This is deeply unbecoming (and frankly expletive-provoking) behavior on the part of Georgetown Law's administration, and it's good that Ms. Lovely stood up for her rights and fair treatment. There's nothing about moving a final exam date in and of itself that disadvantages other students, so the administration's stubbornness on this point makes it sound like they really just didn't want to deal with her—ironic, as lawyers of all people should understand the fairly broad scope of the ADA and Title IX's accommodation requirements. Not only that, but a Catholic school of all places should be bending over backwards to support students who've made the choice to become mothers, not tell them "they could have planned better."
Case in point: I was born 10 weeks premature while dad was still deployed to the Persian Gulf. My mom's undergrad professors (in Washington state in the 90s, no less) greatly reduced her classwork requirements, and at least one held me for an hour when she needed to take an exam and couldn't get a babysitter. Who truly offered cura personalis?
I’m a Georgetown law alumna and I am simply enraged by this story. I’m so mad I don’t even have a constructive comment to offer. This entire story is appalling.
Fun fact- many women whose companies don’t offer maternity leave as such (or not enough) are able to get the time off they need after childbirth through Short-Term Disability. Maybe quibble with the word, but as the article and the student point out here, there are actual, real physical challenges (bleeding, tearing, perhaps surgery recovery and inability to drive for 2 weeks) that persist for weeks after childbirth. Those who are not in the position of having given birth before (for instance, male or childless female law school leadership) often do not know this, or fail to realize it
"The ADA defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity." This is from https://adata.org/faq/what-definition-disability-under-ada. The common meaning is somewhat more derogatory, but in this sense childbirth is most definitely a temporary disability---there is a physical impairment and you receive formal medical instruction to limit many normal activities (such as climbing stairs) and perform others in an unusual way (e.g. peri, as the article noted). A disability doesn't need to be a bad thing or something to avoid, by that definition. It's just a fact and a way to group conditions so that people can have a legal right to reasonable flexibility in certain environments... specifically so that people with unusual needs, whether temporary or long-lasting, can receive what they need without feeling shame.
I have noticed that certain kinds of categorical words ultimately have to be retired from common use because over time they become unusable (due to the natural but reprehensible human desire to look down on one another and insult one another, and, on top of this, the tendency to treat entire categories of people very badly as though not human like ourselves), and then they have to be replaced with a new word because we still need to describe what the word originally meant, until the same thing happens to the new word. I would give examples of this succession of words replacing words but it is better not to unearth the old and warped and rotted ones.
Pregnancy and childbirth involves many things that we would not have been comfortable with beforehand! (Such as "checking to see how dilated you are"!) So we could include "classification as short-term disability" among those things. When I was very pregnant and still taking the bus to grad school (having no car of my own), and one time people would not stand up to offer me a seat in the disabled section on a standing-room-only crowded bus (everyone likes the idea but everyone thinks someone else will do it), I basically pointed to someone seated who was not elderly and said (approximately) "I'm going to sit there, thanks" and he stood up and let me sit there. Perhaps, before I had been in this circumstance, I would not have recognized that I no longer had the ability to stand in the aisle and let people go past me who are getting off at their stop (it was just literally not possible). But in fact I no longer had that ability and was no longer too proud to admit it. Ergo: short-term disability. After I gave birth my mother cautioned me (since I lived in a house with the kitchen and bathroom on different floors) "don't go up and down stairs more than once a day - pick what floor you're going to be on and stay there - or you will bleed longer" and comparing notes across children later I found that she was right (probably from experience, either hers or her mother's handed down); this too is a short term disability because ordinarily I could traipse up and down stairs any number of times in a day to fetch something I had left in another room. I was originally planning to defend my thesis shortly before giving birth but one of my thesis advisors wanted another chapter anyway... so it was a while longer... but my entire committee, being older and having children or having seen a few things, had known better already and did not expect that schedule not to slip (and understood that, as soon as an infant was involved, everything would take much longer)... sometimes we have unrealistic ideas of what we can do until we are in a situation.
