Attn: New York Bar Applicants. NY State Senator @bradhoylman and NY Assemblywoman @JoAnneSimonBK52 are holding a live public roundtable today on Diploma Privilege at 10am EST. The Roundtable is viewable here, but as promised we will also be livetweeting: https://www.nysenate.gov/calendar/events/judiciary/brad-hoylman/august-18-2020/public-meeting-discussion-about-impact-covid

There will be members from @dp4ny participating in the roundtable and they also plan to livetweet. You can find their most recent post on it here: https://twitter.com/dp4ny/status/1295710101676924929?s=20

This meeting is a NYS Joint Legislature Virtual Public Meeting. It is being hosted by the Senate Standing Committee on the Judiciary which is chaired by @bradhoylman.

The meeting is starting. @bradhoylman welcomes everyone to the meeting. He will be cohosting with @JoAnneSimonBK52. Together they sponsored two bills in the NY legislature to extend diploma privilege to NY Bar Applicants.

@bradhoylman is showing a video by a Florida Bar Applicant where the ILG Software had a delay between the Applicant's entry of an answer and the words appearing on screen.

Senator @bradhoylman acknowledges this is only one of many issues with Bar exam Software.

He is now providing a recap of the bar exam circumstances. Acknowledges effects particularly economic effects on law graduates.

In early July @bradhoylman, @JoAnneSimonBK52, and another NY Legislator introduced their first bill supporting Diploma Privilege. The Court cancelled the in-person bar exam shortly after and delayed the online exam until October with many other jurisdictions.

Now @JoAnneSimonBK52 is speaking. She begins by acknowledging that NY Graduates are in Limbo like the grads of many other jurisdictions.

She says that administrators are preparing for the last war rather than reality in front of us. "If there's one thing we've learned about COVID-19, it's that we not only need to think outside the box, but we need to take the box and throw it away."

@JoAnneSimonBK52 is now introducing panelists and allowing them to briefly introduce themselves.

First Panelist is Leslie Ann Caraballo, a @CUNYLaw first-gen law graduate with 2 young children 10 and 5 one of whom has a disability. Leslie is the head of the Org of NY Law Graduates.

Next panelist is Mike Machado from Penn Law who is a member of @dp4ny

Next panelist is Alex Petkanas who is licensed in NY and is advocating for diploma privilege in light of the economic recession coming.

Next panelist is @TaraDylann of the @NatDLSA who is multiply disabled and is advocating for Diploma Privilege in the face of disabled candidates who have not received testing accommodations.

Next panelist is Kayla Smith of Brooklyn Law School who is also a member of @dp4ny. Her life and career is on hold and she highlights how grads just want to be able to work.

Dean @epenalver1211 of @LIICornell is here representing NY's 15 law schools. He is advocating for diploma privilege against insecure online exams and against temporary licensure. He is advocating for the need for BIPOC individuals in the legal profession.

Deborah Jones Merritt from @OSU_Law is also on the panel. She coauthored a paper on diploma privilege early on and has been horrified by the lack of response to the pandemic.

Another Panelist is Jared Trujillo of Association of Legal Aid Attorneys. He says that it is wholly inadequate that the state has not done something and it is affecting hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.

He says that in NY you can practice up until you fail the bar the first time and this can impact not only the livelihood of grads but also the clients who have relied on them.

Last panelist is Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz who represents NY's 81st Assembly District. He and @bradhoylman have passed legislation to protect from evictions and support absentee ballot voting.

The NY BOLE was invited to participate in this roundtable and declined to do so.

Now @bradhoylman is speaking again. He wants to start by drilling down into the impact COVID-19 is having on law grads. He is asking grad panelists to tell anecdotal stories. He asks are we facing mass unemployment of law grads?

Mike Machado is starting. He is due to start at a firm in February. He says that many firms will not hire until the bar exam is resolved. Mike is home with his family. He is very emotionally talking about his family and their home.

His family wants to sell the home and move on. He is facing loan repayments and issues with diverticulitis while he does not currently have health insurance because of the pandemic.

