Pennsylvania has canceled its plans for an in-person bar exam in September, citing the intensifying COVID-19 pandemic.

The Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners informed test takers Wednesday that it has switched to an online exam given Oct. 5 to 7. A day later, the Kentucky Supreme Court followed suit, announcing that in-person exams scheduled for both July and September were cancelled, replaced by an online October test. Pennsylvania and Kentucky become the sixth and seventh jurisdictions, respectively, to scrap plans for an in-person test in either July or September, as bar examiners scramble to find alternative ways to deliver the licensing test safely.

"As you know, we moved the in-person bar exam from the end of this month to the beginning of September with hopes that the course of the COVID-19 pandemic would allow us to administer an in-person exam safely at that later time," wrote Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners chairman David Fine in a letter to examinees. "The best information from health authorities now compels us to conclude that it is unlikely we could do so."

Pennsylvania will use the abbreviated online version of the bar exam being offered by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, administered Oct. 5 and 6. Pennsylvania's exam will include essay questions given Oct. 5 and 7, with 100 Multistate Bar Exam questions—which are multiple choice—given Oct. 6. (The remote proctoring technology Pennsylvania plans to use requires more frequent testing breaks, hence the essay questions are being split over two days instead of the typical one.)

Danielle Conway, dean of the Penn State Dickinson Law, said Thursday that a remotely delivered exam is better than an in-person one at a time when COVID-19 shows no sign of abating. But she said that an emergency diploma privilege that would allow graduates to be licensed without taking the bar is the best option right now. Law graduates in Pennsylvania have joined together to lobby bar examiners to extend a diploma privilege, thus far without success.

"This is an important step for Pennsylvania, because the Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners recognized the need to protect the health and safety of our graduates, but it really is a compromise position," she said. "The compromise will not consider the disadvantages being shouldered by a segment of the test taking community."

Any bar exam, including an online one, will disadvantage test takers who are struggling to care for children or ill family members, or those who don't have reliable internet access, Conway noted. And the stress and anxiety of the pandemic itself has made it more difficult for law grads to study for the exam.

Kentucky had planned to administer in-person bar exams on both July 28 and 29, and Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, but examinees registered for either date will now be automatically enrolled in the October online test, according to the Kentucky Office of Bar Admissions.

The National Conference of Bar Examiners unveiled plans for a shorter online October bar exam in June after coming under increasing pressure to offer an alternative to gathering hundreds or thousands of test takers in one place for multiple days. Conference president Judith Gundersen at the time said it would likely prove a last resort for jurisdictions—in part because scores earned on the online test are not transferable throughout the 35 Uniform Bar Exam jurisdictions and because jurisdictions will have to score the online exams themselves. But the online option has proven to be more attractive to bar examiners in recent weeks as COVID-19 cases climb.

Thus far, Washington D.C., Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky have said they will use that online exam exclusively. Texas, Arizona and Oregon are also planning to give the online October bar in addition to an in-person exam option for either July or September. Florida canceled its in-person July bar exam at the start of the month, and is developing its own online test, to be given in August. Indiana, Michigan, Nevada and Louisiana are also creating their own online exams.

"[The National Conference of Bar Examiners] realizes that the limited emergency option, which allows for local admission only, will not meet the needs of everyone who hopes to be licensed in 2020," the conference said in a prepared statement Thursday. "Recognizing that COVID-19 could continue to impact testing in the future, [the conference] is actively developing solutions for 2021, including exploring whether the [Uniform Bar Exam] could be conducted remotely or online in a way that ensures reliable and valid scores and is accessible to examinees in terms of having the necessary technology and a quiet environment in which to test."