March 3, 2025 • 25 mins
Welcome back to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast! Today, we're discussing the turmoil surrounding the recent California bar exam. We highlight the inadequate preparation, technical issues, and potential future repercussions on law students and bar exam candidates. Tune in to learn more about the situation and hear about potential next steps and advice for those impacted.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Various exam-day issues that occurred
- Post-exam confusion
- Financial and legal implications
- Future of the California bar exam
- Our advice for affected students
Resources:
- Private Bar Exam Tutoring (https://barexamtoolbox.com/private-bar-exam-tutoring/)
- The California Bar Experiment YouTube series (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT5txTOjOHmTwR9HiPiib3N-STp7PxM-O)
Download the Transcript
(https://barexamtoolbox.com/the-aftermath-of-the-february-2025-california-bar-exam/)
If you enjoy the podcast, we'd love a nice review and/or rating on Apple Podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bar-exam-toolbox-podcast-pass-bar-exam-less-stress/id1370651486) or your favorite listening app. And feel free to reach out to us directly. You can always reach us via the contact form on the Bar Exam Toolbox website (https://barexamtoolbox.com/contact-us/). Finally, if you don't want to miss anything, you can sign up for podcast updates (https://barexamtoolbox.com/get-bar-exam-toolbox-podcast-updates/)!
Thanks for listening!
Alison & Lee
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alison Monahan (00:01):
Welcome to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast.
Today we're doing a special episode onthe mess of the California bar exam.
Your Bar Exam Toolbox hosts are AlisonMonahan, that's me, and Lee Burgess.
We're here to demystify the barexam experience, so you can study
effectively, stay sane, and hopefullypass and move on with your life.
Together, we're the co-creators of the LawSchool Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and
(00:24):
the career-related website CareerDicta.
I also run The Girl's Guide to Law School.
If you enjoy the show, please leavea review on your favorite listening
app, and check out our sister podcast,the Law School Toolbox podcast.
If you have any questions, don'thesitate to reach out to us.
You can reach us via the contactform on BarExamToolbox.com, and
we would love to hear from you.
(00:44):
With that, let's get started.
Lee Burgess (00:52):
Hi, this is Lee from the Law School Toolbox and the Bar Exam Toolbox.
I'm here with Alison andwe're here to talk about what
is happening in California.
There really are no words.
Alison Monahan (01:04):
Yeah, I think that's accurate.
I mean, we all thoughtthis was going to be bad.
In case you don't know, if you didn'ttake the California bar, they just
kind of made it up on the fly for thelast, I don't know, four to six months.
We knew it was going to be bad.
If you go back and listen to ouroriginal episode on this, we predicted
it would be bad, but I really thinkit was worse than anyone expected.
Lee Burgess (01:25):
Yes.
If anyone wants the full saga, you cancheck out our YouTube series on this.
We'll link to it in the show notes,where we've been doing updates.
But the test did happen and it was bad.
And now we are here in the aftermath.
So, it is also important for usto know what date we're recording
this because yes, there are stillunanswered questions here on February
28th, just days after the test.
(01:48):
Emails are still getting sentto people who sat for the
test and there is still chaos.
The chaos has not stopped.
So, we're here for you, but you needto know that this is the date of which
we are sharing information, and youneed to just own that part, I guess.
Alison Monahan (02:03):
Yeah, yeah.
I was pretty shocked that on the Fridaybefore the exam, I went and looked at
the California Bar website and they hadtotally changed certain things about how
things were going to be operating, whatthe software was going to let you do.
It turned out it couldn't really do thatanyway, but hey, they thought it might.
You used to launch software, I used tobe a programmer and launch software.
(02:25):
This is really not how you do this.
Lee Burgess (02:27):
Not how you do it.
No, this is not how you do it.
There are dry runs,there's a process for this.
I used a few different processes,and none of them were this.
basically.
Alison Monahan (02:37):
of them were, "Oh wait, the exam's over and we still don't know
how we're going to let certain peopletake the exam." Because the reality
is, we don't have that many students.
But we heard some crazy stuff, justfrom that small pool of students.
We had a student who on the essayday taking it remotely was just
never able to start the test.
Lee Burgess (02:56):
And then they told her that was just too bad,
and she could take it in July.
Alison Monahan (03:01):
Although now it looks like they've changed that.
It's pretty clear they knew this wasgoing to be a total mess, because
they had some makeup days alreadyscheduled as the 3rd and the 4th.
So that went around for a while.
That's not actually what's happening.
It's later in March now that they'rehaving people maybe retake - or take - if
they didn't take this the first time.
Apparently, they were planning onjust using the same essay questions.
(03:23):
Oh my God!
Lee Burgess (03:24):
Which I'm sure are all over Reddit by now.
Alison Monahan (03:26):
They're all over the Internet.
Within minutes of people leaving,they're talking about them.
The idea that you would just usethe same question a week or so
later who is in charge of this?
Lee Burgess (03:37):
Okay, so, for those who have not been following this, let's regroup.
So, just to bring everyone upto speed, California decides
to go rogue back in August.
Alison Monahan (03:47):
To save money.
Can we just flag that,because they wanted to save?
I think it was around $3 millionthat they needed to save.
I don't know if it's every year,every administration, whatever.
That was the stated goal.
Lee Burgess (03:58):
Right.
So then they say, "You know what wouldbe a great idea, is we should just hire
Kaplan, who's a test provider, to writeour multiple-choice questions, so we
can give a remote test, because the NCBEwho writes the MBE will not allow it to
be given remotely." Maybe this is why.
And they just then hire this othervendor called Meazure Learning to
(04:19):
administer the test and use a softwarethat is called ProctorU, and a whole
bunch of people signed up for thetest - many more than they thought
were going to - because it was remoteand you could take it anywhere in the
country - actually, within the world.
And they didn't test it particularlywell, and they had to open last minute
test centers, and everybody went totake the test, and we have a whole
(04:43):
lot of stories about what happened.
But they are very consistent stories,some of them being, couldn't take
the test at all - whoops-a-daisy,functionality just stopped working.
We heard stories from students thattheir machines were just having
error messages pop up periodically,that they lost Internet connections.
And these were using the MeazureLearning laptops at a testing center.
(05:07):
These weren't even athome on your own laptop.
This was using the machines that weregiven to you in a testing center.
There were still technical problems.
So there were technical problemsat home, there were technical
problems at the testing centers.
It was insane.
An hour to get into the testing software,even to be able to start the test.
