How would you like to be notified that you failed the bar exam, only to find out a year later  that…….never mind – you actually passed!

That is exactly what happened to 90 Georgia bar exam takers who sat for the exam in July 2015 and February 2016.

According to the Georgia Bar, the scoring errors on the two exams were caused by 2 separate errors. In the case of the July 2015 mistake, the issue only came up after an aberration in test results came to the attention of the Board of Bar Examiners when an applicant applied for bar admission in a different state. An audit led to the discovery of these errors.

For the February 2016 exam, new scoring metrics that were used for the first time were blamed or the errors.

The Supreme Court of Georgia’s Office of Bar Admissions issued the following statement:

The Board of Bar Examiners has determined that you are one of 90 people who passed the Georgia Bar examinations administered in July 2015 or February 2016, despite prior notification that you had failed to pass. As Board members, we take full responsibility for these errors and offer our sincerest apologies to you.

Having taken the Bar examination ourselves, we recognize the distress that this mistake has caused you. As members of the Board, we are charged with upholding the integrity of the Bar examination.

We have conducted a thorough investigation and have confirmed the causes of the errors in the scoring process. Those have been corrected and we are establishing procedures to ensure we will not make the same errors going forward. Credibility is our certification system’s greatest asset and we must restore the public trust.

The Board is prepared to reimburse you for fees associated with any subsequent exams taken as specified in the letter you have received from the Office of Bar Admissions, although we know your investment of time and effort greatly outweighs the additional cost of the examination.

Want to guess whether any of the 90 affected exam takers and soon-to-be-lawyers will be filing a lawsuit over this matter?