No, surprisingly in light of last week’s revelations from Cambridge, the applicant who cheated on her bar exam did NOT go to Harvard. I’m as stunned as you are!
One of the legal profession’s ethics anomalies is that its character standards for entering legal practice are far more unforgiving than the standards for keeping one’s license to practice after being admitted. For while John Edwards continues to be a North Carolina lawyer in “good standing,” an Ohio bar applicant was held to lack the requisite good character to be a trustworthy lawyer (Ohio Supreme Court opinion here) because of the following set of facts.
When Jasmine Shawn Parker of Covington, Kentucky was taking the Ohio bar exam, a test monitor reported that she had continued to write for up to 30 seconds after “time” was called on a set of two exam questions, and then again for 45 to 60 seconds on two sets of two exam questions. The Board of Bar Examiners investigated, and asked Parker’s tablemates about their observations or her actions, if any, after time had been called. They reported that Parker had continued writing for maybe a second or two past the declared deadline on Day 1 of the exam, and on the second day, had continued to write past the stopping point “long enough to get at least two lines of writing on paper.” As a penalty after these findings, the Ohio Board of Bar Examiners gave Parker no credit on the exam question with the highest point value. Never mind: Parker’s score was high enough to pass the bar exam anyway. Her alleged cheating, however, led the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness to recommend her license be denied, with the opportunity to reapply.
When told about the cheating claim (for that’s what it is) Parker “adamantly denied” that she had continued writing. She characterized the accusations as “malicious,” “unfounded,” “vague,” and “empty and false,” and attacked the integrity and motives of those who had reported her conduct. At the bar examiners hearing, she swore under oath on direct examination that she did not exceed time limits. Under cross-examination, however, Parker conceded that it was “a possibility.” Later, before the Board of Commissioners on Character and Fitness, Parker changed her story again, saying she “had no memory” of writing after the deadline. She said that she regretted her vociferous response to the accusations, and that it was the unfortunate result of haste and immaturity.
And well she might have regretted it, since her initial denials and her attacks on those who reported her misconduct disturbed the court as least as much as her shady exam-taking tactics. The Ohio Supreme Court, in a January 29 ruling, denied a law license to Parker, but said she could reapply in 2013 in light of her “sincere remorse and her maturation as a result of this experience.”
I love this decision.
Parker cheated. Whether it was few seconds or a few minutes, she knew the rules and tried to benefit by breaking them. That shows an integrity deficit, and ethically-challenged lawyers tend to get more unethical as they get more experienced, realizing what they can and can’t get away with, growing cynical, and seeing the rewards of careful rule-stretching and breaking. If Parker tries this kind of thing now, she is a real risk to the profession over the long term. Her response to the accusations compounded the problem. It placed her honesty legitimately in question, as well as her trustworthiness. It was in her interest and the public’s interest, as well as the Ohio legal community’s, for Parker to be taught a sharp lesson now, while she has time to recalibrate her ethics alarms. The compassionate limit on the punishment was also fair and appropriate.
I also love this decision because it supports my objections to one of the favorite arguments of the defenders of baseball’s prime steroid cheat, Barry Bonds. They argue that since he would have undoubtedly qualified for baseball’s Hall of Fame based on his achievements before he began using performance enhancing drugs, his cheating shouldn’t matter. There are two reason cheating disqualifies someone, however. One is that it unjustly inflates their achievements, but the other, equally important (I would argue more important) is that no professions can or should tolerate cheaters in their ranks. If Parker cheated, it doesn’t matter that she didn’t need to. What matters is the cheating itself.
As with Bonds, Parker now has her defenders, who feel that Ohio is being too strict. The Court went “overboard,” writes Vivia Chen in “Consumerist,’ for example. In fact, it was those mean test-takers whose conduct was really deplorable, since they “ratted on her.” That’s right: Chen, a former corporate lawyer (remember what I just said about cynical?), believes that when the Bar Examiners ask an applicant a direct question about the conduct of another applicant, the correct conduct is to cover up for her. Nice. What great advice for a blog devoted to legal job-seeking! Next she opines, incredibly:
“I do think it was uncool for Parker to claim that she didn’t run overtime. That said, running over by 60 seconds or so doesn’t seem like the biggest sin in the world. I bet it happens quite frequently on these type of exams—but it probably doesn’t get reported or caught.“
Goody! Let’s play “Count the Ethics Whoppers”!
ONE! Lying is “uncool”? No, according to the ethics rules governing lawyers, lying is grounds for professional discipline, and lying under oath is professional suicide—unless you’re President of the United States, but I digress…
TWO! “Running over by 60 seconds or so doesn’t seem like the biggest sin in the world”—Yikes! The Comparative Virtue Excuse, the worst rationalization of all! “It’s not the worst thing!” No, and she didn’t commit treason or boil a pet rabbit, either. She cheated. How much she cheated is irrelevant.
