Indiana University Maurer School of Law-Bloomington. (Courtesy photo)

Indiana is the latest jurisdiction to get creative with the bar exam amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Indiana Supreme Court announced May 7 that the exam will take place in late July, but it will be shortened to one day—down from the usual two—and it will be delivered online. That makes Indiana the first jurisdiction to commit to an online July exam, and the first to say it is creating its own coronavirus version of the licensing test. (Both Massachusetts and California have said their bar exams might be online, but each have postponed the July test until September.)

"As a result of the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, it is unclear whether the State Board of Law Examiners will be able to safely administer a two-day, in-person Indiana bar examination on July 28-29, 2020 as scheduled or at any later date in calendar year 2020," reads the court's order.

Jurisdictions have been struggling for weeks with what to do about the upcoming bar exam. Some, including Florida and Texas, are moving ahead with plans to administer the traditional two-day test on July 28 and 29, with some health and safety measures such as requiring test takers to wear masks and increasing the space between tables and examinees. Others, including New York, California, and Illinois, have pushed the exam back to early September—one of two alternative fall dates offered by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, which designs the bar exam.

Utah is the only jurisdiction thus far to adopt an emergency diploma privilege. That will allow qualifying recent graduates from American Bar Association-accredited law schools to be admitted to the bar without taking the licensing exam, provided they complete 360 hours of supervised legal work before the end of 2020.

Half of Indiana's modified, one-day exam will consist of Indiana-specific essay questions, while the other half will be short-answer questions based on topics that are tested on the Multistate Bar Exam. The MBE is the 200-question, multiple-choice portion of the traditional bar exam.

Austen Parrish, dean of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law-Bloomington, said Friday law schools don't yet have many details, but it appears that the Indiana Board of Law Examiners is creating the abbreviated test. (The state board prepares the Indiana law essay questions in normal circumstances, but typically uses the Multistate Bar Exam and the Multistate Performance Test from the National Conference of Bar Examiners. Indiana has not adopted the Uniform Bar Exam.) Test takers should have more information about how the exam will be administered and proctored by May 28, according to the court's order.

Student reaction to the decision has been very positive, Parrish said.

"From my perspective, the decision balances the need for ensuring minimum competency in a reasonable way, while understanding the significant costs and worry that a delayed exam would impose on soon-to-be graduates," he said. "It also recognizes that even a September exam could face difficulties in administration. I hope other states will consider and follow this approach."

Bar authorities in many jurisdictions have appeared reluctant to stray too far from the traditional test, even amid the coronavirus outbreak. The National Conference of Bar Examiners issued a paper in April warning that allowing law graduates to skip the bar exam altogether poses a risk to the public of unqualified lawyers joining the profession. The five largest exam jurisdictions have all said they will administer the test.

Like Utah, Indiana is a relatively small exam jurisdiction. Just 457 sat for the July bar in 2019, compared with nearly 10,000 in New York and 8,000 in California.