Alison Monahan (05:25):
Yeah, I think that was one of my favorites, where they
said, "Oh, too many people are tryingto log in at once." You knew how many
people were going to be logging in.
Obviously, this was not load tested.
Why not?
Lee Burgess (05:36):
Yeah.
On the multiple-choice day atsome testing centers, things
went down for like 15 minutes.
There were open questions about whetherthe timekeeping software was keeping
accurate time - also disturbing.
And now we have all this discussionthat maybe they're going to reuse or not
reuse questions to give another test inMarch to some people who weren't able
(05:57):
to submit enough finished questions.
But we don't even know whatthose questions will be.
Will they be different?
Are they vetted?
Or is there someone at the bar writingquestions right now, just so they have
something to do in the end of March?
Not
Alison Monahan (06:11):
even the end.
Middle.
Lee Burgess (06:12):
Oh, middle.
Sorry, middle March.
Alison Monahan (06:13):
Two weeks.
We all might remember a few years agowhen they accidentally released the
topics in advance, but this, I'm like,"Well, is it going to be on the same
topics? Or is it definitely going to beon different topics?" Is it fair if one
person takes a Contracts question andone person takes a Civ Pro question?
How is that possibly fair?
And I loved the email that we sawlast night where they said, "Well,
if you submitted like four things onthe essay day, we're just going to
(06:37):
go ahead and grade it because we canjust do that." And I could see that
argument for somebody who's a clearpass or someone who's a clear fail.
If someone did very well on all ofthem, they're probably going to pass.
If they look at their MBE score,the quasi-MBE score, and it's
good - okay, that person probablyis going to pass regardless.
Same thing if somebody's going to fail.
(06:58):
But the problem area is the peoplein the middle, and this is a lot
of the people that we work with.
They might be 30 or 40 points off frompassing the first time they take it.
Those essays make a big difference.
If they do really well on one or reallypoorly on one, they may pass or fail.
There's literally no way that isfair to anyone who is on the border.
Lee Burgess (07:17):
No.
And the performance test, which can bea strength for some people, because you
don't need to know any law to do well.
So if you're someone who struggled withmemorization, or you're an attorney
applicant, because a lot of attorneyapplicants count on that performance test
to boost their score, because you don'thave to know any law - that was a piece
that had some pretty terrible problems,and if you don't get to have a performance
(07:40):
test, that's not going to be good.
Alison Monahan (07:41):
That's whole of the test.
How can they just be like, "We'rejust not going to grade that
part. It's not really relevant."Then why are you giving it?
Lee Burgess (07:49):
Also, just the fact that this was such chaos.
We heard from students thattook it in testing centers that
said that the proctors had noidea how the software worked.
They are waving down proctors forhelp, nobody knows what they're doing.
They're like, "We don't know. We'vejust been brought in", because they're
just the random proctor that they found.
When the software went down duringthe multiple choice, it was down for
(08:13):
like 15 to 20 minutes, and peoplestarted whispering - as one would
do when it looks like the test iscombusting - and they're like, "We're
in an active testing situation.
Nobody can speak." And you're like," Okay, this definitely feels like a
solid testing situation." I mean,the whole thing is just insanity.
(08:33):
And they are just hemorrhagingmoney, they're offering refunds.
They were offering refunds upto the test and they're going to
probably give fee waivers for peopleto take some of the July exam.
For those of you who don't know, to sitfor the California bar is a lot of money.
It's a very expensive bar to sit for.
Fee waivers add up.
Alison Monahan (08:49):
It's not even just that.
They're literally refunding peoplelike non-refundable hotel reservations.
I mean, the number I saw thrown aroundjust for that was like $3.1 million.
So that tells you we arenot saving money here.
That's not even counting having toactually schedule, what was it, four
large centers where they said theyweren't going to have that sort of thing.
Not to mention, I'm kind ofguessing there may be some lawsuits.
(09:11):
I don't think this is working outwell from a financial perspective.
No.
Lee Burgess (09:15):
I think we found out right before the test that they had to
renegotiate with Meazure Learning becausethey didn't include accommodations
testing in their original contract.
Alison Monahan (09:26):
And this really raises some questions for me.
And I brought this up, I think, inour very first episode of like, "Who
is behind all of this? Who is makingmoney on all of this? What tech bro
golfed with somebody at the Bar?" It'spretty clear they did not put out RFPs.
There was no time.
How would you have done that?
I obviously don't know that,but I'm guessing that they did
(09:49):
not do an RFP process on this.
So the question is, howis all this going down?
Who's benefiting from it?
Lee Burgess (09:55):
Who's benefiting from it?
Who did the contract reviews?
These contracts wereclearly not written well.
And who owns this problem?
That was one of the things youand I were talking about yesterday
when we were talking about this.
Is this the Bar's failure?
I mean, clearly.
But who is the person to stand upand say, "I'm where the buck stops.
This was my choice." Is the Supreme Courtin California, who technically the Bar
(10:19):
reports to going to just be like, "Oh, noproblem." I have to pay my bar dues and I
am I'm really waiting as long as possibleto give them money, because I'm so mad.
But they also hold the key to my kingdom.
I have to pay my bar dues,I don't have a choice.
Alison Monahan (10:34):
Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier today.
I'm like, shouldn't there bea test of minimum competency
for running the bar exam?
I don't know.
I feel like they're just certain,as we would say in our ski training,
certain "non-negotiables" thatneed to happen for you to pass.
And for them to pass administering thisexam, there need to be things like, people
are able to access all of the questions.
(10:56):
I don't think that's asking too much.
People are able to submitanswers to the questions.
Lee Burgess (11:00):
People shouldn't wait an hour to start the exam.
I vividly remember sitting down forthe test in the big testing center, and
that 15 minutes where you were waiting,where they hand out all the paperwork
and you're sitting with your laptop, andyour anxiety is just through the roof.
I cannot imagine doingthat for an hour or longer.
Alison Monahan (11:23):
Or sitting at your house, where they've told you you're
supposed to log on and you just can'tdo it, and that goes on the whole day.
Come on, that's not okay.
Lee Burgess (11:33):
No.
I also heard some reports - of coursewe haven't seen them - but that these
multiple-choice questions were not great.
Alison Monahan (11:41):
We haven't even gotten to that, which was one of
our main concerns in the beginning.
Lee Burgess (11:44):
That was in the beginning, we were like, "What about the multiple
choice?" All this other stuff has eclipsedthe fact that there are multiple-choice
questions that don't seem to be onpar with what people were expecting.
Alison Monahan (11:56):
Well, and also the fact that they had to send out a
redline correction of the ones theysubmitted for people to practice with,
again, a few days before the test.
