The process of admission to the bar has been particularly stressful for the class of 2020. Their last semester of law school was disrupted and forced online. The summer when most graduates focus on studying for the bar exam was instead filled with unprecedented anxiety for themselves their loved ones and our nation, as well as uncertainty regarding when, or indeed whether, the bar exam would be held. The first postponement of the normal late July sitting, the second cancellation of the planned September administration, and the concession that it would not be possible to hold an in-person bar exam, all added to anxiety well beyond normal.

Finally, on Oct. 5 and 6, a special Remote Bar Examination was administered through the National Conference of Bar Examiners by several jurisdictions, including New Jersey and New York. It is an abridged version of the Uniform Bar Examination (approximately half the length) drafted specially for this purpose. The score is not formally portable in the same way as the conventional UBE score, but New Jersey has entered into reciprocity agreements with several other states, including New York, by which those states will transfer the Remote Bar Examination score if it meets their own cut score.

Applicants taking the Remote Bar Exam completed the exam online in their own homes or other location with Internet access, with an unnerving remote proctoring application that used the computer's webcam to surveil the applicant's immediate area to detect unauthorized assistance. It was not ideal, but very few activities have been ideal since March, and we have thus far not heard of any reason to think that the process was not fundamentally fair.