State Bar Exam Fiasco Prompts ExamSoft Lawsuits

Many of us remember the stress of college exams, though few of us have sat for one of the toughest exams of all: the state bar exam. Across the country, passing the bar exam is the only way to become a practicing lawyer and, in dozens of states, the exam can only be taken electronically. That’s all good – unless the software used to receive examinees’ essays and answers fails, preventing thousands of applicants from successfully completing the test. That’s exactly what may have happened last week, and now the company behind the programs, ExamSoft, is facing lawsuits amid claims that it misled customers and committed negligence by providing faulty software.

ExamSoft programs even began deleting essays as they were typed, locked students out of the system, and left applicants clueless as to whether they had managed to submit their answers and complete the bar exam.

ExamSoft has publically acknowledged last week that the programs failed to work properly, resulting in lost student essays, delays, and large amounts of stress – all this despite the company’s promise to make exam days as relaxing as possible. Lawsuits have now been filed alleging that many test takers found it impossible to submit their essays on the first day of exams despite numerous attempts and even working at the problem all night. Adding insult to injury, ExamSoft has so far failed to refund the $150 some applicants spent to install the correct software.

Now, students are saying that the company should have known that their product was faulty and would not be able to cope with the demands of the exam days, and that ExamSoft’s servers were inadequate to handle the number of submissions. In certain cases, ExamSoft programs even began deleting essays as they were typed, locked students out of the system, and left applicants clueless as to whether they had managed to submit their answers and complete the bar exam.

According to one complaint filed in California:

Suits have also been lodged in Washington and Illinois, with more expected. Attorneys are looking to hear from people who were affected by last week’s ExamSoft software failures.