Upwards of 30,000 people are slated to take online bar exams in October, but virtually no jurisdiction is planning to hold so-called “stress tests” to see if the software platform delivering the test will hold up under the strain.
That’s a concern for law graduates like Melanie Blair, who is planning to take Illinois’ online exam Oct. 5 and 6. Blair is among the 11 examinees who filed a petition Sept. 1 asking the Illinois Supreme Court to compel the Illinois Board of Bar Admissions to conduct two live mock exams in the weeks before the exam to test the platform provided by ExamSoft—the outside vendor that every jurisdiction offering an online exam has contracted with. The court denied the petition two days later in a terse opinion that offered no reasoning for the decision.