I'm sorry, what?
And one of our tutors was usingthose questions and he wrote us, he's
like, "One of these is completelywrong. It is totally incorrect."
Lee Burgess (12:14):
If we're finding the errors, that's not a good thing.
Alison Monahan (12:17):
No.
No, I have heard from various peoplethat the questions were really kind
of weird, not good, a lot of theanswer choices didn't make sense.
I don't think, shockingly,they were really up to par.
Lee Burgess (12:28):
Well, because it wasn't vetted.
Listen, we create products, we makethings, we vet them with other people.
You and I create a new something or other.
It's usually read by other lawyerson our team to give us feedback.
Feedback is how you do work, really.
That's how you do it.
And there was no opportunity for feedback.
(12:49):
You know the other thing wehaven't heard a lot about lately?
Oh, The Experiment from the fall.
Alison Monahan (12:54):
What happened with that?
The exam happened.
Are people getting extra points?
We don't know.
Nobody's heard anything.
Lee Burgess (13:01):
When are people going to know?
How is this going to factor into allof this new grading scales they're
doing, some sort of statistics,gymnastics to create something?
I don't know.
It's just really sad, and that'swhy I'm just waiting until the
very last day to pay my bar ofdues, even though they don't care.
Whatever, I'm a sucker.
(13:21):
I'm going to have to pay thembecause I want to keep my license.
Alison Monahan (13:24):
Yeah.
I mean, let's be honest, the wholething is kind of a cartel on all sides.
So, we were talking the other day,really, probably they should just go
with the UBE and the NextGen, but thenCalifornia lawyers are going to be upset
because they don't want reciprocity.
You don't get the UBE withoutreciprocity, basically.
Lee Burgess (13:41):
Nope.
So, I don't know what's going to happen,and the Supreme Court's been silent.
Somebody's got to be callingthe Supreme Court, right?
Alison Monahan (13:49):
Also, the other thing is, what are they doing in July?
Are they going to reuse Meazure?
Hopefully not, but okay, are theygoing to pick a new platform?
Time's already short.
We're already short on time for July,and they were supposed to be having
Kaplan write the essay questions bythen, too, I think, in the original idea.
This is crazy.
We don't literally know how peopleshould be preparing for the July exam.
Lee Burgess (14:12):
Yeah, I was talking to someone this week who was talking
about prep, and I had to be like,"Well, I will have this conversation
with you, yet I cannot tell youwhat the July exam will look like."
so.
Alison Monahan (14:21):
It's just insanity.
It's literally crazy.
Lee Burgess (14:24):
It's insane.
And what it really all comesdown to it, this is supposed
to be for the public good.
The whole point of these bar exams...I mean, there may be various reasons
for the bar, but one of the reasonsis to license lawyers of minimum
competency, so that you can be prettysure that somebody who passed the
bar is qualified to practice law.
(14:44):
I don't know that the publicis really talking about
this, but it's just not good.
This isn't what the Bar is supposedto do, and the Bar is running out
of money, even though we pay obscenefees for bar dues in California.
It just feels like the whole thingneeds to be taken over by someone else.
Alison Monahan (15:06):
Who's competent.
Minimally.
Lee Burgess (15:07):
Who's competent.
Yes, minimally competent.
Yeah, and as we referred to,this is not the first time
Alison Monahan (15:13):
the California Board of Bar Examiners has screwed things
up, but this is really next level.
I mean, this is worse than COVID, whichto be fair, wasn't entirely on them.
The other thing about this is,it's entirely self-inflicted.
There was absolutely noreason this needed to happen.
They could have justhad a normal bar exam.
People would have taken it.
People would have passed or failed.
No one would have been suing themand complaining and whatever.
(15:34):
It didn't need to happen.
Lee Burgess (15:35):
No, this is all about them getting in a fight with the
NCBE, because the NCBE wouldn't letthem use their questions remotely.
And then the bar decided it neededto give a remote exam to cut costs.
And here we are.
I don't think any costs were cut.
Alison Monahan (15:51):
I do not think they were cut.
I think they were elevated.
I
Lee Burgess (15:54):
think they were elevated.
And frankly, there shouldbe lawsuits over this.
All the different reliance damages.
I mean, my contracts law is a littlerusty, but a lot of people spent a lot
of money and took time off of work.
And law firms are going to losemoney because people aren't
going to be able to be licensed.
Law firms count on people being licensed.
Alison Monahan (16:14):
Yeah, people may be losing jobs.
A lot of people, if they failed in July,February is their time to pass, and you're
going to lose your job in this mess?
Lee Burgess (16:21):
Somebody should be responsible for that.
I mean, who's going towork at the bar right now?
Who's just showing up and being like,"We should write this next email"?
I sat on those Q&As and listenedto the Q&As, and I know that
folks at the Bar were trying.
But at some point months ago, somebodyshould have said, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't
do this. Maybe we should just go backto the way it was", or something.
(16:44):
But this solution was such a mess.
You and I both worked in softwarerollouts and development.
Sometimes you pushed a rolloutbecause it wasn't ready to go,
it was riddled with errors.
You did not send anythinglive when it wasn't ready.
Come on.
Alison Monahan (17:01):
Well, anyone who says, "Oh well, we just did our best.
We couldn't have known" - just golisten to our very first episode.
This is not shocking.
Lee Burgess (17:09):
No, and honestly, I sat on those Q&As, where thousands
of people came to lodge complaints.
They 100% knew things were not going well.
The mock exams did not go well.
The Experiment did not go well.
This is no surprise to anyone.
It shouldn't be a surprise.
Maybe somebody was surprised.
Alison Monahan (17:27):
I mean, it shouldn't have been a surprise when you're
like, "Oh, we'll just do all this inwhat, five months, six months?" It
was obviously not going to go well.
That was not enough time, as we said.
Lee Burgess (17:36):
Yeah, I know.
So, it's a lot.
So, as we mentioned, thereis this makeup that was just
announced last night, on the 27th.
And you're going to get anemail offering it to you.
Alison Monahan (17:49):
I don't even know that it's really an offer.
It seemed to me like if they wantyou to do it and you don't do it,
then you have no shot at passing.
Lee Burgess (17:56):
Well, I guess they're only offering it to
you if you can't possibly pass.
So, I
Alison Monahan (18:01):
Well, it seemed to me they're offering to you
basically if they don't have enoughthat they might be able to grade.
So, if you either didn't get any of theessays because you were never able to
connect, or basically at least two ofthem were not processed or didn't upload
or whatever, then they're going to haveyou come and do this makeup day, or days.
