On Tuesday, July 28, 2026, approximately seven-hundred test-takers sat in a room in Yakima, Washington, ready to take the Washington State bar exam. After law school, masters programs, and internships, during which many graduates accrued hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, endless hours of studying for the bar examination, and expending financial resources to travel to Yakima and book hotel rooms near the testing center for the two-day test, the Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) canceled the bar exam due to tech issues. This cancellation occurred after examinees sat inside of the testing center for nearly five hours waiting for the software and internet to work. Although those with testing accommodations proceeded with completing the exam, the technical issues and little to no break between sessions caused extreme disorganization, distraction and anxiety amongst those who had to continue the exam. The Yakima Convention Center's failure to handle the commencement of the bar exam impacted all of those registered for the July 2026 Washington State Bar Exam

The WSBA and the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) has rescheduled the exam to take place on September 1-2 without offering any financial support or refund to those who plan to take the make-up exam, placing the burden of their catastrophic failure on the examinees. Requiring graduates to take the bar exam in September would push employment start dates back several months, causing many examinees to lose tens of thousands of dollars in income while remaining unemployed, among other things.

Not only is delaying licensure to seven-hundred prospective lawyers detrimental to the legal community; it is detrimental to the entire state of Washington. As Seattle University School of Law Dean Anthony Varona noted in the Seattle Times, Washington state has some of the gravest access-to-justice challenges and attorney shortages in the nation. Preventing hundreds of recent graduates from delivering much needed legal services across the state would only exacerbate these issues. And as Matthew Sanders, Director of the King County Department of Public Defense, acknowledged in his letter to the Washington Supreme Court, these circumstances would especially impact indigent clients seeking legal representation - disproportionately Washingtonians of color, those identifying as LGBTQ+, and people living with disabilities.

For these reasons, granting diploma privilege to examinees who sat for the July 2026 Washington bar examination is the only equitable and just remedy. Diploma privilege allows all applicants who were eligible to sit for the Washington Bar Examination under APR 3 and were present at the Yakima testing site to receive their license to practice without taking the bar exam. Examinees, attorneys, and law school deans across the nation have called for the Washington Supreme Court to grant immediate diploma privilege to examinees. 

We need your help. The WSBA has scheduled a Special Meeting to discuss this topic on August 7, 2026. The more signatures we can get by this time, the more likely it is that the WSBA, NCBE, and Washington Supreme Court will hear our concerns. We are grateful for your support.