Leslie Ann Caraballo is now talking. "Legally Blonde doesn't represent us." Most students do not go to the White Shoe firms. Many students who have reached out to her don't want to be identified due to C&F intimidation.

Now Leslie is reading impact statements. First impact statement is from a grad whose parents were unable to work and whose siblings were risking their lives as essential workers.

Employer told this grad that if they cant figure something out, the employer will have to go a different direction.

Leslie has heard from pregnant grads and grads who need elective surgeries who have planned their lives around the bar exam.

Leslie admits that she and many parents are unable to effectively study for the bar exam while having to be full-time childcare providers.

Senator @bradhoylman is shifting to ask @epenalver1211 how students are experiencing the pandemic. Dean Penalver says the grad statements are very consistent with what he is seeing.

"It's impossible to exaggerate how disruptive the uncertainty is." - @epenalver1211

"As disruptive as that is, it is massively compounded for students who had not already secured employment" - @epenalver1211

Now @JoAnneSimonBK52 wants to talk about how the disruption is specifically affecting the legal marketplace.

Deborah Merritt is now speaking and says NY prides itself on being a leader in the legal profession. NY has lost that rep over the last two months. Graduates from Ohio shifted to take DC bar exam rather than NY.

Says Bar examiners have violated dormant commerce clause (This is a very interesting argument)

Says this is a hard earned entrance into the legal profession.

Jared Trujillo is talking now about legal service jobs. He says these are incredibly difficult and stressful jobs to begin with. The pandemic only makes this worse.

Trujillo says grads remain under intense stress as they try to represent people and do so very competently.

He references many successful people who failed the bar exam including Hilary Clinton and Michelle Obama.

Senator Monica Martinez is asking whether there is a difference in what someone can do under supervision of licensed attorney vs. after they have taken the bar.

Deborah Merritt ( @law_djm) says it depends how the order is drafter, but there is a difference and it will disproportionately affect legal services/public interest work.

Merritt says that in March or April online bar exam might have been possible but NCBE stood in the way. Claims other professions particularly medicine were capable of having new doctors.

Senator Thomas F. O'Mara of NY 58th District now speaking. Law graduate from 1991. Says he vividly remembers taking the bar exam. He wants to find a way to make grads gainfully employed and is extremely disappointed in lack of participation by NY BOLE.

He says lack of NY BOLE participation is insulting not just to state legislators but to the Grads as well. He says his predecessor was one of the last licensed by Diploma Privilege.

He does believe bar exam is important for minimal competence but says that he was able to be gainfully employed while waiting for Bar results.

He is concerned about 100 hour supervision requirement. He wants limit increased and thinks the state needs DAs and PDs across the state. He is now asking what others on the panel think of 100 hour requirement.

now @JoAnneSimonBK52 is saying many federal attorneys do not have to be licensed to practice for the gov't. She says that we need to find the right way to get grads the knowledge they actually need to practice.

Conversation now being shifted by @bradhoylman toward technology. Acknowledges issues with Michigan Bar Exam and the cancellation of Florida's online bar exam.

Now @TaraDylann speaking on issues with online bar exam.

Connectivity issues occuring during the meeting.

Tara is addressing issues with both AI proctors flagging individuals and says these issues are not resolved through human reviewers.

Kayla Smith says none of these technology issues are hypothetical. They are being experienced everyday including in this meeting. Also says that grads have no problem doing more than 100 hours. They just want to work.

Kayla says president of Barbri has even said they have no idea how grads should take certain parts of the bar exam without access to scratch paper and virtual scratch paper is not the same.

Kayla says that it's easy to say that moving the bar exam just gives you more time to study, but this is not accurate. It is multiple date changes plus a pandemic. Burnout will only increase.

Kayla says this is a very real situation where grads are homeless and have no health insurance and have many other issues.

Kayla says grads are not asking anything for anything to be handed to them. They are merely asking for the work they have already done to be acknowledged so they can begin to work.

Dean @epenalver1211 says Cornell tried to make space available for online exams and the software made this impossible. He says all of these challenges are adding hurdles for first-gen and BIPOC applicants.

