“The rumor mill about bar exam horrors chugged steadily in June and July as thousands of recent law school graduates prepared for the grueling New York State Bar Examination,” April Dembosky reports for The New York Times.
This week, “test takers will sit for hours, proving their grasp of the intricacies of the law — from criminal codes to contracts. Some hope they won’t have to sit next to lip smackers or overzealous scribblers, others hope that their health will hold up,” Dembosky reports.
“Many will be praying that their computers will not have a meltdown,” Dembosky reports. “‘There’s no guarantee when it comes to technology,’ said John McAlary, the executive director of the New York State Board of Law Examiners. ‘There’s always a risk that something can go wrong.'”
“The New York board has allowed candidates to complete the essay parts of the bar exam on their laptops since February 2003,” Dembosky reports. “For all the stories of students having anxiety attacks in the exam room, there seems to be a competing number about their computers crashing and the specialized exam software going awry.”
Dembosky reports, “For Mac users with bad handwriting, there is no keyboarding option. The exam software is designed to run on Windows systems, and the New York board included this clause in its laptop policy, warning in capital letters: WE DO NOT SUPPORT APPLE PRODUCTS IN ANY FORM INCLUDING INTEL BASED LAPTOPS RUNNING BOOTCAMP **NO EXCEPTIONS**'”
Dembosky reports, “Last summer, panic spread through various testing sites when the exam software – which locks down all programs and files except the exam – malfunctioned. Hundreds of laptop users who navigated back to a previously completed essay found a blank screen. In the months following the exam, Mr. McAlary said, the board salvaged all but 47 essays. Some of those candidates passed or failed regardless of their score on the lost essay, leaving only 15 that were given an estimated score. Nine of them passed the bar, six didn’t.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Davis Machead” for the heads up.]
One headline, three bars! We win! As for the rest:
“The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.” – George Bernard Shaw
So, the big question to these cretins should be “What’s the problem with running Bootcamp?” It must be pure Mac ignorance.
i read on the nyu law school website that intel macs with bootcamp aren’t even allowed during lectures.
But they will allow them to charge outrageous fees to future clients.
If they’re aware enough to know about Bootcamp, wouldn’t they know that Macs running Windows under that program are essentially operating as native Windows computers?
Maybe it’s an IT idiot who doesn’t understand the idea. I used to work with Mac-haters like that in a former job.
The New York State Bar are racists!
They’ll be hearing from me!
MDN/MW: ‘results’. I’ll be gettin’ some.
“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”
‘Oliver Twist’ by Charles Dickens
I’m gonna sue the sonsabitches!
Amazing. Half of the law students at Lewis & Clark law school in Portland use Macs. The East Coast should just go back to England. We don’t need it!
Barring it, even though bootcamp or parallels can run that silly OS Windows just proves that the IT management there are Windows Fanbois. They hate anything Apple, because their reasoning for barring Apple is just pure hate and ignorance.
WE DO NOT SUPPORT YOUR BULL SHIT NO EXCEPTIONS
Another case of ignorance.
Shakespeare said it best ” First thing we do is kill all the lawyers “.
Is it a coincidence that most of our Senators and Congressmen are
lawyers by trade and education ? No wonder this country has the problems that don’t seem to get addressed by Congress.
“It must be pure Mac ignorance”
There’s a lot of ignorance among Mac users, pure or not.
“They hate anything Apple, because their reasoning for barring Apple is just pure hate and ignorance.”
Law school exam software needs to lock the PC down pretty tightly, so that accessing any reference material, pre-written essays etc on the PC is impossible. It usually re-boots the PC so that it only runs the exam software. My guess is that Boot Camp is somehow incompatible with that process.
“First thing we do is kill all the lawyers “.
No problemo. Who’s next?
How about meteorologists? They tick me off.
Nah… SBG… I vote we kill off the stock analysts next.
Jim – TIV,
A most excellent choice. I bow to your better judgement.
