Attorneys and legal scholars are sounding the alarm after a massive scandal rocked Arkansas, where a former court official allegedly manipulated bar exam scores for years, allowing some applicants to pass while causing others to fail.
“Wow,” Texas A&M law professor Alex Nunn wrote on X.
“For years, an official in Arkansas allegedly tampered with bar exam scores, pulling points from some test takers and giving them to others,” Nunn wrote, pointing to at least one case in which someone who should have passed instead failed.
The Arkansas Supreme Court revealed Thursday that former court administrator Nancie Givens faces 65 felony counts of tampering with public records. Investigators uncovered discrepancies spanning at least eight bar examinations between 2020 and 2025, along with approximately 11,400 deleted or inaccessible files.
Prominent Arkansas trial attorney Tom Mars raised concerns about potentially unqualified lawyers practicing in the state.
“It’s frightening to think that people may be practicing law in Arkansas who failed the exam,” Mars posted on social media.
“No doubt there would be an outcry to do that if we were talking about doctors,” he added, urging the court to require affected lawyers to pass the exam.
University of Arkansas law professor Robert Anderson questioned who benefited.
“It seems sort of unlikely to me that a bar official was just adding points to random candidates’ scores,” Anderson wrote. “We need (and I think we will get) complete transparency.”
Attorney Leah Goodridge raised another possibility, questioning whether racial bias played a role.
“Check the racial demographics of the bar exam takers whom she took points away from,” she wrote on X. “This IS the Deep South.”
The state Supreme Court called the allegations an “unprecedented breach of public trust.”
Givens has pleaded not guilty.
Wow. For years, an official in Arkansas allegedly tampered with bar exam scores, pulling points from some test takers and giving them to others. This caused numerous failing exams to pass, and resulted in “at least one instance” where an otherwise passing exam fell below the requisite threshold. cc: @BarExamTutor — Alex Nunn (@AlexNunn) November 5, 2026
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