Colorado Supreme Court
Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel
Promoting Professionalism. Protecting the Public.
Q&A with Susan Gleeson
The Director of Examinations
discusses the bar exam’s evolution, computer glitches and stuffed animal
mascots.
By JAMES CARLSON
Winter 2014
You might
not recognize Susan Gleeson’s face. But if you’re a Colorado attorney, you
might remember her voice. The Director of Examinations has administered the state’s
bar exam since 1982. When she delivers instructions over the loud speaker to
examinees at the February bar examination, it will be her 65th exam.
Which is to
say that she’s seen a lot. Gleeson sat down earlier this year to talk about the
intensity of the exam and how it’s changed over the years, about the strange
objects people used to bring with them to their test table, and about what
advice she has for test-takers.
Along with planning the test, you are also the voice of the bar exam. I’ve
heard you a few times. You sound very soothing, even comforting.
It’s the
mother in me. (Laughs) I turn on my
mother voice. The examinees are extremely intense. They’ve been locked up for
six months studying, and this is their entire career. It’s very important that
we give an air of confidence so that they will be calm. If they see that we’re
stressed, that creates more stress.
I remember watching Jim Coyle (Regulation Counsel) walk through the convention
center yelling to lines of waiting examinees, “If you’re here for the beer
festival, you’re a few days early!” That got some laughs.
Yes, things
like that. I like to tell the examinees, “Welcome to the 2014 bar exam. If
you’re not a bar exam candidate, you should not be here.” We want to let them
know we’re not the gestapo. We want them to be as relaxed as possible
How has the exam changed since you’ve been in charge?
In all sorts
of ways. In the 80s we had two test components: essays and multiple-choice. We
had 18 essays at one point. The performance test was adopted in 1989, which
added a third component to the exam. The essays have been whittled down over
the year. Now, with the recent adoption of the Unified Bar Exam, we have six
essays and two performance tests.
Why the reduction in the number of essays?
Well 18
essays is excessive, for one. Also, essays test for minimum competency, but
they don’t demonstrate how good of a lawyer you’ll be. An essay tests your
ability to memorize facts and regurgitate them. As a testing product, the performance
test gauges a person’s ability to be a lawyer. Can they identify relevant facts
among fluff? How well can they communicate that to a client?
That’s the same reasoning behind the new holistic grading.
Yes, with
the old method, graders looked for the examinees to identify particular legal
issues in an answer. Essentially, if the applicant hit the right buzz words,
they got the points. But there wasn’t a focus on the quality of writing, on
comprehension of the legal theory. Holistic grading is a global assessment of
the answer. You’ve got to hit the points, but you’ve also got to be able to
construct a cohesive paragraph and demonstrate that you can communicate
effectively to the court and to a client.
You’ve been doing this for more than 30 years now. You must have seen
some … well, some interesting things in your time.
There was
this poor girl once who got herself worked up into such a tizzy before the test
that she was sobbing and had to call her boyfriend to come pick her up. I once
found a pair of clean boxers behind a toilet at the site. We never found out
what that was about. We’ve had other instances, too. We had a woman who got the
blue screen of death at the end of the essay day. We had to send her whole
computer to the laptop vendor, and they retrieved her answer files.
Did she pass?
She passed and
was so relieved.
Wait, so what does happen if someone has a technical problem with their
laptop?
We try to
have contingency plans for everything, so we have extra test booklets and packets
for writing, and that person would start writing. That said, we’ve never lost a
test taken on the laptop.
When I observed the exam, what struck me was that it’s such a controlled
environment.
It has to be
exactly as we plan it. There’s so much riding on the exam. Most often it goes
off without a hitch, but sometimes things go wrong. My philosophy is that if we
have the physical space, the tables set up correctly, and the test materials in
place, then we can administer the test. We got the boxes, we got the books, we got the site. Anything else we can deal with.
What’s the weirdest thing someone’s tried to bring into the testing room?
Before we
had lists of items they couldn’t bring, examinees would bring little stuffed
animals, like mascots. One guy brought a wind-up alarm clock, the kind that
ticks on every second. That didn’t go over well. Years ago, we had a woman who
brought a framed picture of Perry Mason. (Laughs)
She had it on a little stand and took the test with Perry Mason looking at her.
What’s the best advice you can give examinees?
A couple
things. If they are using a laptop to take the exam, they should make sure they
are familiar with it. You don’t want to open a borrowed laptop for the first
time on the day of the exam only to learn that it doesn’t support the program
needed.
Also, it
sounds obvious, but they need to follow instructions. They should read the
instructions before they show up. There is a comprehensive list of things they
can’t bring, and people invariably don’t read it. And they should listen to the
instructions at the test site. People don’t listen and then think we’ll fix
something they mess up. If they recognize that it’s their exam and their career
and their responsibility to do things right, then they’ll be fine.
James Carlson is the Information
Resources Coordinator with the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. If you
have an idea for the OARC Update, contact him at j.carlson@csc.state.co.us.