Legal Pad

Bar Examiners Appeal to Avoid Accommodating Blind Law Grad

[Kate Moser]

Two weeks before a blind UCLA law school grad is set to take the California bar exam, the administrators of the national portion of the test have thrown her a curveball.

The National Conference of Bar Examiners this week appealed the preliminary injunction Stephanie Enyart won two weeks ago from Northern District Judge Charles Breyer, who ordered that she be able to take the test with the assistive technology (free reg. req.) she used all through law school.

The exam administrators, represented at the preliminary injunction hearing by Cooley Godward Kronish partner Gregory Tenhoff, cited security concerns and also the worry that granting one blind student’s preferred accommodations would open Pandora’s box.

Indeed! Disabled law school grads everywhere getting the reasonable accommodations they say they need! Stand down, Americans with Disabilities Act.

Disability Rights Advocates, which is representing Enyart and where she also is working as a law clerk, told the Chronicle that the appeal was “flabbergasting … irrational and mean-spirited.”

Tenhoff didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

Judges Bounced Off Controversial Race-Data Case

Hey, it was just a little motion to intervene. So what was all the fuss?

Not one, not two, but three judges in San Francisco Superior Court either recused themselves or were asked to step aside by counsel on Wednesday during a hearing in a case over bar exam data.

Maybe it’s the nature of the case? UCLA law prof Richard Sander wants to examine State Bar data for proof that affirmative action doesn’t work. After his previous study suggested affirmative action might be responsible for black students’ high bar-exam failure rates nationwide, his premise is that race-based preferences opened doors of elite law schools to minority students who weren’t academically prepared and might have prospered at less prestigious law schools.

Yeah, that’s going to tick some people off.

Some ticked-off people, and recuse excuses, after the jump:

A Different Kind of Terror for Bar Exam

Last week Legal Pad's affiliate Cal Law published the six essay questions from last July's Bar Exam, along with model answers from Bar prep courses.

Legal Pad was surprised by one of the questions. "To protect the nation against terrorism," Question No. 2 began, "the President proposed the enactment of legislation that would authorize the Secretary of Homeland Security ('the Secretary') to issue 'National Security Requests,' which would require businesses to produce the personal and financial records of their customers to the Federal Bureau of Investigation ('the FBI') without a warrant." Hey -- does that sound familiar?