It was two days.
But yeah, stay tuned, I guess.
(18:23):
Check your email.
Yeah, if you think you'reone of those people.
And people work,
Lee Burgess (18:26):
travel.
It's spring break for families coming up.
People
Alison Monahan (18:29):
might have had a bar trip planned.
People do bar trips.
Does no one remember this?
You leave the country for amonth after you take the bar.
I
Lee Burgess (18:35):
did that!
Alison Monahan (18:37):
I mean, the idea that they can just be like, "Oh well,
just come back in a few weeks"- thatis also extremely disrespectful.
Lee Burgess (18:44):
Yeah.
I guess the question becomes,where do we go from here?
What do you do?
So, if you're listening to thisand you sat for this chaos,
you are welcome to vent to us.
You can send us an email, youcan reply on our contact form.
We're collecting the venting.
We don't have any power, but we'rehere to hold space for you, because
we're so sorry that this has happened.
(19:04):
I think that there'sa bit of wait and see.
I think that they did grade the examfor COVID, which was also a bit of a
mess, and people passed, and so thereare still going to be lawyers that
come out of this, that are going toget licensed out of this, in theory.
If you don't get licensed, hopefullyyou explore all your remedies.
Maybe there'll be an appeals process.
(19:26):
I don't know.
I'm encouraging our own studentsto write everything down that
happened to them in the exam room.
I do think that with time and readingeverything on Reddit or whatever, your own
experience can get a little convoluted.
So, if you don't want to write it alldown, do a voice memo on your phone.
Just capture what actually happenedto you, because if there is some
(19:47):
sort of appeals process or lawsuitsor something, you need an accurate
description of what happened.
And so, maybe that's something productiveyou can do, is to capture what happened.
Alison Monahan (19:57):
Right.
And I think that might alsojust help people process.
You've got it down, you can put thatin the box and then start trying to
move on, because the reality is, theBar is probably going to do nothing.
We know how this goes.
But yeah, I think people just have tostart sort of trying to move past this,
which is really hard when there's thismuch uncertainty and they're sending
out emails being like, "Well, we haven'treally decided what to do, so we're just
(20:18):
going to keep you hanging in for a while."
Lee Burgess (20:19):
"Oh, but we're sorry."
Alison Monahan (20:21):
"Sorry we're totally incompetent and we expect you to be
competent, but hey, whatever." It'sjust, I find it so infuriating because
it was all so easily predicted.
Yeah,
Lee Burgess (20:32):
so easily predicted.
I mean, we started talkingabout this in August, about what
a mess this was going to be.
And so, here we are in the end ofFebruary and we are looking to July.
We're about the same number ofmonths out as when in August
we started talking about this.
And yet, we're really in the sameplace, sort of, except now we
know how bad it can actually be.
(20:54):
So, if you are still in law school,looking towards this July bar, it's
okay to be nervous, but I do thinkyou just have to proceed accordingly
and then we'll figure it out as we go.
I mean, if you're doing some earlystudying to practice performance tests,
to practice multiple-choice questions,I still think that's a good idea.
(21:15):
What you don't want to do is just throwup your hands and be like, "Well, they're
not going to be adequately prepared.Then I don't have to be adequately
prepared." Because that's still notgoing to help you reach your goals.
Alison Monahan (21:24):
Yeah.
It is kind of terrifying that, as youjust said, we're about the same amount
of time from July as we were when wefirst heard about this Experiment.
I'll be real curious to see what the nextfew weeks hold in bar land in California.
Lee Burgess (21:38):
I don't know.
I still think the SupremeCourt's going to get super mad.
Maybe they're going to dosomething, I don't know.
Alison Monahan (21:44):
I don't know.
I mean, I feel like the easiest optionis, you have to administer the NCBE
questions until you can show that youare able to do it another way, and
you have obviously not shown that.
Lee Burgess (21:54):
Yeah, I think they need to revert.
That's what I would say.
If I was the California Supreme Court- which I'm not - and they are never
going to listen to this podcast, but...
Alison Monahan (22:04):
You never know.
Lee Burgess (22:04):
If I was, I would probably say, go back to the old way.
Rent the convention centers,do it the old way, until you
can truly test something new.
Alison Monahan (22:15):
Yeah.
Now I was thinking I could totallysee some of this podcast showing up in
footnotes of a lawsuit or something.
But hey, you have the whole record.
Go to YouTube if anybodysays it wasn't predictable.
Lee Burgess (22:27):
It's just really disappointing and sad, and we really just
feel for everybody who's in this mess.
You all worked so hard.
You worked really hard, and you triedto show up and you tried to do your best
and you tried to roll with all the bumps.
And it was unconscionable what happened.
I really think it was.
Alison Monahan (22:45):
No, I feel it's so unacceptable.
Bottom line is, it'sabsolutely unacceptable what
Lee Burgess (22:50):
happened.
Yeah.
We're here for you, you're welcome tovent to us, we will keep you posted,
we will come back on the podcast andour YouTube channel with any updates.
I think that my last final thought is,if you took that exam, check your email
very carefully and make sure your baremails are not going to spam, because who
knows what they're going to send out next?
Alison Monahan (23:11):
Who knows?
Literally, who knows?
The whole thing is still so crazy.
I mean, they're still literally, Ithink, at this moment in time, as we
record this on a Friday afternoon,still administering some of the tests
to people who have accommodations.
Lee Burgess (23:22):
Oh my gosh.
Alison Monahan (23:23):
Maybe they'll have some meetings over the weekend.
I don't know, maybe not.
Lee Burgess (23:27):
I'm guessing they don't work on the weekends.
Alison Monahan (23:29):
I think normally, but I'm also saying maybe this could
be an emergency type situation wherethey need to call everybody in.
But we can't clear our schedule for that.
I don't know, does everyone else cleartheir schedule for two weeks from now?
Lee Burgess (23:40):
Yeah, I know.
Anyway, keep us posted,we'll keep you posted.
We're thinking about you.
Hang in there.
And we'll update everyone aswe figure out what comes next.
Alison Monahan (23:51):
Good luck, everybody.
And tune into our YouTube if youwant the latest updates, because
that's probably where they'll be.
Good luck!
Lee Burgess (23:59):
Good luck!
Alison Monahan (24:00):
With that, we are out of time.
I want to take a second to remind you tocheck out our blog at BarExamToolbox.com,
which is full of helpful tips to helpyou prepare and stay sane, hopefully,
as you study for the bar exam.
