The Bar Exam Crisis Continued…

Semi-annually, graduated, but not yet barred, law students, hunker down and take a life-changing exam. Ask any attorney about taking the bar exam, and he or she will most likely begin regaling you with tales about sleepless nights studying delirious flashcards, and caffeine…lots of caffeine.

Last week, the bar takers across the country finished their written answers and went back home or to their hotels to upload their exams. Typically, depending on the state, examinees have a day or two to upload their answers. If you don’t submit your answers, you get a zero on that portion of the exam (or all of it if you don’t turn it in), and that does not bode well for bar passage.

So, when these test-takers attempted to upload their exams, imagine their horror when they received error messages…over and over again. And then the software crashed. And then the website crashed. And then the customer service phone line crashed too.

Panicked law school graduates took to Twitter to vent their frustrations, worries, and expletives. Apparently the software had a hard time keeping up with the thousands upon thousands of students attempting to upload their exams. The Examsoft program costs students $100-$150 to download.

The bar takers, then, had to be up the next day to take day two of the exam; many test-takers had little to no sleep, knowing that part one of their exams weren’t turned in yet. One observing attorney commented on Twitter about an impending class action, albeit jokingly. That joke became a reality.

A class-action lawsuit has now been filed in Illinois, one of the states that were hardest hit in the bar debacle. The suit names Examsoft Worldwide as a defendant. “This failure occurred despite the fact that Examsoft knew well in advance of exam day exactly how many applicants had registered and paid to use the …program.” The suit seeks compensation for emotional distressed.

A similar suit has been filed in Washington. The plaintiffs enraged that the software company refused to issue refunds.

Needless to say, the worst group of people to anger is a bunch of would-be lawyers who have every updated code, law, and regulation fresh in their minds.

For your amusement, here are some of the tweets that stole the show from bar takers:

@Huerts31: “Are the folks at #examsoft the same who did the Obamacare website?”

@ASBaird: “Surprise! The #barexam has a bonus torts question. Unfortunately, it’s a real-life simulation where #examsoft screws us over.”

@deakydeacs: “In news unrelated to #barghazi I took a bunch of photos of myself drinking win in the dark.”

@lawvocado: “…we’re all in the same boat. Too bad it’s the Titanic…so #examsoft is the Titanic, right?”

Seasoned attorneys also took to Twitter to vent about #barghazi in their own unique ways.

@SlickSharkey: “#Barexam-ers, in my day, we had to walk our exam booklets up to the front of the room ourselves! Uphill! Both ways!”

@Popehat: “I know how you feel; my typewriter ribbon ran out during the bar exam. #old #soveryold”

@going_concern: “Our hearts go out to bar exams victims today”