Illinois Law Grads - Please Sign On to Support Diploma Privilege for Recent Grads
If you graduated from law school in Illinois, please join me and support the authorization of diploma privilege for the Illinois bar exam this year, which would allow the granting of Illinois law licenses to those who intended to take the bar exam this year on the basis of their graduation from law school. Numerous deans and professors at other law schools in Illinois are advocating for diploma privilege for the Illinois bar exam. At least two other states have already granted diploma privilege to their recent grads- Washington and Utah (Oregon has passed a temporary diploma privilege). This is /not/ an unreasonable ask but the most reasonable solution to the current unprecedented pandemic.
I know about all this because of various advocates on Twitter and the Illinois for Diploma Privilege facebook group. Everything I’ve written here is about Illinois because that’s where I went to law school (DePaul, wooo), but this issue is happening in almost every other state, so if you’re a law grad from another area, please go participate in the efforts for diploma privilege in those states too!.
If you’d like to see the petition we filed with the Illinois Supreme Court, it’s here (I signed on to it) - There are a ton of impact statements on here which make me tear up – it’s extremely clear that holding an in person bar exam at any point while this pandemic is uncontained is going to really hurt people and already has.
The IBAB’s response to our petition is linked here – and is opposed to diploma privilege.
******If you didn’t get to sign on the first time, you can email molliejmcguire@gmail.com to add your signature to a potential supplemental filing - Go here for more info .
Here's an oped in the Washington Post from the leaders of the United for Diploma Privilege facebook group explaining a lot of the reasoning -
Fortune has written an article about this as well.
Please consider the following:
1. The Bar Exam doesn't actually test for fitness to practice law. Anyone who has taken this and then later actually practiced law knows this, because they're completely different skills.
And at this point, a bar exam isn't going to assess any test taker' competency, but will only assess how well they're managing during a global pandemic. Any test taker with significant personal, financial, or health problems due to the host of worldwide issues caused by COVID 19 will be put at a significant disadvantage. Financial means, personal privilege, and pure luck (in avoiding COVID) will be what's tested, not legal knowledge or test taking skills.
2. It's prohibitively dangerous at this time to host an in person Illinois Bar Exam given the continuing threat of COVID-19. Although Illinois has postponed the bar until September, all signs indicate that this crisis will /not/ be over until next year sometime, after we have a vaccine and our numbers actually go down. We should absolutely not put people in the position of choosing between their health/the health of the people they live/interact with and their ability to practice the law.
In addition, the fact that the exam keeps getting rescheduled and changed at the last minute (and will likely get rescheduled again) is incredibly stressful on test takers. It's standard practice for most people taking the bar exam to take two months off to study for the exam. This can be a huge financial strain in the best of times, and when the actual date of the test is so uncertain and the amount of time needed to study for the bar keeps growing and being delayed, it puts test takers in a horrible and untenable situation for both financial and mental health.
3. IT experts who practice law have spoken out to state that we do not currently have the technology to ensure a fair and reasonable online bar exam that is equally available to all participants, as such an exam would likely require significant internet bandwidth, computer memory, and ancillary devices such as webcams (which would be kept on the entire time to ensure there's no cheating). Since proctors actually don't have the time to watch hundreds of hours of footage, they'll likely be using AI tech to track any anomalies and to check for facial recognition. Studies show that facial recognition software recognizes white men more readily than any other person, thus, such technology is going to cause more problems for any non-white man and will likely shorten these test-taker's test time and increase the likelihood of their scores being questioned due to these known issues. Someday, we will have the technology and equal tech access for all test takers to make this option viable, but everything I've read indicates that we're not there yet. These issues are explained VERY WELL in this twitter thread from Tom McMasters.
4. Some have suggested extending recent grads a temporary license to practice under supervision until December 2021. However, this is only a temporary solution that will create further problems down the road. When is a public service lawyer or a small firm lawyer or a public defender going to find time to study for the bar exam in 2022 on top of a full time job serving clients who desperately need their help?
The only solution that adequately addresses all the issues present here is diploma privilege to Illinois bar exam test takers.
As I stated previously, if you're an Illinois law school grad who didn’t get to sign on the first time, you can email molliejmcguire@gmail.com to add your signature to a potential supplemental filing - Go here for more info .