The news for bar exam takers in the pandemic has been mostly bad—unless you’ve been praying for movement on the Uniform Bar Exam. As of today, the UBE has added as many states (5) in the past year as it had in 2018 and 2019 combined!
And which state is it that brings us to 39 total? It’s one that will unite Sheetz and Wawa lovers alike in coffee-fueled celebration!
It’s Pennsylvania! While announcing that the July 2021 bar exam will be remote, the Keystone State dropped the news that the UBE will be administered starting in July 2022.
“Because the UBE is uniformly administered, applicants earn a portable score they can transfer from one UBE jurisdiction to another,” said Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners Chair David R. Fine in the release. “That portability is helpful to applicants who can then more readily seek employment in more than one jurisdiction.”
Hat tip to Duquesne University School of Law Professor Ashley M. London for relaying the info.
Your humble writer of #UBEWatch, in the interest of full disclosure, is a graduate of Duquesne and a longtime western Pennsylvania resident. And having eagerly looked forward to when this day would come, I’m happier than a yinzer with a Primanti Brothers sandwich and an Eat’n Park smiley face cookie. (Or a Philadelphian with a good cheesesteak.)
That will make sense to some of you.
Geographically, Delaware joins the states whose neighbors have all become UBE jurisdictions. It joins the similarly surrounded Wisconsin, Virginia, and South Dakota. (And Hawaii—kinda.)
The Florida Georgia Line, the Big Muddy Buddies, and the Silver-and-Golds are our last remaining neighbor states who still haven’t gone UBE, as described in our Indiana announcement.
Stay tuned for more #UBEWatch updates as they happen!