Leslie Ann Caraballo now speaking and says this is a circumstance of unequal bargaining power. Grads have no power while unlicensed.

Says the attitude grads keep getting is "Suck it up" even in this profession with so much alcoholism and depression in the profession.

Mike Machado now going to address technical issues with the exam.

Machado says all concerns enumerated before the exam have come to fruition. All 3 vendors have issues. ILG proved unreliable both in Florida's cancellation of the exam and in two other states who were forced to offer exams by email.

Machado says Extegrity pulled out citing technical infeasibility.

Mike says NY BOLE has a lot of confidence in Examsoft.

Mike says that NY law exam is not the same as the online exam that will require 20,000 examinees to login at the same time. He says that Michigan DDOS attack shows Examsoft has vulnerability and that was only 800 test takers.

Says we still know nothing of Examsoft except that we cant trust their software.

Deborah Merritt says NCBE has stated they will not scale scores for online exam which will effect scoring. A raw score can be very different from scaled score. NCBE says that's the state's problem.

Merritt acknowledges that she originally supported supervised practice based on the kind of hours spent studying for the bar exam, but she now believes students have already spent many more hours than that studying.

Merritt says she cares most about the clients and the clients will benefit most by being able to have diploma privilege attorneys serving them now.

Dean Penalver addressing whether bar exam does demonstrate any kind of proficiency. He does think that there's a difference between crisis and inherent value of bar exam. He thinks bar exam does demonstrate some knowledge of the law but it's a memorization test.

He thinks this discussion is separate from the immediate question.

@JoAnneSimonBK52 says there are two current bills one with 100 hours of supervision, one without.

@JoAnneSimonBK52 says first thing taught in practice is "look it up, don't rely on your memory" which is contrary to bar exam.

@JoAnneSimonBK52 says she feels like there is no plan B for if the online exam fails and she would like to hear others address this.

@TaraDylann says memorization is not a valid measure of an attorney. says it would be malpractice not to look up information in practice.

@TaraDylann says 100 hours is just 100 hours more than what grads have already done through clinics.

Alex Petkanas says he feels confident that grads are ready to practice and that ABA already requires experiential credits. State court has waived 50 pro bono hours but most students have already completed way more than that.

Alex also says the bills still require character and fitness and MPRE so this is not just opening the profession. He also says that many junior attorneys are supervised already when they first begin work by their employers.

@bradhoylman acknowledges that the bar exam and the bar prep industry does feel like a "racket" or a "cottage industry". That there are significant financial interests here that frequently stand in the way of reform.

Leslie Ann Caraballo says that when bar exam came about it was to keep certain groups out. She says that it may not lay on racial lines in the modern era but it still falls disproportionately on communities of color and is a social justice issue.

The profession claims to want to diversify, but in the midst of a pandemic and a social reckoning on race, but is not practicing what they preach in their treatment of this exam.

Leslie says we are already paying LSAT tax, law school tax, bar prep tax.

Leslie says grads have never put a limit on what they are willing to do to make this possible.

@JoAnneSimonBK52 is giving closing remarks. "We are at an inflection point in our society with people of color, women, disability issues. COVID has laid bare so many issues affecting our society"

@JoAnneSimonBK52 says her door and her email are open and they want to find a path forward. There were other ways to license the bar and we need to look at other ways to license now. She says she is very concerned about bar exam created under stress without proper testing.

@JoAnneSimonBK52 says so many ways online exam affects people that haven't been explored yet. Ends by thanking everyone on the panel and everyone watching.

@bradhoylman Thanks everyone and says over 8500 views on this zoom panel. Says this needs to be addressed now for low income clients to survive and thrive post COVID-19. Specifically thanks law grads whose voices have not been heard.

The meeting closed and so our livetweet thread is closing too. We'll be around addressing questions and comments among our other work which includes two new diploma privilege pieces sometime this week.

For those interested, check out @dp4ny's livetweet thread here: https://twitter.com/dp4ny/status/1295723394957279233?s=20