By Erin Coe

Law360 (April 1, 2020, 11:26 AM EDT) -- When Georgetown University Law Center graduate Samantha Peppers found out she passed the New York State bar exam in October, she thought her lifelong dream of becoming a lawyer would become a reality in a matter of months, but the worsening coronavirus crisis is making it harder for her to see when she's going to cross the finish line.

Like Peppers, more than 10,000 law graduates took the New York State bar exam in July 2019, and of the approximately 6,500 who passed, many have yet to make it through the application process. Some are still waiting for character and fitness interviews and subsequent admission ceremonies, while others are still responding to notices by bar officials that their applications are incomplete. And the nearly 3,600 test-takers in February 2020 are on deck to start the application process once they find out if they passed.

However, the spread of the coronavirus has thrown many young professionals' carefully crafted career plans into disarray for the moment.

"I worked incredibly hard to finish law school, I worked incredibly hard to pass the bar and be where I'm at now," said Peppers, a law clerk pending admission to the bar at a large firm in Manhattan. "I've wanted to be a lawyer my entire life, and I just want to know the process is still moving along and that alternatives are being discussed so that I can actually be one."

A notice on the New York State Board of Law Examiners' website states its office is closed until further notice as a result of the coronavirus crisis, and while grading of test-takers' February 2020 bar exams is progressing, the board said results may be delayed past the usual May 1 deadline. And on Friday, the New York Court of Appeals announced that it would postpone the next bar exam set for July 2020 and reschedule it sometime this fall.

Some applicants told Law360 that while they have received emails from judicial departments of the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division that their upcoming character interviews and admission ceremonies set for March and April have been canceled, applicants haven't received additional guidance on what the next steps are.

Laura Halperin, a graduate of The George Washington University Law School who took the New York bar exam in July 2019, was looking forward to being sworn in as a lawyer in April at the same Brooklyn courthouse that her grandfather had been sworn into decades ago, but the bar notified her in mid-March that her scheduled interview and conditional ceremony had been canceled.

While she works at a small firm on the East Coast and says her job is stable, she is still worried that her firm, as well as other small firms and nonprofits, will be left in a tough spot if applicants' ability to obtain law licenses remains in question over the next several months.

"You can't be sent to court on your own, you can't sign filings, you can't go to administrative hearings," she said. "You need a much higher level of supervision before you become a member of the bar."

Halperin said she's interested to hear if New York judicial departments are considering holding interviews telephonically or allowing attorneys to be sworn-in in absentia as jurisdictions like the District of Columbia permit. New York admission ceremonies currently are required to occur in open court.

"I know the departments are not trying to leave us out to dry, but it's a scary moment, and it's hard not having any guidance," she said. "Not hearing anything about what they're thinking or [getting a sense of] what can be done with technology … is nerve-wracking."

Many law graduates move into jobs requiring bar admission, according to a policy paper published in March by a group of law professors. Of the more than 24,000 graduates of American Bar Association-accredited law schools who took jobs with this requirement in 2018, nearly half of the jobs were with the government, firms of 10 or fewer lawyers, public interest organizations and firms of 11-25 lawyers.

"These four groups of employers, notably, tend to serve the needs of low-income individuals, middle-income individuals and small businesses. Disrupting the flow of new lawyers into these workplaces will undermine service to groups that already struggle to obtain services from our legal system," according to the paper.

BigLaw firms also are eager to have law clerks and graduates transition to licensed lawyers, though there can be a little more flexibility. However, if law clerks are interested in pro bono work, which tends to involve less supervision, they could be limited in what they can do without a licensed lawyer by their side.

These concerns aren't lost on Alan Scheinkman, presiding justice of the Second Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division, who chairs the New York State Bar Association's task force on the bar exam. He knows delays in bar admissions have a profound effect on applicants, limiting some from the jobs they can take and the compensation they can earn.

Yet he's quick to point out that these are not normal times. As more people die and fall ill from COVID-19 and the U.S. government issues social-distancing guidelines to minimize its spread, courts are limiting operations and some law firms are cutting lawyer pay and laying off employees.

"Unless and until social-distancing restrictions are changed, our hands are kind of tied," he said.

When asked if judicial departments are considering moving any of the interviews or admission ceremonies to phone or video sessions, Justice Scheinkman said they have to wait to see what's going on. He said these events don't typically involve work that can be done remotely, and they require a lot of coordination between judges and clerical staff.

"It will be dependent on when we can resume more normalized operations," he said. "When that happens, we will do everything we can to get people admitted as quickly as we can and use technology to do that. It's just a very unfortunate situation. We can't put a large number of people in a room."

In the Second Judicial Department, about half of applicants who took the July 2019 bar exam as well as some earlier test-takers completed the admissions process before New York residents were ordered to stay at home on March 20, according to Justice Scheinkman. However, about 200 applicants are waiting for character interviews, an additional 200 applicants or so are waiting for court ceremonies, and about 350 applicants have incomplete applications, he said.

The number of applicants still wading through the admission process in New York's three other judicial departments is not available at this time, according to a spokesman at the New York State Unified Court System earlier this week.

In light of the disruptions to courts and applicants due to the coronavirus crisis, there is a big opportunity here for the New York bar application process to be revised, according to Kevin Ratana Patumwat, a Harvard Law School graduate who passed the July 2019 bar and is tentatively scheduled for a character interview and ceremony in May.

New York bar officials and judicial departments should consider allowing a notary public to swear in new lawyers, holding character interviews virtually, letting applicants secure signatures from previous employers that can be scanned and emailed, and perhaps postponing court ceremonies for later on, he said.

"As long as people are certified, if there is no ceremony, people could live," Patumwat said.

In the meantime, applicants continue the waiting game.

Peppers is turning 30 in September, and she was hopeful she'd be a lawyer by then. Her optimism hasn't been lost.

"Still hopeful!" she added.

--Editing by Rebecca Flanagan and Alyssa Miller.

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