You can also find information on ourwebsite about our courses, tools,
and one-on-one tutoring programsto support you as you study for
the UBE or California bar exam.
(24:22):
If you enjoyed this episode of theBar Exam Toolbox podcast, please
take a second to leave a review andrating on your favorite listening app.
We'd really appreciate it.
And be sure to subscribeso you don't miss anything.
If you're still in law school, youmight like to check out our popular
Law School Toolbox podcast as well.
If you have any questions or comments,please don't hesitate to reach out to
Lee or Alison at lee@barexamtoolbox.comor alison@barexamtoolbox.com.
(24:47):
Or you can always contactus via our website contact
form at BarExamToolbox.com.
Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!
Welcome to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast.
Today we're doing a special episode onthe mess of the California bar exam.
Your Bar Exam Toolbox hosts are AlisonMonahan, that's me, and Lee Burgess.
We're here to demystify the barexam experience, so you can study
effectively, stay sane, and hopefullypass and move on with your life.
Together, we're the co-creators of the LawSchool Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and
(00:24):
the career-related website CareerDicta.
I also run The Girl's Guide to Law School.
If you enjoy the show, please leavea review on your favorite listening
app, and check out our sister podcast,the Law School Toolbox podcast.
If you have any questions, don'thesitate to reach out to us.
You can reach us via the contactform on BarExamToolbox.com, and
we would love to hear from you.
(00:44):
With that, let's get started.
Lee Burgess (00:52):
Hi, this is Lee from the Law School Toolbox and the Bar Exam Toolbox.
I'm here with Alison andwe're here to talk about what
is happening in California.
There really are no words.
Alison Monahan (01:04):
Yeah, I think that's accurate.
I mean, we all thoughtthis was going to be bad.
In case you don't know, if you didn'ttake the California bar, they just
kind of made it up on the fly for thelast, I don't know, four to six months.
We knew it was going to be bad.
If you go back and listen to ouroriginal episode on this, we predicted
it would be bad, but I really thinkit was worse than anyone expected.
Lee Burgess (01:25):
Yes.
If anyone wants the full saga, you cancheck out our YouTube series on this.
We'll link to it in the show notes,where we've been doing updates.
But the test did happen and it was bad.
And now we are here in the aftermath.
So, it is also important for usto know what date we're recording
this because yes, there are stillunanswered questions here on February
28th, just days after the test.
(01:48):
Emails are still getting sentto people who sat for the
test and there is still chaos.
The chaos has not stopped.
So, we're here for you, but you needto know that this is the date of which
we are sharing information, and youneed to just own that part, I guess.
Alison Monahan (02:03):
Yeah, yeah.
I was pretty shocked that on the Fridaybefore the exam, I went and looked at
the California Bar website and they hadtotally changed certain things about how
things were going to be operating, whatthe software was going to let you do.
It turned out it couldn't really do thatanyway, but hey, they thought it might.
You used to launch software, I used tobe a programmer and launch software.
(02:25):
This is really not how you do this.
Lee Burgess (02:27):
Not how you do it.
No, this is not how you do it.
There are dry runs,there's a process for this.
I used a few different processes,and none of them were this.
basically.
Alison Monahan (02:37):
of them were, "Oh wait, the exam's over and we still don't know
how we're going to let certain peopletake the exam." Because the reality
is, we don't have that many students.
But we heard some crazy stuff, justfrom that small pool of students.
We had a student who on the essayday taking it remotely was just
never able to start the test.
Lee Burgess (02:56):
And then they told her that was just too bad,
and she could take it in July.
Alison Monahan (03:01):
Although now it looks like they've changed that.
It's pretty clear they knew this wasgoing to be a total mess, because
they had some makeup days alreadyscheduled as the 3rd and the 4th.
So that went around for a while.
That's not actually what's happening.
It's later in March now that they'rehaving people maybe retake - or take - if
they didn't take this the first time.
Apparently, they were planning onjust using the same essay questions.
(03:23):
Oh my God!
Lee Burgess (03:24):
Which I'm sure are all over Reddit by now.
Alison Monahan (03:26):
They're all over the Internet.
Within minutes of people leaving,they're talking about them.
The idea that you would just usethe same question a week or so
later who is in charge of this?
Lee Burgess (03:37):
Okay, so, for those who have not been following this, let's regroup.
So, just to bring everyone upto speed, California decides
to go rogue back in August.
Alison Monahan (03:47):
To save money.
Can we just flag that,because they wanted to save?
I think it was around $3 millionthat they needed to save.
I don't know if it's every year,every administration, whatever.
That was the stated goal.
Lee Burgess (03:58):
Right.
So then they say, "You know what wouldbe a great idea, is we should just hire
Kaplan, who's a test provider, to writeour multiple-choice questions, so we
can give a remote test, because the NCBEwho writes the MBE will not allow it to
be given remotely." Maybe this is why.
And they just then hire this othervendor called Meazure Learning to
(04:19):
administer the test and use a softwarethat is called ProctorU, and a whole
bunch of people signed up for thetest - many more than they thought
were going to - because it was remoteand you could take it anywhere in the
country - actually, within the world.
And they didn't test it particularlywell, and they had to open last minute
test centers, and everybody went totake the test, and we have a whole
(04:43):
lot of stories about what happened.
But they are very consistent stories,some of them being, couldn't take
the test at all - whoops-a-daisy,functionality just stopped working.
We heard stories from students thattheir machines were just having
error messages pop up periodically,that they lost Internet connections.
And these were using the MeazureLearning laptops at a testing center.
(05:07):
These weren't even athome on your own laptop.
This was using the machines that weregiven to you in a testing center.
There were still technical problems.
So there were technical problemsat home, there were technical
problems at the testing centers.
It was insane.
An hour to get into the testing software,even to be able to start the test.
Alison Monahan (05:25):
Yeah, I think that was one of my favorites, where they
said, "Oh, too many people are tryingto log in at once." You knew how many
people were going to be logging in.
Obviously, this was not load tested.
Why not?
Lee Burgess (05:36):
Yeah.
On the multiple-choice day atsome testing centers, things
went down for like 15 minutes.
There were open questions about whetherthe timekeeping software was keeping
accurate time - also disturbing.
And now we have all this discussionthat maybe they're going to reuse or not
reuse questions to give another test inMarch to some people who weren't able
(05:57):
to submit enough finished questions.
But we don't even know whatthose questions will be.
Will they be different?
Are they vetted?
Or is there someone at the bar writingquestions right now, just so they have
something to do in the end of March?