When I was a student at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law 20+ years ago, I had a baby in the middle of my 1L year; I buried him at the end of the 1L year (right in the middle of exams - I was allowed to take my remaining exams late). I had another baby near the end of my 2L year. The faculty, administration, and my fellow students were 100% pro-life insofar as how they treated me both as a pregnant woman and then as the mother of an infant, a fact and experience which surprised me given the political activity of many of them. The experience informs me to this day that people are so much more than the signs they carry or the causes they champion. I am sorry Ms. Lovely's experience was not like mine. I had to earn my degree, but it just made sense for Loyola to treat me the way they did. I am thankful for that - it made me a better lawyer in the long run and I was able to be a mother to my little children while also being a law student.
This sounds like the BS my mother got from her female honours supervisor who told her she was disappointed my mother was getting married and “wasting her life”. My mother wasn’t even pregnant yet! She then poo pooed a possible research project exploring the relationship between heart rate and oestrogen and sent my mum articles that claimed NFP causes more Down Syndrome babies to be born because of ‘old eggs’… not that NFP users are Catholic and pro-life and won’t abort conceived babies with downs. 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️ this was a secular university, but the fact is women can be nastier than men when it comes to driving other women out of professions. Especially if they have a chip on their shoulder about ‘struggling in a man’s world’.
We could have had a heart rate monitor that could detect ovulation 20 years ago if not for this idiot making it clear that women like my mother don’t belong in scientific research.
For what it’s worth, my own experience of growing a family and higher degree research at a Catholic university was excellent. I thank god for that experience and I offer it up for the numpties at Georgetown.
I'm an alum. I signed the petition. I have absolutely NO idea how a pregnant lady offering to take a law school exam a week EARLY is unfair to other students. If anything, it's unfair to herself because she loses a week of time to study for the exam. Her professor was perfectly fine with accommodating her. What kind of administrative bozos is Georgetown hiring to run their law school that they did not realize this was going to be a PR disaster AND a lawsuit risk if the lady couldn't get a reasonable accommodation? This is just so stupid, especially for a law school. I hope whoever told her "no" gets fired because that's just unbelievably incompetent as well as sexist and unfair and probably illegal.
Right that’s what killed me. She said EARLY. As in opposite of unfair. The hard no on early just screams “we hate babies how dare you” but this article showed me they just have a generally nasty - NOT VERY CATHOLIC CAN THE TAKE AWAY THEIR NOMINAL STATUS ALREADY - attitude slash approach to any reasonable disability accommodations of ANY type. The freaking grinch is running those departments! because even the professor was like I’m happy to help in any way!
Maybe this is because law school is different, but throughout undergrad and grad, when I experienced medical difficulties, (and i had a lot of them) I just went straight to the professor to ask for accommodations. It seems bizarre to me that even though her professor was on board with her taking it early, she still needed to file paperwork and get it approved by someone other than her professor.
Any ideas why they would have made their system *more* stringent than it previously had been? Not offering incompletes is just weird to me. A person takes 15 weeks of a 16 week class and you tell them to withdraw at the very end?
That person who told her she should have planned better needs to be fired. How is this whole story not a giant title IX violation?
Most law school classes don't have any work assignments due throughout the semester, so it's hard to give an "incomplete" when the whole class for grading purposes basically is the exam. For many classes you could just skip class all semester and then show up for the exam and if you pass it, fine.
Law schools tend to be more concerned than other types of schools with students requesting exam accommodations because they worry about students getting some unfair advantage or trying to cheat, and the exam grades, especially for the first year and especially at a large school like Georgetown, are going to have a significant impact on what you'll be able to do at the school during the next 2 years and on your future employment prospects. It may also be that this student who has an unusual background had some history of "asks" that other students typically don't. However, none of this justifies the school acting as it did here imo.
