>\n

That, more so than even the response in the moment, is the real indictment of the bar exam as an institution. They\u2019ve had time to think about this and they still can\u2019t comprehend a response that might involve stopping the test. The ritual cannot be compromised!<\/p>\n

The woman survived. But the legitimacy of the bar exam remains in the toilet. And if the best the Board can offer is a press release version of \u201cwe did everything right,\u201d then maybe they\u2019re more out of touch than we even thought.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Bar Applicants Call B.S. On Examiner\u2019s Account Of Test-Taker Suffering Cardiac Arrest<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good news: the woman who collapsed during the New York bar exam at Hofstra reportedly survived. That\u2019s worth saying up front because nothing that follows should overshadow that. But now that we know she\u2019s alive, we can get back to the other glaring issue: What in the actual hell is wrong with the people running […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":129448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Headshot-300x200-yzEXg5.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}