Bar Exam Horror Story:
How to Pass the Bar—then Fail

By Carson King
Updated: December 10, 2020

As if 2020 didn’t already suck for enough people, things just got much, much worse for fifteen recent law grads.

Imagine this: It’s your wedding day. All your friends and family are there. Gifts, large sandwich platters, and colorful napkins are everywhere. The wedding cake is beautiful, everything is perfect . . .

. . . And then your groom goes to use the restroom . . .

And never comes back.

While we say it could “never happen to us,” it does happen . . . and now it sometimes happens when it comes to passing the bar exam.

What happened

On November 30, 2020, the Kentucky Bar Exam results were finally posted. After fifty-five days of waiting, grads got their scores—or so they’d thought.

As recorded by the Kentucky Office of Bar Admissions, a filing incident occurred in which eighteen students got the wrong test score.

Fifteen were told they passed, when in fact, they had failed the bar exam. Ouch.

Three were told they failed, when in fact, they had passed the bar exam. That must be nice.

What’s next

Before the Kentucky Office of Bar Admissions noticed the problem, news of the students’ “success” on the bar exam had led to parties and social media celebrations built upon the untruth.

Some of the students are protesting that they should be “permitted” to pass anyway, because “all results are final.” 

While initially only eighteen students and their friends and family were affected, the story has blown up across the web, appearing on Fox Business, ABC News, Reddit, MSN, and Yahoo.