But I still wanna get those blasted weathermen.
The New Bar is discriminating.
Easy… they want to support only ONE platform. They don’t want to have to keep up with Macs running bootcamp. A student could easily just SAY they were running bootcamp and then be running parallels. The NY BAR doesn’t want to have to deal with that variable.
They know that they can lock down the computers to everything except the exams.
Some of the Mac users here are both clueless and out of touch.
It’s a difficult test and they’re doing their best to suss out the cheaters or prevent them from doing so.
As a law firm IT guy, I am not surprised by the NY State Bar antics. Law is one of the most conservative and technically backward professions in existence. To give you an example, most lawyers still prefer and use Word Perfect. I bet most readers did not even realize Word Perfect still existed.
Fortunately, pockets of enlightment are spreading in law. As Sum Jung Gai noted, half of the Portland attorneys-in-making are using Macs. At legal confences I am seeing the % of Macs increase steadily and significantly every year. And earlier this year in the American Bar Association’s Law Practice monthly magazine, the cover story covered in detail the advantages to switching from PCs to Macs.
The bottom line is that the tide is changing in law as it is in all business with respect to Macs. Those lawyers who refuse to change and improve are destined to join blacksmiths, buggy makers, and abacus users on the slag pile of history.
“What’s the problem with running Bootcamp?” It must be pure Mac ignorance.
OH THE IRONY of such ignorance, displayed displayed by people giving a test to measure mastery of intricacies.
Is this really ignorance, or pure anti-Mac bigotry?
What if an aspiring suit covered up the Apple logo on their MacBook and took the test with Boot Camp anyway?
I understand an unwritten part of law school is learning how to get ahead any way you can. Why not do it this way?
Sir Gill Bates…
I’m a meteorologist, have been for 20 years… your point? Or is it just the untrained ignorant “weathermen” you hate?
I’d like to plant my boot up his stinkin’ arse!!
That’s it! I’m boycotting Law & Order from now on, including Law & Order: Criminal Intent, but not Law & Order: SVU, because Ice-T is da bomb, and so is Chris Meloni. Rawr.
Shall we guess that their software has no way to stop a Mac from compromising its security? Likely that if someone boots into OS X during the exam they’ll be able to otherwise bypass the software. Obviously the problem is that the NY Bar has not INSISTED the software be designed to work with Macs. Hiring a professional Mac developer might be a good first step. Or a good SECOND step after requiring them to do this in the first place.
How is an Apple computer running Windows any different than a Dell or HP? Exactly, it’s not.
The testing program locks down all other programs in XP… the user can’t access anything else.
With Bootcamp, locking down all the programs may still allow access to the OSX part of the drive, where candidates may have access to things that others don’t.
gow,
Yeah, it’s the TV numbskulls. It seems like every local station has several ‘professional meteorologists’. I try to watch the news (especially morning) and every ten minutes they’re giving the weather.
They go through a bunch of mumbo jumbo with their charts and radar. Apparently, whoever has the most powerful Doppler radar also has the biggest shlong. They babble for so long you usually don’t remember what the weather is supposed to be.
They can totally blow their prediction, but the next time you see them, not a mention of it. I guess they figure people won’t recall what they said anyway.
It used to be that all the stations had a cute weather girl who just read what the national guys said was going to happen. Took less than five minutes and was usually more accurate than they are today.
I’ve heard that the local stations make most of their profit from advertisements on the news. I guess that’s why a half hour news cast now drags out for two hours. I always love how they feed you teasers on the 6:00 PM news, and then say “details at 11:00”. Bastards.
Anyway, I guess what I really detest is the money grubbing lack of integrity that is so prevalent with the television news media. The weather guys are just an easy target.
No offense meant to the NWS, NOAA or other non-TV meteorologists.
Seems like the NY Bar software just wants to lock down the entire OS to prevent access to study notes etc.
It can’t do that in OS X. If using Boot Camp, the Mac user could just reboot and check some notes, then boot back into Windows and try to continue the exam.