Not
Alison Monahan (06:11):
even the end.
Middle.
Lee Burgess (06:12):
Oh, middle.
Sorry, middle March.
Alison Monahan (06:13):
Two weeks.
We all might remember a few years agowhen they accidentally released the
topics in advance, but this, I'm like,"Well, is it going to be on the same
topics? Or is it definitely going to beon different topics?" Is it fair if one
person takes a Contracts question andone person takes a Civ Pro question?
How is that possibly fair?
And I loved the email that we sawlast night where they said, "Well,
if you submitted like four things onthe essay day, we're just going to
(06:37):
go ahead and grade it because we canjust do that." And I could see that
argument for somebody who's a clearpass or someone who's a clear fail.
If someone did very well on all ofthem, they're probably going to pass.
If they look at their MBE score,the quasi-MBE score, and it's
good - okay, that person probablyis going to pass regardless.
Same thing if somebody's going to fail.
(06:58):
But the problem area is the peoplein the middle, and this is a lot
of the people that we work with.
They might be 30 or 40 points off frompassing the first time they take it.
Those essays make a big difference.
If they do really well on one or reallypoorly on one, they may pass or fail.
There's literally no way that isfair to anyone who is on the border.
Lee Burgess (07:17):
No.
And the performance test, which can bea strength for some people, because you
don't need to know any law to do well.
So if you're someone who struggled withmemorization, or you're an attorney
applicant, because a lot of attorneyapplicants count on that performance test
to boost their score, because you don'thave to know any law - that was a piece
that had some pretty terrible problems,and if you don't get to have a performance
(07:40):
test, that's not going to be good.
Alison Monahan (07:41):
That's whole of the test.
How can they just be like, "We'rejust not going to grade that
part. It's not really relevant."Then why are you giving it?
Lee Burgess (07:49):
Also, just the fact that this was such chaos.
We heard from students thattook it in testing centers that
said that the proctors had noidea how the software worked.
They are waving down proctors forhelp, nobody knows what they're doing.
They're like, "We don't know. We'vejust been brought in", because they're
just the random proctor that they found.
When the software went down duringthe multiple choice, it was down for
(08:13):
like 15 to 20 minutes, and peoplestarted whispering - as one would
do when it looks like the test iscombusting - and they're like, "We're
in an active testing situation.
Nobody can speak." And you're like," Okay, this definitely feels like a
solid testing situation." I mean,the whole thing is just insanity.
(08:33):
And they are just hemorrhagingmoney, they're offering refunds.
They were offering refunds upto the test and they're going to
probably give fee waivers for peopleto take some of the July exam.
For those of you who don't know, to sitfor the California bar is a lot of money.
It's a very expensive bar to sit for.
Fee waivers add up.
Alison Monahan (08:49):
It's not even just that.
They're literally refunding peoplelike non-refundable hotel reservations.
I mean, the number I saw thrown aroundjust for that was like $3.1 million.
So that tells you we arenot saving money here.
That's not even counting having toactually schedule, what was it, four
large centers where they said theyweren't going to have that sort of thing.
Not to mention, I'm kind ofguessing there may be some lawsuits.
(09:11):
I don't think this is working outwell from a financial perspective.
No.
Lee Burgess (09:15):
I think we found out right before the test that they had to
renegotiate with Meazure Learning becausethey didn't include accommodations
testing in their original contract.
Alison Monahan (09:26):
And this really raises some questions for me.
And I brought this up, I think, inour very first episode of like, "Who
is behind all of this? Who is makingmoney on all of this? What tech bro
golfed with somebody at the Bar?" It'spretty clear they did not put out RFPs.
There was no time.
How would you have done that?
I obviously don't know that,but I'm guessing that they did
(09:49):
not do an RFP process on this.
So the question is, howis all this going down?
Who's benefiting from it?
Lee Burgess (09:55):
Who's benefiting from it?
Who did the contract reviews?
These contracts wereclearly not written well.
And who owns this problem?
That was one of the things youand I were talking about yesterday
when we were talking about this.
Is this the Bar's failure?
I mean, clearly.
But who is the person to stand upand say, "I'm where the buck stops.
This was my choice." Is the Supreme Courtin California, who technically the Bar
(10:19):
reports to going to just be like, "Oh, noproblem." I have to pay my bar dues and I
am I'm really waiting as long as possibleto give them money, because I'm so mad.
But they also hold the key to my kingdom.
I have to pay my bar dues,I don't have a choice.
Alison Monahan (10:34):
Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier today.
I'm like, shouldn't there bea test of minimum competency
for running the bar exam?
I don't know.
I feel like they're just certain,as we would say in our ski training,
certain "non-negotiables" thatneed to happen for you to pass.
And for them to pass administering thisexam, there need to be things like, people
are able to access all of the questions.
(10:56):
I don't think that's asking too much.
People are able to submitanswers to the questions.
Lee Burgess (11:00):
People shouldn't wait an hour to start the exam.
I vividly remember sitting down forthe test in the big testing center, and
that 15 minutes where you were waiting,where they hand out all the paperwork
and you're sitting with your laptop, andyour anxiety is just through the roof.
I cannot imagine doingthat for an hour or longer.
Alison Monahan (11:23):
Or sitting at your house, where they've told you you're
supposed to log on and you just can'tdo it, and that goes on the whole day.
Come on, that's not okay.
Lee Burgess (11:33):
No.
I also heard some reports - of coursewe haven't seen them - but that these
multiple-choice questions were not great.
Alison Monahan (11:41):
We haven't even gotten to that, which was one of
our main concerns in the beginning.
Lee Burgess (11:44):
That was in the beginning, we were like, "What about the multiple
choice?" All this other stuff has eclipsedthe fact that there are multiple-choice
questions that don't seem to be onpar with what people were expecting.
Alison Monahan (11:56):
Well, and also the fact that they had to send out a
redline correction of the ones theysubmitted for people to practice with,
again, a few days before the test.
I'm sorry, what?
And one of our tutors was usingthose questions and he wrote us, he's
like, "One of these is completelywrong. It is totally incorrect."
Lee Burgess (12:14):
If we're finding the errors, that's not a good thing.
Alison Monahan (12:17):
No.
No, I have heard from various peoplethat the questions were really kind
of weird, not good, a lot of theanswer choices didn't make sense.
I don't think, shockingly,they were really up to par.
Lee Burgess (12:28):
Well, because it wasn't vetted.
Listen, we create products, we makethings, we vet them with other people.
You and I create a new something or other.
It's usually read by other lawyerson our team to give us feedback.
