Harvard Law Grad Fired From Biglaw Occupation After Failing Bar Loses Disability Bias Match Versus Bar Examiners

A Harvard Law graduate who unsuccessful the New York bar test 2 times, missing her Biglaw career since of it, and submitted a disability bias suit from the state’s Board of Law Examiners has now experienced that suit tossed out — and you could possibly be equipped to guess why if you are deep into learning for the bar test appropriate now.

First, we’ll present some qualifications. If you remember, again in 2016, the plaintiff in this case, now recognized as T.W., sued the New York BOLE, alleging that she’d been denied tests accommodations on the bar examination that she’d received even though in legislation school. It was since of this denial, she claimed, that she failed the bar exam twice in a row, which led to her dropping her work at Ropes & Grey. “Once you are in a huge, white-shoe law agency and you are compelled to depart, you are out of sync,” her lawyer said at the time. “The likelihood of obtaining yet another job at a large agency is slender to none. This has seriously derailed her occupation.” T.W. passed the test on her 3rd check out, but a vocation in Biglaw had already handed her by.

So, why was this lawyer’s bar exam match banished from court docket? In accordance to Choose Raymond J. Dearie of the Eastern District of New York, the BOLE is like an arm of the condition, and that usually means it is entitled to sovereign immunity in opposition to ADA promises like the plaintiff in this circumstance experienced levied.

On best of Dearie booting T.W.’s past remaining lead to of motion — the Next Circuit kicked a different a single of her claims in 2021 — he went forward and denied her the injunctive reduction she sought to stop the BOLE from reporting her past examination benefits. An expungement, he observed, would merely not undo what had previously been done. The ABA Journal has the dollars estimate from the choose:

“T.W. submits that she faces continuing injury mainly because the document of her bar examination failures has hindered her job look for and career prospects,” Dearie wrote. “But T.W. never alleges that a possible employer has inquired about her bar assessment document, much significantly less built a selecting decision based mostly on that file. In its place, she alleges that legislation firms have uncovered ‘that she did not have the possibility to attain the practical experience they request from a 2013 graduate because of to the disruptions prompted by her bar evaluation failure.’ … The courtroom simply cannot rewrite record expungement will neither alter T.W.’s level of knowledge nor undo the actuality that she did not properly pass the bar right up until 2015. Also, the injunctive reduction T.W. requests would suppress a record that, according to the board, it is prohibited from disclosing to employers.”

T.W. could have spent the final several years of her existence litigating in opposition to the New York BOLE and ended up with a loss, but it was not specifically all for naught. At least potential bar examination candidates in the state will know just how challenging it is to sue the bar examiners. That is not what she was hoping for, but it’s a little something.

Harvard Legislation grad loses suit boasting absence of bar test lodging nixed her BigLaw vocation [ABA Journal]

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Higher than the Law, exactly where she’s worked due to the fact 2011. She’d really like to listen to from you, so make sure you come to feel no cost to email her with any guidelines, inquiries, opinions, or critiques. You can adhere to her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.