If using Parellels or VM Fusion, its even easier… the NY Bar exam software cannot even detect that its running in virtualisation, thus a possible loophole for the candidates to check their notes. Yes, its unfair, but given how conservative this lot are, I can see their perspective.
Maybe any Mac developers fancy stepping up and offering to develop a OS X version of the NY Bar exam software to even out the playing field? (I’m not a developer, sorry)
Woody,
“but not Law & Order: SVU, because Ice-T is da bomb, and so is Chris Meloni.”
Ice-T is funny. But Meloni is a wiener. Even the woman kick his sissy ass. The only ones he can take are 100 pound dweebs who are handcuffed. He just loves to act tough and slam helpless people into walls. What a puss. I’ll bet he’s even worse in real life.
(If you’re being sarcastic, please disregard the above statement. Thank you.)
ANY Intel compatible computer manufacture that is barred from exams should sue.
With idiots like this, no wonder lawyers have such a bad name.
More evidence reinforcing that Lawyer stereotype, where most are assholes. And it starts at the top.
is isn’t the lawyers per se folks, it is the BAR, that is why years ago i created HELL – HELP END LICENSING of LITIGATORS.
apparently their software is doing some BARbaric low level stuff to keep people from using software that is not related to their exam.
this is NOT trivial, they probably have a good reason to ban macs.
What do you call a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start
Three guys walk into a bar, the fourth one ducks. (ba-dump-dump)
The Dude abides.
The other day I was using my new Apple iTele and passed a Galactic Bar during a teleport.
> If using Boot Camp, the Mac user could just reboot and check some notes, then boot back into Windows and try to continue the exam.
Could a savvy Windows user (yes, I know, a bit of an oxymoron) with a dual boot machine (say, with a Linux partition) get around the rules?
It is illegal to support a monopoly! For this reason, this institution
must be juged and punished!
Why allow people to use their own computers at all? Most tests with essay sections that I have taken over the past 20 years or so have used computers at the test facility. Nowhere near the same risk of cheating there.
The bar association produces lawyers, what do you expect?
@Sum Jung Gai
“The East Coast should just go back to England. We don’t need it!”
Ahem, we don’t want em either mate!!!
ApplePi,
You are clueless and out of touch.
Ever hear of Parallels? Or VMWare?
FOR WINDOWS?
Dude, your ignorance is mind-numbing and your rampant fanboi’ism makes you stupid.
Take your flaccid “argument” elsewhere.
@British Mac Head: you beat me to it!
To the gallows!!!
Makes perfect sense. You see, the “judge” often keeps important and useful information out of the courtroom. For the Bar, some “Judge” is keeping useful and important technology out of the exam. Perverted logic just permeates our legal system
@ Sir Gill Bates
In our local metro area, we have a station that compulsively advertises their “Storm Center” weather news applet. So here you are on a beautiful day, blue sky, sun shining, and this “Storm Alert” comes blasting across your TV warning of an impending colossal tornado or snow storm. Here they try to generate fear, cause when they kick in the “Storm Center”, look out Loretta, cause the grocery store shelves will be bare within the hour.
One poster says: ” Law school exam software needs to lock the PC down pretty tightly, so that accessing any reference material, pre-written essays etc on the PC is impossible. It usually re-boots the PC so that it only runs the exam software. My guess is that Boot Camp is somehow incompatible with that process.” [italics provided]
This in and of itself is unethical on the one hand, and on the other, puts the examiners at great risk should vital information on anyone’s personal computer become lost or end up in the wrong hands. And an OS that so readily lends itself to this kind of direct invasion of privacy should be banned. If this level of security is required for proper examination of candidates, then the examiners should provide the hardware – period.
Having worked within IT at a law firm I would guess that the Lawyers want to train the students that the partners simply don’t want to pay a penny more than they have to for something that doesn’t revenue earn (i.e. in the heads of the average law firm partner everything but them). Therefore Macs are out and the cheapest possible alternative is accepted, however rubbish it may be.