Feedback is how you do work, really.
That's how you do it.
And there was no opportunity for feedback.
(12:49):
You know the other thing wehaven't heard a lot about lately?
Oh, The Experiment from the fall.
Alison Monahan (12:54):
What happened with that?
The exam happened.
Are people getting extra points?
We don't know.
Nobody's heard anything.
Lee Burgess (13:01):
When are people going to know?
How is this going to factor into allof this new grading scales they're
doing, some sort of statistics,gymnastics to create something?
I don't know.
It's just really sad, and that'swhy I'm just waiting until the
very last day to pay my bar ofdues, even though they don't care.
Whatever, I'm a sucker.
(13:21):
I'm going to have to pay thembecause I want to keep my license.
Alison Monahan (13:24):
Yeah.
I mean, let's be honest, the wholething is kind of a cartel on all sides.
So, we were talking the other day,really, probably they should just go
with the UBE and the NextGen, but thenCalifornia lawyers are going to be upset
because they don't want reciprocity.
You don't get the UBE withoutreciprocity, basically.
Lee Burgess (13:41):
Nope.
So, I don't know what's going to happen,and the Supreme Court's been silent.
Somebody's got to be callingthe Supreme Court, right?
Alison Monahan (13:49):
Also, the other thing is, what are they doing in July?
Are they going to reuse Meazure?
Hopefully not, but okay, are theygoing to pick a new platform?
Time's already short.
We're already short on time for July,and they were supposed to be having
Kaplan write the essay questions bythen, too, I think, in the original idea.
This is crazy.
We don't literally know how peopleshould be preparing for the July exam.
Lee Burgess (14:12):
Yeah, I was talking to someone this week who was talking
about prep, and I had to be like,"Well, I will have this conversation
with you, yet I cannot tell youwhat the July exam will look like."
so.
Alison Monahan (14:21):
It's just insanity.
It's literally crazy.
Lee Burgess (14:24):
It's insane.
And what it really all comesdown to it, this is supposed
to be for the public good.
The whole point of these bar exams...I mean, there may be various reasons
for the bar, but one of the reasonsis to license lawyers of minimum
competency, so that you can be prettysure that somebody who passed the
bar is qualified to practice law.
(14:44):
I don't know that the publicis really talking about
this, but it's just not good.
This isn't what the Bar is supposedto do, and the Bar is running out
of money, even though we pay obscenefees for bar dues in California.
It just feels like the whole thingneeds to be taken over by someone else.
Alison Monahan (15:06):
Who's competent.
Minimally.
Lee Burgess (15:07):
Who's competent.
Yes, minimally competent.
Yeah, and as we referred to,this is not the first time
Alison Monahan (15:13):
the California Board of Bar Examiners has screwed things
up, but this is really next level.
I mean, this is worse than COVID, whichto be fair, wasn't entirely on them.
The other thing about this is,it's entirely self-inflicted.
There was absolutely noreason this needed to happen.
They could have justhad a normal bar exam.
People would have taken it.
People would have passed or failed.
No one would have been suing themand complaining and whatever.
(15:34):
It didn't need to happen.
Lee Burgess (15:35):
No, this is all about them getting in a fight with the
NCBE, because the NCBE wouldn't letthem use their questions remotely.
And then the bar decided it neededto give a remote exam to cut costs.
And here we are.
I don't think any costs were cut.
Alison Monahan (15:51):
I do not think they were cut.
I think they were elevated.
I
Lee Burgess (15:54):
think they were elevated.
And frankly, there shouldbe lawsuits over this.
All the different reliance damages.
I mean, my contracts law is a littlerusty, but a lot of people spent a lot
of money and took time off of work.
And law firms are going to losemoney because people aren't
going to be able to be licensed.
Law firms count on people being licensed.
Alison Monahan (16:14):
Yeah, people may be losing jobs.
A lot of people, if they failed in July,February is their time to pass, and you're
going to lose your job in this mess?
Lee Burgess (16:21):
Somebody should be responsible for that.
I mean, who's going towork at the bar right now?
Who's just showing up and being like,"We should write this next email"?
I sat on those Q&As and listenedto the Q&As, and I know that
folks at the Bar were trying.
But at some point months ago, somebodyshould have said, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't
do this. Maybe we should just go backto the way it was", or something.
(16:44):
But this solution was such a mess.
You and I both worked in softwarerollouts and development.
Sometimes you pushed a rolloutbecause it wasn't ready to go,
it was riddled with errors.
You did not send anythinglive when it wasn't ready.
Come on.
Alison Monahan (17:01):
Well, anyone who says, "Oh well, we just did our best.
We couldn't have known" - just golisten to our very first episode.
This is not shocking.
Lee Burgess (17:09):
No, and honestly, I sat on those Q&As, where thousands
of people came to lodge complaints.
They 100% knew things were not going well.
The mock exams did not go well.
The Experiment did not go well.
This is no surprise to anyone.
It shouldn't be a surprise.
Maybe somebody was surprised.
Alison Monahan (17:27):
I mean, it shouldn't have been a surprise when you're
like, "Oh, we'll just do all this inwhat, five months, six months?" It
was obviously not going to go well.
That was not enough time, as we said.
Lee Burgess (17:36):
Yeah, I know.
So, it's a lot.
So, as we mentioned, thereis this makeup that was just
announced last night, on the 27th.
And you're going to get anemail offering it to you.
Alison Monahan (17:49):
I don't even know that it's really an offer.
It seemed to me like if they wantyou to do it and you don't do it,
then you have no shot at passing.
Lee Burgess (17:56):
Well, I guess they're only offering it to
you if you can't possibly pass.
So, I
Alison Monahan (18:01):
Well, it seemed to me they're offering to you
basically if they don't have enoughthat they might be able to grade.
So, if you either didn't get any of theessays because you were never able to
connect, or basically at least two ofthem were not processed or didn't upload
or whatever, then they're going to haveyou come and do this makeup day, or days.
It was two days.
But yeah, stay tuned, I guess.
(18:23):
Check your email.
Yeah, if you think you'reone of those people.
And people work,
Lee Burgess (18:26):
travel.
It's spring break for families coming up.
People
Alison Monahan (18:29):
might have had a bar trip planned.
People do bar trips.
Does no one remember this?
You leave the country for amonth after you take the bar.
I
Lee Burgess (18:35):
did that!
Alison Monahan (18:37):
I mean, the idea that they can just be like, "Oh well,
just come back in a few weeks"- thatis also extremely disrespectful.
Lee Burgess (18:44):
Yeah.
