Students in exam hall. (Photo: bibiphoto/Shutterstock.com)

After taking public comments for almost three hours Monday, California's committee of bar examiners retreated behind closed doors to consider the fate of the July bar exam as COVID-19 spreads across the United States.

The committee was not expected to emerge from closed session to immediately announce a decision despite the public pleas from more than 50 people, many of them graduating law school students, to grant diploma privilege and allow them to practice law without having taken the bar exam.

New York on March 27 became the first state to officially postpone the July bar exam. Massachusetts announced Monday it will also postpone the exam to an as-yet-undermined date in the fall.

The National Conference of Bar Examiners, which produces the multistate portion of the test, announced Monday it will decide by May 5 whether there will be enough participating jurisdictions and test-takers to hold a July multistate bar exam. The nonprofit said last week that it will offer a separate exam in the fall for jurisdictions that can't or don't want to move ahead with the test in July amid the coronavirus outbreak.

In a letter submitted to California's state bar Monday, hundreds of recent and future law school students called the northeastern states' decision to postpone the exam "a messy alternative."

"The emergency diploma privilege is a superior alternative to postponement because it provides greater certainty and job security for law school graduates and employers and greater choice for clients," the letter said.

Granting graduates freedom from the exam will allow them to immediately go to work helping clients with housing and immigration issues, two areas where the letter-signers said legal need will likely skyrocket in wake of the pandemic.

"Just as our colleagues in medical schools have been called upon to join the front lines fighting COVID-19, so too are attorneys needed to fight for the rights of individuals most affected by this pandemic," the letter said. "We implore California to display leadership during these trying times and pave the way for the timely delivery of legal services."

The developments put California's committee of bar examiners, volunteers more accustomed to toiling quietly behind the scenes, under enormous scrutiny. A conference-call meeting Monday was chaotic, as members of the public shouted to be heard over each other and recorded alerts interrupted whenever someone joined or left the meeting. Some would-be attendees were blocked from the call after it reached capacity.

"This is the most public comment we've ever had," committee chairman Robert Brody said before he and his colleagues moved into closed session to consider options for the July bar exam, including postponement, holding an online exam or granting diploma privilege.

The committee must also decide what to do about two first-year exams, also known as baby bars, scheduled for June and October.

The committee did vote to allow California-accredited law schools to offer pass/fail grades during the 2020 spring and summer semesters as many American Bar Association schools have already done.

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