Florida Rejects Diploma Privilege

The Florida Supreme Court rejected a plea to change its rules to permit bar admission based on a law school diploma due to the pandemic’s impact on the bar examination

Petitioners, now, ask the Court to adopt emergency rules that “waive the requirement of passing all parts of the bar examination” as a condition for admission to The Florida Bar and, instead, allow for admission of applicants who otherwise qualify for admission based upon graduation from an ABA-accredited law school and demonstration of good moral character as provided in Rule 3-12 of the Rules of the Supreme Court Relating to Admissions to the Bar. Under the Petitioners’ proposal, Bar applicants registered to take the July Bar exam would be admitted immediately upon recommendation of the Board, subject to supervision for six months by a Florida attorney who has been a member of The Florida Bar in good standing for five years. At the end of six months of supervision, the supervising attorney would “attest[] to the completion of the period of supervised practice,” the supervision requirement would terminate, and the newly admitted lawyer would enjoy the privileges of unrestricted practice enjoyed by all other members in good standing of The Florida Bar For the reasons explained below, the Court declines to authorize such a pathway to Bar membership.

Explanation

This Court has determined and still believes that law school graduation alone does not sufficiently demonstrate the knowledge, ability, and preparedness necessary to admit a law graduate to the practice of law in Florida. Therefore, it has long been the Court’s policy to require Bar applicants to demonstrate that they meet these essential requirements by taking and obtaining a passing score on the Florida Bar Examination before admitting them to The Florida Bar…

This Court also does not believe that the completion of six months of supervised practice can sufficiently substitute for the passage of a comprehensive Bar examination that would allow the Court to fulfill its constitutional duty to evaluate a Bar applicant’s knowledge and skill before admitting the applicant to the unrestricted practice of law.

Justice Lawson concurred and noted that the bar examiners are volunteers who devoted extensive efforts to try to meet the crisis

Our failure to administer a secure and reliable bar exam in July and August is bitterly frustrating for the Board, for the Court, and for applicants. Those frustrations, however, do not justify opening Florida’s legal profession to most Bar applicants registered for the July exam without a reliable assessment of their preparedness to practice law

With respect to Petitioners’ second argument—the “disruption of . . . settled expectations” suffered by applicants, along with the attendant financial and other hardships and psychological stress, I apologize. I sincerely wish that our well intentioned actions in attempting to provide an admission opportunity as early as possible would have succeeded as planned. When we decided to move forward with a July administration of the exam, we had no way of knowing whether conditions would even improve by February 2021. Attempting to stay the course with a July administration, even with the obvious obstacles, appeared to be the best option for applicants and the legal system at that time. In hindsight, one could speculate that simply postponing testing until October or February might have been better for everyone. That is the nature of hindsight

(Mike Frisch)