The Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday that hundreds of aspiring lawyers who never got to take the state's bar exam can become licensed attorneys without ever sitting for it.
Wednesday's second day was scrapped too, on the grounds that officials no longer trusted the platform.
It was that Washington concentrated its entire cohort in a single venue with no fallback site, the exact concentration of risk Dean Varona's criticism of the Yakima venue targeted.
Repeat applicants and anyone who had previously failed the bar exam are excluded from the waiver entirely; their only options are retaking a future exam or withdrawing for a refund.
He isn't alone in facing consequences beyond the fee itself: delayed job start dates, stalled clerkships and postponed life plans were common threads across the applicants who spoke to reporters in the ten days between the cancellation and the court's order.
The court granted a waiver to first-time applicants unable to test after a July 28 technology failure canceled the exam in Yakima, but rejected the full diploma privilege sought by the state's three law school deans.