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Law360 (August 20, 2020, 10:43 PM EDT) -- More than 50 Florida attorneys as well as Florida Bar applicants who are waiting to take the now-postponed bar exam filed a petition Thursday with the state's high court asking for an emergency rule that would allow recent law graduates to practice without having to pass the bar exam.
The petition comes one day after Florida Chief Justice Charles Canady issued an apology to bar applicants and acknowledged the failure of officials responsible for the test. It also comes after the Florida Board of Bar Examiners said it is developing a program that would allow applicants to temporarily work under the supervision of a member of the Florida Bar.
The bar exam, which had been set to be administered online for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was scheduled for Wednesday but canceled on Sunday due to repeated problems with the testing software. The cancellation sent law school graduates scrambling to figure out whether promised job offers will be withdrawn and how they will pay for expenses until a new exam date in October.
"The disruption of the settled expectations has created extreme financial hardships, loss of employment opportunities, loss of health care and repeated psychological stress," the petitioners said. "While all lawyers are aware of the stress of taking the bar exam within settled expectations, none have the experiences of these students who cannot reach the finish line for no fault of their own."
The petitioners say that other states, including Utah, Washington, Oregon and Louisiana, have allowed recent law school graduates to practice law without taking the bar due to problems in giving a bar exam during the pandemic.
The petitioners propose that the emergency rule include that in place of passing the bar exam, new attorneys have a supervising attorney for at least six months who is a member of the Florida Bar who has been in good standing for at least five years. If a supervised attorney takes and passes the bar exam before those six months are up, the person would no longer be subject to supervision, the petitioners propose.
In a four-minute video posted Wednesday, Justice Canady said he cannot guarantee that future efforts will be flawless but assured applicants that the court and the FBBE has learned from recent events and will put alternative plans in place so that "one way or another, there will be an October administration of the bar exam."
The chief justice said that since the onset of the pandemic — which had already forced a shift of the July 28-29 in-person exam to an online version of the test — the goal has been to administer an exam as expeditiously as possible while ensuring it is a valid and secure examination and is offered in a safe manner for test-takers.
The chief justice also made reference to the FBBE's announcement that it would develop a program that would allow applicants to temporarily work under the supervision of a member of the Florida Bar. But he acknowledged that the program, which is slated to begin by mid-September — the earliest date that exam grades would have been released for the summer bar exam — is a "stopgap measure that will provide limited relief to a limited number of applicants."
--Additional reporting by Carolina Bolado and Nathan Hale. Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.
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