While law students across the country have joined forces to lobby state courts and bar examiners to adopt emergency diploma privileges that would allow them to skip the bar exam altogether due to the coronavirus pandemic, authorities who oversee attorney admission are beginning to coalesce around a different alternative now that the July bar exam looks unlikely: temporarily allowing law graduates to practice under the supervision of licensed attorneys until they have the chance to sit for the bar.

After the New Jersey Supreme Court on Monday officially postponed the July bar exam until the fall and announced an expanded supervised practice provision, the movement toward such alternatives got a boost Tuesday. That’s when the American Bar Association’s Board of Governors adopted a resolution urging jurisdictions to cancel the July bar and allow 2019 and 2020 law graduates to practice under supervision until they take and pass the bar exam in 2021.