The deans of all 15 law schools in New York have joined the push for an emergency diploma privilege that would let recent graduates become licensed without taking the bar exam.

In a July 17 letter to the New York Court of Appeals, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and several other elected officials, the deans requested the state adopt a diploma privilege "in the swiftest way possible." Their letter came one day after the Court of Appeals canceled the exam that was to be held in-person Sept. 9 and 10 without committing to any alternatives. (The September exam was a postponement of the traditional July bar exam.)

"The State of New York currently has no clear plan to facilitate the admission to the bar of thousands of our recent graduates," reads the deans' letter. "These graduates now are in a state of limbo, with a profound level of uncertainty and anxiety that surrounds their futures and economic stability as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic."

Meanwhile, state lawmakers are stepping up their efforts to enact a diploma privilege for law graduates. Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon plans to introduce an updated version of an earlier bill that would create a diploma privilege. Under her revised bill, law graduates would be admitted to the bar in New York after completing 100 hours of practice under the supervision of an attorney. That diploma privilege would remain in effect until September 2021, or until the COVID-19 state of emergency has ended.

"Current applicants for the bar need to be able to begin the practice of law for which they have studied and, in many cases, taken on enormous student debt without endangering their health and safety and that of their families," reads a memo that accompanies Simon's revised bill.

Law graduates have been lobbying for a diploma privilege in New York for months. On July 13, an advocacy group called United for Diploma Privilege New York sent a letter to the Court of Appeals signed by more than 1,500 people requesting a hearing in which law graduates could make their case for an emergency diploma privilege amid the COVID-19 pandemic. A separate group last week sent a letter to Cuomo urging him to use his authority to implement a diploma privilege.

Asked for comment on the July 17 letter from the law deans, a court spokesman referred to a Monday update delivered by Court of Appeals Chief Judge Janet DiFiore that reiterated the expansion of a supervised practice program under which recent law gradates may practice until they have the chance to take the bar exam, and the creation of a work group to make recommendations on how to license new attorneys this year. That work group will look at whether New York should administer the abbreviated online bar exam being offered Oct. 5 and 6 by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, DiFiore said.

"The group is also considering whether New York should adopt an emergency diploma privilege in lieu of the bar exam or whether we should take any other immediate measures designed to ameliorate the difficulties faced by our 2020 law graduates," she said.

But the court's working group isn't expected to make any recommendations until early August. That's too long for law graduates to remain uncertain about their professional futures, the New York law deans argue. Recent graduates have quit jobs, taken leaves of absence, and taken out loans to fund their bar studies, they wrote.

"While we support the adoption of an online examination as an option, the excessive delay in making a final determination on such an exam places an undue burden on our graduates who have been studying intensively for licensure for the past two months in the midst of extreme public health concerns and hardship," reads the deans' letter.

Utah, Washington and Oregon have thus far adopted emergency diploma privileges in response to the challenges posed to the bar exam by COVID-19. But allowing aspiring attorneys to skip the exam has been a hard sell in many other jurisdictions. Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri and Colorado are among the growing number of jurisdictions where courts and licensing entities have recently denied diploma privilege petitions filed by examinees.