I guess the question becomes,where do we go from here?
What do you do?
So, if you're listening to thisand you sat for this chaos,
you are welcome to vent to us.
You can send us an email, youcan reply on our contact form.
We're collecting the venting.
We don't have any power, but we'rehere to hold space for you, because
we're so sorry that this has happened.
(19:04):
I think that there'sa bit of wait and see.
I think that they did grade the examfor COVID, which was also a bit of a
mess, and people passed, and so thereare still going to be lawyers that
come out of this, that are going toget licensed out of this, in theory.
If you don't get licensed, hopefullyyou explore all your remedies.
Maybe there'll be an appeals process.
(19:26):
I don't know.
I'm encouraging our own studentsto write everything down that
happened to them in the exam room.
I do think that with time and readingeverything on Reddit or whatever, your own
experience can get a little convoluted.
So, if you don't want to write it alldown, do a voice memo on your phone.
Just capture what actually happenedto you, because if there is some
(19:47):
sort of appeals process or lawsuitsor something, you need an accurate
description of what happened.
And so, maybe that's something productiveyou can do, is to capture what happened.
Alison Monahan (19:57):
Right.
And I think that might alsojust help people process.
You've got it down, you can put thatin the box and then start trying to
move on, because the reality is, theBar is probably going to do nothing.
We know how this goes.
But yeah, I think people just have tostart sort of trying to move past this,
which is really hard when there's thismuch uncertainty and they're sending
out emails being like, "Well, we haven'treally decided what to do, so we're just
(20:18):
going to keep you hanging in for a while."
Lee Burgess (20:19):
"Oh, but we're sorry."
Alison Monahan (20:21):
"Sorry we're totally incompetent and we expect you to be
competent, but hey, whatever." It'sjust, I find it so infuriating because
it was all so easily predicted.
Yeah,
Lee Burgess (20:32):
so easily predicted.
I mean, we started talkingabout this in August, about what
a mess this was going to be.
And so, here we are in the end ofFebruary and we are looking to July.
We're about the same number ofmonths out as when in August
we started talking about this.
And yet, we're really in the sameplace, sort of, except now we
know how bad it can actually be.
(20:54):
So, if you are still in law school,looking towards this July bar, it's
okay to be nervous, but I do thinkyou just have to proceed accordingly
and then we'll figure it out as we go.
I mean, if you're doing some earlystudying to practice performance tests,
to practice multiple-choice questions,I still think that's a good idea.
(21:15):
What you don't want to do is just throwup your hands and be like, "Well, they're
not going to be adequately prepared.Then I don't have to be adequately
prepared." Because that's still notgoing to help you reach your goals.
Alison Monahan (21:24):
Yeah.
It is kind of terrifying that, as youjust said, we're about the same amount
of time from July as we were when wefirst heard about this Experiment.
I'll be real curious to see what the nextfew weeks hold in bar land in California.
Lee Burgess (21:38):
I don't know.
I still think the SupremeCourt's going to get super mad.
Maybe they're going to dosomething, I don't know.
Alison Monahan (21:44):
I don't know.
I mean, I feel like the easiest optionis, you have to administer the NCBE
questions until you can show that youare able to do it another way, and
you have obviously not shown that.
Lee Burgess (21:54):
Yeah, I think they need to revert.
That's what I would say.
If I was the California Supreme Court- which I'm not - and they are never
going to listen to this podcast, but...
Alison Monahan (22:04):
You never know.
Lee Burgess (22:04):
If I was, I would probably say, go back to the old way.
Rent the convention centers,do it the old way, until you
can truly test something new.
Alison Monahan (22:15):
Yeah.
Now I was thinking I could totallysee some of this podcast showing up in
footnotes of a lawsuit or something.
But hey, you have the whole record.
Go to YouTube if anybodysays it wasn't predictable.
Lee Burgess (22:27):
It's just really disappointing and sad, and we really just
feel for everybody who's in this mess.
You all worked so hard.
You worked really hard, and you triedto show up and you tried to do your best
and you tried to roll with all the bumps.
And it was unconscionable what happened.
I really think it was.
Alison Monahan (22:45):
No, I feel it's so unacceptable.
Bottom line is, it'sabsolutely unacceptable what
Lee Burgess (22:50):
happened.
Yeah.
We're here for you, you're welcome tovent to us, we will keep you posted,
we will come back on the podcast andour YouTube channel with any updates.
I think that my last final thought is,if you took that exam, check your email
very carefully and make sure your baremails are not going to spam, because who
knows what they're going to send out next?
Alison Monahan (23:11):
Who knows?
Literally, who knows?
The whole thing is still so crazy.
I mean, they're still literally, Ithink, at this moment in time, as we
record this on a Friday afternoon,still administering some of the tests
to people who have accommodations.
Lee Burgess (23:22):
Oh my gosh.
Alison Monahan (23:23):
Maybe they'll have some meetings over the weekend.
I don't know, maybe not.
Lee Burgess (23:27):
I'm guessing they don't work on the weekends.
Alison Monahan (23:29):
I think normally, but I'm also saying maybe this could
be an emergency type situation wherethey need to call everybody in.
But we can't clear our schedule for that.
I don't know, does everyone else cleartheir schedule for two weeks from now?
Lee Burgess (23:40):
Yeah, I know.
Anyway, keep us posted,we'll keep you posted.
We're thinking about you.
Hang in there.
And we'll update everyone aswe figure out what comes next.
Alison Monahan (23:51):
Good luck, everybody.
And tune into our YouTube if youwant the latest updates, because
that's probably where they'll be.
Good luck!
Lee Burgess (23:59):
Good luck!
Alison Monahan (24:00):
With that, we are out of time.
I want to take a second to remind you tocheck out our blog at BarExamToolbox.com,
which is full of helpful tips to helpyou prepare and stay sane, hopefully,
as you study for the bar exam.
You can also find information on ourwebsite about our courses, tools,
and one-on-one tutoring programsto support you as you study for
the UBE or California bar exam.
(24:22):
If you enjoyed this episode of theBar Exam Toolbox podcast, please
take a second to leave a review andrating on your favorite listening app.
We'd really appreciate it.
And be sure to subscribeso you don't miss anything.
If you're still in law school, youmight like to check out our popular
Law School Toolbox podcast as well.
If you have any questions or comments,please don't hesitate to reach out to
Lee or Alison at lee@barexamtoolbox.comor alison@barexamtoolbox.com.
(24:47):
Or you can always contactus via our website contact
form at BarExamToolbox.com.
Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!
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