Nightmare in apple country

If you'll pardon the expression, OMG. The Washington State bar exam has been cancelled because they couldn't get adequate wi-fi in the exam rooms, which were in Yakima. The bar examiner bureaucrats struggled with the problem for several hours yesterday morning, keeping the already unbearably stressed examinees on location and in suspense for hours. Eventually they called the whole thing off.

Having taken bar exams in a couple of states, and having taught bar review courses for more than 20 years, I can tell you that this is an unmitigated disaster, causing untold angst for about 600 law school graduates who just sacrificed eight weeks cramming for what may be the most important moment of their young lives. And so far, the bureaucrats aren't offering them much by way of consolation or relief:

Renata de Carvalho Garcia, chief regulatory counsel of the Washington State Bar Association, said in an email to test takers that “we do not have sufficient confidence that the technology issues have been resolved” in order to push the exam to Wednesday.

The email said the WSBA is working with the test maker, the National Conference of Bar Examiners, to hold a make-up test on Sept. 1. Test takers can also transfer their applications to the February 2027 sitting or receive a full refund....

Local testing staff in Yakima, Wash., where the test was taking place determined the bandwidth issues couldn’t be resolved in order to complete the test and exam takers were dismissed for the day, according to NCBE. It added that the bandwidth issues “did not involve the NextGen testing platform."

One of my recurring nightmares is being in a strange place and my phone won't work. Hundreds of innocent souls are now living that terrifying dream.

You've got to wonder what the heck the exam was doing in Yakima. The "Palm Springs of Washington" is two to three hours away from the nearest law school. And for that matter, why weren't there at least a couple of different locations closer to where the candidates live? One in Spokane, one in Seattle, one in Vancouver. Easy peasy.

But wherever the exam was held, if the adequacy of the internet access at the test facility was not throughly checked in advance, well, as most of the examinees could have told you on the test, that would be negligence. And there are monetary damages. Think about how much money has been wasted in the applicants' travel expenses. Not to mention the costs of day care for some of their loved ones. 

Then there are the celebrations and vacations that are supposed to start tomorrow. They're not going to be half as much fun as was planned, if they happen at all.

But the worst offense is having to continue the cramming ordeal for another month and change (at the least). That's some serious emotional distress.

Already there are calls for just giving everybody in the room a pass to bar membership. But in a normal July exam, only seven out of 10 normally pass; should the other three get a freebie because Yakima is still on dial-up? It will ultimately be up to the state supreme court to decide.

Whatever happens now to the exam-takers, I can't help but join them in saying shame, shame, shame on the Washington bar examiners. 

WSBA directed questions about the cause of the WiFi problems to the Yakima Convention & Event Center where the test... took place.

What a load of manure. In any normal organization, heads would roll. But it's a state government bureaucracy, and so that seems unlikely.

There are many other issues with how people become lawyers these days. Don't get me started. But this episode is beyond inexcusable.

UPDATE, Thursday afternoon: