A fair bar exam cannot be administered today. The State Bar and the California Supreme Court have spent months unsuccessfully searching for a way to offer the bar exam. This must stop. When all of the options are carefully evaluated and no workable solutions exist, it is time to move into the modern age and chart a new path—one without an exam. The focus on an exam to the exclusion of all other solutions has left California with no plan at all.

Law schools and their graduates have waited patiently hoping for an announcement that would be more thoughtful and workable than some of the jurisdictions who rushed their plans and later had to change course. But the delays continue and no plan emerges for California. Meanwhile, graduates do not have unlimited money to support themselves, or unlimited time to wait for their licensing process to be complete.

The lack of leadership by the California Supreme Court and the California State Bar is an embarrassment. To insist upon a licensing exam that has been under attack for years is indefensible as a pandemic rages on. No one has produced any data to support the notion that somehow a high-stakes licensing exam leads to better attorneys. No one has suggested a way to offer an exam without serious health risks. Yet the State Bar and the Supreme Court remain steadfast in their commitment to an exam.