THREE! “I bet it happens quite frequently on these type of exams..” The Golden Rationalization…everybody does it! Vivia is on a roll…a legal ethics malpractice roll!
FOUR! “It probably doesn’t get reported or caught.” This is #25 on the Ethics Alarms Rationalization List, The Favorite Child Excuse. “HE got away with it, so it’s OK for me to do it too!”
Yechhh.
And it is thinking like Chen’s, my friends, that is why John Edwards still has his law license.
Ohio got it right.
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Facts: ABA Journal
Source: Consumerist
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
I have to admit, my initial instincts were along the lines of “jeez, 30 seconds, gimme a break,” but I now think you’re right. For reasons of angrily denying and denouncing, and for all the other points you make.
Good call.
Thanks, Charles, and my gut reaction was the same as yours.
This reminds me of a question I brought up during a recent department meeting at the high school where I teach. We were discussing rounding up semester grades. In the past I only round up semester grades that are __9.5 or higher. My department chair showed us an example where he rounded up an 89.45 to an A. I asked what cut off we were using for rounding up, because there has to be a cut off – there always has to be a clearly defined cut off, whether it be rounding grades or alloting time for an exam. Why would an 30 extra seconds on a test be ok if an extra five minutes is not? (Or maybe some people think an extra five minutes is ok).
I remember years ago when a Ph.D. co-worker at a consulting firm smilingly admitted that he had cheated on every doctoral exam he had ever taken. I was appalled, and told him so. His response was to challenge me to tell the truth: “Do you really mean you’ve never cheated on a test?” I said no, I hadn’t. I also said cheating on just one test would have negated (for me) my entire college career.
But the point is: even those many years ago, that cheerful admission of cheating is still stark in my memory. This man only got the job he had on the basis of his totally fake Ph.D., and he was so casual about it it scared me. I asked him them if he had ever engaged in a hit-and-run accident, he said of course not, and I asked him why I should believe him about that, because if he was a perpetual cheater in academia I was sure he was a perpetual cheat on everything else in his life.
It’s not just lawyers and politicians, my friends. It is endemic to our culture, and it scares the crap out of me. Where is the honor?
I agree that “just 30 seconds” is still cheating. But, I am uncomfortable with the final result- the established penalty for breaking the deadline appears to have been a zero-credit on the highest value question. However, when the penalty didn’t prevent her passing there were additional punishments imposed? To me, that sounds like they decided her punishment wasn’t enough so they added to it after the fact. Is doing so unethical? Or am I just missing something about how the process of becoming a lawyer goes?
It seems clear from the account that the 30 seconds alone would not have warranted such serious punishment. (Though I must say, in a written test, writing 30 seconds after you’re supposed to stop is pretty clear cheating.). She wrote much longer than that after time was called on the second day—that’s a pattern of cheating. But what lost her the license was not being forthcoming and honest during the investigation and hearing—the opinion is clear about that too. Cheating, plus a pattern of cheating, plus lying to the Bar? Easy call, if you ask me. I think she got off easy.
I think the punishment is perfectly reasonable, if the passing grade on the exam isn’t tied to being licensed. Does passing the bar exam (under normal circumstances) directly lead to being granted a law license? Or is the grade only part of the package to join the lawyer fold?
Only part of the package. You can pass the exam with flying colors, but you still have to have a law degree, and bass the bar’s other admission requirements, including a fee, and a character assessment. That’s where the cheating and lying nailed her.
OK, that makes more sense. I was under the impression that the exam was final barrier, and when the point deduction didn’t punish her adequately they ex-post-facto’ed more punishment.
This is pretty common. When I call time, students often try to continue to write on the exam. You can’t take the exam away, however, because that is grounds for dismissal from most universities as grossly unprofessional conduct and is considered to be close to a physical assault. If you tried to fail them for it, you would be in for quite an uphill battle as their parents weighed in and the pressure mounted.
I did once manage to announce last call for the exams and leave the room while a student was still trying to write more on his exam. I went to my research lab instead of my office. He didn’t find me for 5 hours, at which time I was able to disallow the exam because he had been in possession of it unattended for an extended amount of time. Students have too much power these days.
This is a huge problem within the U.S. that is spreading in all professions. We have masses of citizens adopting this attitude in leaps and bounds.
We now have generations of children that have been taught in this manner and again, this is another reason the U.S. is in the trouble we are. It is sad to see and say this attitude/belief is well embedded deep within government agencies and courts..
It is as simple as the nose on everyone’s face, when you build something out of lies and you repeat it long enough, then people begin to believe that it is truth. But then people later begin to wonder why things /society is deteriorating. Sooner or later the structures built on lies start to crumble.
If you want something to stand the times then you have to build on truth and that wa y when something does go wrong you can adjust , recognize the wrong to make something stronger that will with stand time.