Back in March, when the phrase "social distancing" was still new, a group of law professors urged bar authorities around the country to start planning major changes for the next bar exam, scheduled for the last week of July.

The 11 professors, including Andrea Curcio of Georgia State University College of Law, said online bar exams would be risky because applicants could have trouble accessing safe spaces and solid Internet service, among other challenges.

Now that Georgia and many other states have decided to administer their bar exams online, Curcio spoke to the Daily Report to offer her thoughts.

Curcio said she appreciates the exam, which was set for more than 1,000 applicants in a conference center, being scheduled online. "It's going to save literally thousands of lives," she said.

Holding an exam so that recent law graduates can get their licenses to practice law will also, of course, help them—and an expected increase in clients needing legal advice to navigate evictions, bankruptcies and other economic fallout from virus suppression efforts.

An imperfect exam, she said, "is better than not having an exam at all." That situation that may be occurring in New York, where authorities canceled a September in-person exam without, so far, an online replacement.

Curcio still has some concerns about Georgia's online exam and thoughts about other avenues for recent law graduates to be licensed without needing to take an exam.

Curcio sounded confident that Georgia test-takers will be able to find safe, quiet places to take the exam that have sufficient Internet access, especially if law schools open their facilities to those who need them.

She is more concerned about how the exam will be graded and how a passing score will be determined, given that the National Council of Bar Examiners is not offering to help states analyze test data so that scores are compatible with how applicants were scored in previous years.

Curcio, who teaches civil procedure, evidence and civil pretrial litigation and also works on legal education and bar exam issues, suggested that bar applicants get a little more time, such as 30 minutes, for the essay questions, given the new format of online case materials that might require a lot of scrolling.

She also suggested allowing open book testing, as Nevada is doing. Doing so would relieve many security issues, she says, and may serve as a "security blanket" to applicants who have had to prepare for the test in such unusual circumstances.

"This year's examinees are incredibly stressed," she said. Many planned on studying for 10 weeks for the bar exam, not for a process that would last till October. Many graduates had student loans that were timed to run out this summer, when they were expecting to start legal jobs that have been postponed till next year.

Curcio also suggested two other paths to bar licensure that would not require a bar exam, relieving pressure on applicants.

A "supervised practice" would allow an applicant to works for an experienced bar member for a specific period of time, such as 320 hours. The applicant be able to join the bar if the supervising lawyer certified the work the applicant did and expressed confidence that the applicant could serve clients appropriately.

Curcio imagined this process working well with big firms, prosecuting, public defender and legal aid offices .

"Clinical licensure," she said, could be granted to applicants, if their professors certified their work in law school supervised clinics allowed sufficient experience to be able to practice law. Curcio said law schools could compile that information within a month.

A spokeswoman for the state Supreme Court said the Office of Bar Admissions' announcement Monday of specific details about the online exam will address many of Curcio's ideas.