Change in the Number of Times One Gets to Pass the Mississippi Bar exam

A Case for Grandfathering of Law Students Amidst the Pandemic

In 2019, eight young women entered Mississippi Colleges School of Law. They were eager and ambitious, ready to pursue careers in law—yet unaware of the surprises that lay ahead. The biggest surprise, of course, was the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced them into a wholly virtual learning environment—something none of them anticipate or wanted. But they persevered in their studies and finished their law courses in 2022. Their resilience and optimism despite the daunting situation was admirable to say the least; they considered themselves successful in the face of such unprecedented challenges.

Yet, while these students were braving the new frontier of a pandemic-stricken world, and forced into online learning, the Mississippi Supreme Court, in November 2021, decided to cap the number of attempts to pass the Mississippi bar at four, a sharp decrease from the previous unlimited attempts. This monumental change was not widely discussed or recognized at the time, perhaps due to the pandemic and the focus that situation as well as on students adapting to online learning.

Despite these new regulations and the challenges of virtual learning, these eight women remained optimistic. As graduation loomed in May 2023, they undertook the hefty task of preparing for the bar exam. Some opted to take a course offered by their university at an additional cost of $1000, adding to their already significant student debt. The institution, on its part, assured them that they were ready for the examination.

However, they were shocked upon receiving their results: all eight of them had failed. Next to COVID and the forced switch in learning venue from campus-based to virtual, this was the third biggest shock of these students’ lives. How could this happen? Had their learning been insufficient the whole time? Had the university failed them in not preparing them adequately for the bar? Who was to blame? The students were thunderstruck. It was not that one or two of them had failed. Rather, all eight of them had failed the exam. All eight of them had received more or less the same educative experience, had gone through the same process; all eight of them had obtained the same final result: failure.

The stark reality of failure now bore down heavily on the eight students. This was not a simple class test that they had failed and from which they could hopefully bounce back in the future; it was the bar exam - the culmination of their years-long pursuit of a legal career. The failure was an enormous disappointment, steamrolling through the optimism and resilience that they had held onto throughout their educational journey and the COVID ordeal that had knocked them back on their heels just years before.

Embarrassment was an immediate response. After all, they had emerged from one of the finest institutions in the state - Mississippi College School of Law. Yet here they were, all eight of them, unsuccessful in their first attempt at the bar. Their collective failure was a blow to the perception that they had been adequately prepared. Depression quickly set in, amplifying their feelings of disappointment and embarrassment. They had placed immense pressure on themselves to succeed, believing that their hardships during the pandemic and their subsequent perseverance had mentally and emotionally toughened them for this crucial moment. When they failed, they questioned the investment they had made in their education.

Nonetheless, and despite the bleak circumstances, the students found solace in their shared experiences. They formed a support network, transforming their individual hardships into collective strength. They held regular meetings, providing emotional support to one another and using their unique perspectives to brainstorm and share different studying strategies.

They chose not to wallow in their failure but to confront it head-on, turning it into a stepping stone towards their success. Their resilience shone through as they threw themselves into preparations for their second attempt at the bar. Their shared experiences of failure, embarrassment, and depression, while painful, served as a strong motivational force to overcome the challenges that lay ahead. Despite their first unsuccessful attempt, their collective spirit and determination remained undeterred. They prepared for their second encounter with the bar exam.

A few chose again to invest in the preparatory course offered by the college, and in February 2023, they undertook the exam once more. The results were identical to the first; all eight failed again. This second failure was a crushing blow, now magnified by the newly implemented limit on the number of attempts. The students began to seriously question what was going on. Here they were—all eight of them having received the same education and the same experience, unable to pass the bar and get on with their careers in law. But not only that—now they were left with only two more attempts to pass the bar, with the specter of unpayable student loan debt and lack of employment hovering over them. They felt a new kind of fear and pressure that they had never felt before. This was on an order of magnitude worse than anything they had felt during COVID, when they had been forced into a temporary lockdown situation, forced to learn remotely, forced into a box with limited interaction with other peers and the outside world. Back then everything had seemed so strange, so unreal—yet hope had remained because everyone anticipated that the situation was only temporary, and that soon everything would go back to normal.

Now, the eight students felt that the ceiling was closing in. The risk appeared that “normal” might not ever again be an option. When they had started this journey, their had been no cap on their future. No limit on the number of times they could be tested. It seemed especially harsh, now, that such a limit existed due to a change in the law—harsh because during COVID they had not received the same kind of educative experience as law students before them. Those students had not been capped; but these eight were. It was like they were being punished for no fault of their own. What if they needed more than two more chances to pass? What if they needed three? Or four? Why were they being thrust into a situation where they had to fear for their future just because a legislator somewhere had decided to pass a law that had very little concern or empathy with the plight of students who tried to learn during COVID lockdowns?