The trouble with law firms is they still have this idea that any IT money spent is for IT’s benefit. In reality the money isn’t for IT and often not even directly for the firm, it’s the CLIENTS’ data and protecting it that the spend is for. That message however doesn’t get through. All they are interested in is cutting costs.
It doesn’t stop them from screaming and shouting when the crappy systems this strategy results in crash all the time though. I’ve never worked amongst so many intelligent idiots as that time in “the law vertical”.
If they were smarter, wouldn’t they just put the exam in a web app? That way they could control the server platform it runs on, without dictating to people what system they need to use.
…oh, wait, except then they’d mandate an out-of-date browser like IE, wouldn’t they? God forbid someone use an ALTERNATIVE browser such as – *shudder* – FIREFOX! (dun dun DUN!)
‘There’s no guarantee when it comes to technology,’ said John McAlary, the executive director of the New York State Board of Law Examiners. ‘There’s always a risk that something can go wrong.’
…especially when you rely solely upon Windows. Doorknobs.
Most lawyers are unscrupulous bastards. I would have thought that cheating on the bar exam was a prerequisite to passing that exam.
Just goes to show you just how backward thinking the NY bar really is!
Hell, I’m not so sure that there even using computers… let alone PC’s!
But I’ll bet that when this story starts to generate bad press, they’ll be changing there position and fast!
It also show just how many partners are members of the NY bar and how much influence they have over the rest of the bar.
I bit that those jr. members are bitting the bit to get a iMacs on there desks, right about now!
But guess where the money come from to buy those iMacs…directly out of the billfolds of guess who…the partners!
smells like a lawsuit to me
@ Dave H:
The problem isn’t that lawyers don’t want to spend the money on IT, but most law firms are run by lawyers who don’t know squat about IT and most IT people don’t have the time and patience to explain something to them or why it is needed.
These lawyers are usually running the practice, handling HR matters, and many other things they were never trained to do. Then they have to handle their client’s problems. Law firms are notorious for having archaic business structures anyway.
That’s also a problem with lawyers and why people get frustrated in dealing with them – they don’t take the proper time to educate their clients on why something needs to be done in a particular way.
chaz,
That’s funny. They’re probably taking bribes from the grocery store owners. Don’t get me started on THOSE guys!
After years of teaching the soon-to-be attorneys how to push the legal limit the NY Bar is merely bowing to the masters of sneaky in Redmond…
Morons that need their quotes adjusted and look at the facts.
“There’s no guarantee when it comes to technology,” … “There’s always a risk that something can go wrong.”
-There is no guarantee when it comes to life, there is always a risk that something can go wrong.
They really should have a much broader technology disclaimer:
“Technical difficulties may include ink flow, lead breaking, eraser disintegration, paper ripping or crumpling. In the event any technical difficulties occur during the bar examination, you must handwrite your essay answers using your own blood in the answer books provided and no additional time may be allowed nor sharp instruments will be provided although you are allowed to use your pen or pencil to impale yourself. If the answer books become crumpled, ripped torn or disintegrates you will be allowed to write your answers all over the ass of one of the invigilators you will not be provided with any artificial breathing apparatus.
Most lawyers are unscrupulous bastards.
I resent that accusation!!!
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True story: at a recent conference, my employer’s legal counsel (i.e. chief vampire) smugly told our supervisors to do things a certain way, “because it’ll make my job easier”.
WTF?!?! Dude, EARN the fortune we’re paying you…
There is likely no good reason for the anti-Mac stance of the NY Bar Examiners. (Note that these people are not really lawyers–and the bar exam itself has little to do with the practice of law.) Just simple ignorance/laziness on the part of their IT people.
I should add that Harvard Law is completely open to Macs, about 30% of the students use them. I think NYU actually bans them, requiring only PCs. And of course, all the major firms in NY are PC only, as far as I know.