North Carolina Bar Exam Horror Stories

By Kayla Britt

What’s worse than taking the bar exam? When something goes wrong on the day of the exam. In the theme of horror season, read a few bar exam horror stories from our fellow North Carolina attorneys.

Kevin Hornik

To preface, I am a Type 1 diabetic. When I signed up to take the bar exam, I was using insulin injections rather than an insulin pump. So, I wasn’t required to get an accommodation to bring in an electronic device. However, over the summer, I decided to switch over and use an insulin pump. At that point, I was so underwater with bar study and work that it didn’t occur to me to check in with the NCBLE about whether I would need accommodation.

When exam day one arrived, and I went to check in, I was told that I could not bring my insulin pump in with me. For obvious reasons, that was not an option for me. Ultimately, they allowed me to join the accommodations room. But the accommodations room had started the exam already, and I lost about 30 minutes of exam time. Fortunately, I was able to finish all the exam questions and felt reasonably confident in my answers.

I tried to get to my test site very early on exam day two so that I would have plenty of time to troubleshoot any insulin-pump-related issues before the accommodations room opened. My car was the only car on Gorman Street at 5 a.m. that morning. Or, at least, that’s what I thought. As I approached the McKimmon Center, I slowed down to make sure I was turning into the correct parking lot. I looked up at my rearview mirror just in time to see headlights speeding toward me. Fortunately, my airbags didn’t deploy, and the other driver and I both walked away unscathed. But that certainly did nothing to keep my nerves in check for exam day 2.

All’s well that ends well, and I went on to pass the bar exam and get my license. But my bar exam experience was definitely a horror story, at least from my perspective.

Anonymous

I had to be publicly paraded, in humiliation, in front of a long line of women to the bathroom to remove my headscarf for inspection. Thankfully my story and several other women got the Bar to change the way they treat Muslim women in a scarf. I also tripped over the metal tie-down in the parking lot at lunch. I had to sit with ice on my ankle and take the exam. It was bad enough that I thought I was going to have to go to urgent care after the session. Thankfully, the ice did the trick, and I didn’t need to go to urgent care. This was on the first day. On the second day, my computer crashed, and it took multiple people to get it to work.

Hotrick McDougal

I am a 2020 bar exam survivor. There was the uncertainty of whether the exam would be administered up until July, there was no bar prep at the school, we were wearing masks, and there were two people at a long table. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy.

Glenna Boston

In February 2015, there was a snow/ice storm during the bar exam. Folks slid in and contemplated how to get home.

Anonymous

In 2014, ExamSoft failed during the bar exam and the bar takers received compensation from a class action lawsuit.

Tania Springsteen

My bar exam horror story was about 10 years ago. Just before the afternoon session of the essay portion of the exam while we were waiting to start, I was nervous, and to calm my nerves, I doodled on the envelope given to us with the exam number. I tend to draw a sunset beach scene when l am tense. While I am drawing, l noticed a girl to my right intently watching me. She then called over a proctor and two proctors come up to me and asked what I was doing. I explained that I was doodling and showed them the envelope of my “artwork.”

At first, they seemed ok with that and walked away. Then they came back asking to take the envelope. I had no issue with that but asked what it was about, and they said they couldn’t say. A few minutes later, and maybe 5fiveminutes before we start, the proctor came back to me and said that another test taker told them I was cheating by making notes, but everything checked out okay and that I was good to go.

Matthew J. Pentz

I’m not sure mine counts as a full-on horror story, but the power went out during the first day of my exam. I took it during the summer of 2012 at the state fairgrounds in the big livestock exhibition building. At the time, they allowed both laptop users and hand writers. During the first essay portion on the afternoon of the first day, a major storm rolled through and knocked the power out. Laptop users could still see due to their screens emitting light while the hand writers were in the literal dark. The proctors, for some reason, allowed everyone to continue to work during the 40 minutes the lights were out and then made the decision to give everyone an additional 40 minutes of time in excess of the 4 hours we were originally allotted (I personally stopped after 4 hours and did not use my extra 40 because I was worried about how this event was going to viewed by the examiners. I was a laptop user and the program we had to use tracked out time, so I knew exactly how much time I had worked on the test.)

Afterward, everyone was freaking out because no one knew what the examiners were going to do. Allegedly, there was an emergency meeting that night where they debated the event with some examiners advocating to vacate the day and require all takers to do it again (using what test materials, I have no idea), but they apparently decided on some strange grading scheme that would take into account a person’s performance on the section that experienced the power outage and weight things in a way where it was given less prominence in the overall score if that person did not perform well on it.

We were informed of this the next morning and let out a collective sigh of relief, or as much of such a sigh as possible given we were about to take the second half of the test!

Richard Wayne Bobholz

I was there for the rats and power outage in 2012. They ended up having to grade the exam two ways, and if you passed in either of those ways, you passed the exam. The power outage was on the first day, so everyone showed up the second day really shaken and not knowing how they’d handle it. Laptops died, people cried, and the hand writers couldn’t even see their test booklets.

Mercedes Restucha

I proctored this year, and there was a squirrel stuck in one of the fairground buildings for two days. All the proctors had our eye on it, and were trying to shoo it away from the test takers. I should add that squirrels are among my top five fears, but I handled it well.

Sharita Whitaker

My table mate was super nervous and kept shaking the table throughout the exam. I was so annoyed, but I was too afraid to say anything to the proctor, so l suffered through it.

Jen Stinehelfer Boyer

It’s not that memorable of a story, but I was 8.5 months pregnant back when I took the bar exam in 2005, and my daughter likes to claim that her brain is what put me over the top.

Celie B. Richardson

This may not meet the definition of a horror story, but it seemed like it at the time. The Barbri people told us that one topic had not been tested in so long that they were going to drop it from the review course next year. The instructor went over it quickly. It was on the exam. Negotiable instruments, I think it was. This was 1998.

Allan Tarleton

After the morning essay session in 1980 in Memorial Auditorium, I somewhat seriously considered giving up and not returning for the rest of the exam. How could I have gone to a good law school for three years among bright people, taken the Barbri review course, studied my butt off and not know enough to answer with any confidence most of the questions in that section? I didn’t have plans for the afternoon, so I came back; and, as far as I know, since they didn’t publish the numbers, had the highest score of anyone.

Chelsea Rodriguez

During the 2016 summer bar, I must have been so anxiety-ridden about starting the second portion of essays after lunch that about 15 minutes before starting the exam, I accidentally pushed the “start” button on my laptop/exam software. I immediately told one of the admins what happened, and they said I could either lose that time or switch to handwriting my essays. I switched, and somehow by the grace of God, passed that first time even though my handwriting probably looked crazy and panicked. I didn’t even practice handwriting full essays, so I would definitely suggest bar exam takers try it a couple times just in case something crazy happens!