"ExamSoft" Bar Exam Software Fails Law Grads

New submitter BobandMax writes ExamSoft, the management platform software that handles digital bar exam submissions for multiple states, experienced a severe technical meltdown on Tuesday, leaving many graduates temporarily unable to complete the exams needed to practice law. The snafu also left bar associations from nearly 20 states with no choice but to extend their submission deadlines. It's not the first time, either: a classmate of mine had to re-do a state bar exam after an ExamSoft glitch on the first go-'round. Besides handling the uploading of completed exam questions, ExamSoft locks down the computer on which it runs, so Wikipedia is not an option.

Comments

Really?

[nospam007]

"leaving many graduates temporarily unable to complete the exams needed to practice law."

And that's a bad thing, because ... ?

Re:Really?

[fiziko]

The business next door proctors these and similar exams. They are expensive and not available in every community, so the test takers have often paid a relatively large amount of money at this stage of their lives, not just several hundred to take the test, but also travel, accommodations, missing day(s) of work, etc. to be where the test is available. The proctoring company does not charge them for the second attempt, but all of the expenses needed to be there get doubled.

Re: Really?

[O('_')O_Bush]

Lawyers are not necessary to maintain law and order. They are useful only when law is written by and presided over by other lawyers, for lawyers.

That is, they are a solution to a problem they create.
  You can look back at just about every functionjng society for most of human history and neither find mob rule nor lawyers. You also find law that is comprehensible to a lay person.

Not saying our legal system is better or worse than old legal systems, just that the point you made about mob rule is certainly not necessarily true.

Re:Really?

[rossdee]

"Yeah, mob rule is so much better than law and order..."

I have never seen "Mob Rule" but "Law and Order" stopped being good after Jerry Orbach died.

Re: Really?

[EvilJoker]

I still can't read a word of it though

Lockdown

[GigaplexNZ]

Besides handling the uploading of completed exam questions, ExamSoft locks down the computer on which it runs, so Wikipedia is not an option.

Yeah, that'll work, because nobody has internet capable cellphones, secondary machines or even Virtual Machines.

Re:Lockdown

[Anonymous Coward]

For exam takers, a secondary machine and internet capable cellphone is not an option. The exam doesn't take place in your living room but at a monitored location. In my state, the exam proctors don't even let you bring in your own pencil. Pulling out a cellphone would be a great way to be kicked out and never be allowed to take the exam again.

I am not sure the current state of virtual machines and ExamSoft, but at least a few years ago the ExamSoft software would not run when a virtual environment was present. While I am sure people have found workarounds, the point of the software (and why most law schools and state bars use it) is to avoid that result.

Re:Lockdown

[sandytaru]

Last time I took a test (CAPM), the testing place gave me a temporary locker to put my stuff, and also requested that I turn my pockets inside out to show I didn't have a tiny cell phone or something hidden in them. They take it pretty seriously.

I noticed that the exam software we used was running on XP and appeared to have been originally programmed for Windows 98. I wonder if they ever upgraded those boxes to Win7...?

Re:Lockdown

[Chelloveck]

RTFA:

The digital system for the exam works on usersâ(TM) personal laptop, which they bring to the testing facility, where they download the company's application to the computers they use to take the tests. At the end of the exam, the file closes and locks. When the user is able to connect to the Internet, the file uploads. Users cannot make changes to the file after the conclusion of the test.

You have to drive to the exam site but you're expected to bring your own equipment? Who thought that up? Rather than trying to intrusively lock down everyone's machine it would be far better to simply issue everyone a cheap tablet or netbook on which to take the exam. Controlled hardware, no need to try to "lock down" innumerable variations of BYOD. The ExamSoft web site says the software runs on "any modern machine", defined as Windows, Mac, or iPad purchased in the past 3-4 years. But disable any anti-virus, and no VMs. They're basically trying to secure any random machine off the street to prevent cheating. That's a very fine example of "doing it wrong".

Lawsuit Just Begging to Happen

[Mr D from 63]

Sue the bastards... but they might need to hire a lawyer to do it.

Trust

[DoofusOfDeath]

If we can't trust these applicants to take the test honestly, how can we trust them to act as officers of a court?

perspective from one of the victims

[Anonymous Coward]

So I took the NY Bar yesterday and can validate this is all true.

This thread has seen a lot of jokes, but just to put things in perspective:

This software costs $100 for a one time use accounting for two 3 hour sessions. Furthermore, it is bound to your computer, so if you need to transfer it, you need to pay for an additional license.

The software is not complex. It has exactly 3 main functions:
1. Provide limited word processing functionality
2. Lock the user out of other programs
3. Automatically upload the answer files to Examsoft servers upon closing.

At my administration of the exam, there were perhaps 1000 people. Mine was in Albany, but there were also administrations in NYC (the largest), Buffalo, and I think one other location. So say 5000 people. Several other states were offering their bar exam with Examsoft on the same day, so lets be generous and say there were 50,000 students who needed to upload files over the course of an evening. The files uploaded consisted of 2 250k files in their proprietary format. So we are talking 25 whopping Gigabytes TOTAL being thrown at them. And they were paid roughly $5M for one day of testing. Also, bear in mind, that there is a winter administration as well, albeit with fewer candidates, and that Examsoft is used for many other types of test as well, so their yearly gross is probably well into the 8 figures.

Yet somehow, they didn't have the bandwidth/and/or the server capacity to handle the connections or puny amount of data being thrown at them? This is unacceptable by any business standard. And they have been the exclusive provider of this service for years, so it's not like they had no notice of what kind of volume they should be prepared for!

I personally paid $300 just to take this exam ($200 to NY for the exam itself, easily one of the cheapest fees among the states, + $100 for Examsoft). I also spent about $1000 in travel expenses. After many tries, I apparently managed to upload the files (my software said they failed, but I received confirmation emails saying they had succeeded). Examsoft can't confirm either way whether data corruption has occurred. If they did not manage to upload in one piece, my exam will have automatically failed by the Bar's standards, a decision which is unappealable. So I will be out my financial investment, close to two months of study time, as well as 6 months in lowered earning potential SINCE I WON'T BE LICENSED.

This was a massive, massive failure, and I will frankly be shocked if multiple lawsuits aren't filed against Examsoft over this.