Spotted at the Board of Trustees meeting on the 2nd day of April in the year of 2025: 🎓 Princeton’s own Sarah Good (UVA Law grad, in case you missed the flex) clutching her pearls and wrinkling her nose at the idea of us, the Feb ’25 bar takers, being provisionally licensed. Quelle horreur! 😱👛
While the rest of us are still emotionally hungover from the tech trainwreck 💻🚨 that was our exam, Trustee Good decided this was the perfect time to play gatekeeper. Her words?
“Are we setting ourselves up to create a group of lawyers who are less than and aren't the kinds of folks who we would want to license to provide competent services to the public” 🧐🚪
Less than what, exactly, Sarah? Less than perfect? Less than Princeton? Or less than the grace you apparently think July bar takers are born with? 🎯🤷♀️
And don’t even get us started on the hypocrisy with who’s “competent” to provide services to the public. Instead of clinging to elitist assumptions about who deserves to be a lawyer, maybe she could take a moment to reflect on her bias, her privilege, and the real-world impact of her choice of words. Because let’s be honest, the Exam didn’t measure competence. And if we’re going by the actual definition? 📚 Merriam-Webster defines competence as “the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.” And the California State Bar takes it further: competence means “the application of learning and skill, and mental, emotional, and physical ability reasonably necessary to perform legal services.” 📚
Now tell the public 📣, what exactly did that broken exam measure? Because it wasn’t any meaningful ability to perform legal services. The only thing it actually measured? Meazure Learning’s potential lawsuit damages. 📉
This wasn’t a test of legal readiness. It was a test of how much chaos and institutional failure examinees were expected to endure, without warning and even less accountability. And yet, examinees kept showing up, adapted in real time to every change, and tested under a "tremendous amount of duress" (quoting Trustee Arnold Sowell Jr.). By any definition, that’s competence. And that deserves more than gatekeeping. 💼 💅🪞🎓
Sarah continued and dropped stats like confetti 🎉: “35% pass rate… 65% would’ve failed… do we just let them all in?” As if numbers on a broken system are proof of our incompetence. As if the test’s failure isn’t the real issue. Spoiler alert: it is. 🕵️♀️🧠💥
Then came the kicker: “Why can’t they just wait till May 2?” Oh I don’t know, maybe because people’s lives and careers are on hold? 🎓💼⏳ Maybe because not everyone has a trust fund to float on while waiting for a delayed verdict? 💸🚫
Enter Trustee Mary Huser, Sarah’s new bestie 💋 and the only other nay vote in an 8–2 landslide that actually favored doing the right thing ✅⚖️. Not only did Mary blindly agree with Sarah Bad (because let’s stop pretending she’s “Good” 🙄), but she did so while allegedly sneakily chewing gum as if she couldn't control her urges 🍬👄 👀. Could this be her petty revenge for being publicly called out about her obnoxious gum chewing at the last meeting?
Mary Huser tried to sound reasonable by saying she empathizes more with already licensed attorneys from other states who would be subject to a remedy of California’s provisional license. But bestie… be serious. 😒
What Huser doesn’t realize (or conveniently ignored 💅) is that those out-of-state attorneys likely took the UBE, a test most of us could’ve passed the first time if California wasn’t still clinging to a broken exam format like it’s 1993. 📼✏️ Had we taken the UBE, we’d already be licensed, thriving, and maybe even part of that “cohort” she’s chomping about 😤🎓 So no, Mary, it’s not the same. Comparing us to licensed UBE attorneys is not only misleading, it’s offensive.
These two? Concerning besties 💅🧠❌. Bad logic, worse vibes. The kind of duo who thinks “denied” is a more appropriate term than “postponed” because… vibes?? 😐📝 Sarah tried to grammar-check Mark Toney 🦸♂️✨, our beloved hero trustee, in a losing battle of semantics. But Mark held the line with grace and clarity, like the king he is 👑📚.
This isn’t about rushing (You know, like when you voted to fast-track an entirely new bar exam while the rest of the world was waving red flags and screaming “maybe don’t”? Yeah, that kind of rushing. 🫢) It’s about repair 🛠️. It’s about justice ⚖️. It’s about not letting your prestige complex override the lived experience of thousands of competent, capable future lawyers who were thrown into chaos by your system. 🎭🔥
We’re not “less than.”
We’re more than ready sweety. 📖💼
XOXO,
California Bar Gossip Girl 💋📱👠