18 Kentucky bar applicants are recovering from whiplash after 15 of them were told they had passed the October Kentucky bar exam when they, in fact, had not. Conversely, three others were told they had failed the bar exam when they had actually passed.
The erroneous results are being blamed on human error during the data entry process. One applicant's information was being entered into a spreadsheet, and in the process, their name was entered twice, causing the rest of the spreadsheet to be misaligned. The end result was that 18 applicants had the wrong score attached to their name.
The 18 applicants were given the wrong results on Monday, only to be notified again on Thursday that a mistake had been made.
The Kentucky Office of Bar Admissions released a statement about the mix up through their website on Friday. In the letter, the KYOBA Executive Director Valletta Brown apologized sharing the following, “I want to apologize to every applicant affected by the incorrect Kentucky Bar Exam results that were issued by my office earlier this week. I know that no apology can undo the anguish and disappointment that these bar examinees and their families have endured. We sincerely regret this mistake, which was the result of a data entry error. The mistake was not discovered prior to the results posting on Monday. Once we realized there was an issue, our priority was correcting the results and making any necessary adjustments. All affected applicants were personally notified yesterday, December 3, 2020, of their adjusted score and exam result.”
State Representative Demands Answers
Kentucky state representative Jason Nemes did not take the apology lightly. In a statement he shared on Twitter, he expressed, "Heads have to roll for this. It is incredible and unacceptable."
Expanding on his concerns, Nemes stated that he would like a hearing to take place so that a thorough investigation can uncover what exactly went wrong. Nemes explains that he wants to know what went wrong and what could have been done differently. More importantly, Nemes emphasizes that necessary steps need to take place in order to make sure that a mistake of this magnitude does not happen again.
Unsurprisingly, applicants who were informed that they passed the bar when they had not were devastated. One applicant, Andrew Skomorowksy, took the exam three times. To find out that he passed but then be informed that he had not is something he describes as a "gut punch.”
Like several of the other applicants, Skomorowksy shared the good news with his family as soon as he found out and has even paid several fees and dues in order to obtain his Kentucky Bar Association license.
Skomorowksy shared with a local news outlet the following, “To have come this far and get so close, literally close enough that I held in my hands a piece of paper that said I'd passed, and to be told, nope, sorry, that's not the case, it's a gut punch. I’m pretty hurt by this. This was a big deal. I'm okay with failing the exam, it's the way that this matter got handled with which I take such umbrage."
Kentucky representative Nemes echoed Skomorowsky's pain by stating, "This is very serious. It affects people's lives in a very profound way, and it's a very serious mistake and there needs to be accountability, and I'll let the Supreme Court take the first effort in seeing what that is."
In the statement put out by the Kentucky Office of Bar Admissions, the agency offers an olive branch in trying to correct the massive mess up. Their statement explains that the Board of Bar Examiners and Supreme Court will waive the application fees for the February bar exam so that the applicants who were given the misinformation can try again with the exam.