The “ask your professor” system works great, until a single professor denies reasonable requests. Then someone complains to the administration, and the administration imposes a formal system that everyone is supposed to follow to receive accommodations. No more just asking your professors; the professors will get reprimanded for issuing informal accommodations. Everything must go through The System. Everyone must file forms. Forms must be approved. Bureaucracy always wins.
I read this as a direct quote by Georgetown on another website regarding this, “It would be inequitable to all the other non-birthing students in her class.”
This story infuriates me. I'm speaking as a disabled person, here, in case that matters to anyone (not), and I have personal experience with educators being unwilling to grant me accomodations for my physical disabilities in my nursing program. The only accomodations available were to students with *learning disabilities,* which I don't have. This comment is just to amplify the point of Ms. Lovely's experience at Georgetown: she's by no means alone.
I needed physical accomodations for doing my clinicals, since I'm an ambulatory wheelchair user (meaning I can stand and pivot, stand over someone, certainly long enough to assess, administer meds, etc., and do the many nursing tasks which can be done while seated as evidenced by my many hospital stays) and I could've done it, had I been given a chance. Oh, and my career goal was hospice nursing, which wouldn't be a bunch of running around anyway. I also had to obtain a religious exemption from assisting with elective abortions, and I was vocally pro-life in class and in projects. Only a few other students agreed with me and would only say so in whispers, secretly. I can't imagine that helped my cause much.
It seems to me that, whatever any particular school or program in any particular university may *say* about their supposed dedication to their students' wellbeing, and their so-called diversity, they actually don't care in the slightest. Certainly not about physically disabled students (pregnancy sometimes being a short term disability in some circumstances) at least. Not that it matters now, but I was the top of our whole class, and it seems to me that they ought to have made an effort to help me get through my remaining clinicals. Too bad I didn't reach out to an attorney at the time.
I'm happy for Ms. Lovely, and I share her hope that at least Georgetown will treat its students better regarding accomodations going forward. What an unnecessary struggle for her. I also hope reasonable accomodations are improved for other short term and/or permanently disabled students. It would improve justice for us.
It undermines the pro-life witness of the Church when Catholic schools and employers are willing to intimate that a mother should have “planned” pregnancy timing better as a way of avoiding accommodations.
As a GU undergrad alum, it is disheartening to see what has happened to my alma mater. I feel very little connection to the University anymore as it has systematically abandoned its Catholic identity in favor of worshiping at the Blue Cathedral of Woke Ideology under the faux veneer of Catholic Social Teaching. While I am sure there are still many good Catholics at the University in both the student body, the faculty, and the administration, the University for some time has been more concerned with recognition from DC elites than from adherence to the Gospel. How a so called Catholic University could take such an anti-family stance and then only make the accommodation when sufficient negative publicity was brought to bear should be a statement that the administration at the Law Center should be cleaned out as it is currently staffed by unChristian morons. Unfortunately, having lived there long enough and experienced it, unChristian morons makes up a super-majority of DC's population.
It's not just that Georgetown Law's initial decision was an egregious affront to the mother-student (that likely violates Georgetown's own policy regarding obligations to accomodation requirements of the university), but that this decision is completely tied-up with transgender and DEI policies. Georgetown made executed its decision precisely because it would be "inequitable to non-birthing students"
"Non-birthing"! Really! What a deplorable thing, entirely worthy of the utmost derision and contempt by all. Utterly "woke" both in speech and in conduct.
When I was in grad school at the university of Illinois 60 years ago, the professor I worked for as an assistant let me re-arrange my work hours to accommodate my pregnancy and another professor dispensed me from turning in a term paper for his course for the same reason. He simply looked at my research notes and quizzed me on the subject. Neither man thought in terms of departmental rules or needing permission for their generous gestures. Ah, it was a simpler time . . . .
To be a little bit of an "advocatus diaboli"; legal education is unique.
The grade for a class is determined almost exclusively based on one or two tests; and the results of these tests can determine a student's legal career. The only thing future employers care about - if they are not looking for someone with bar admission and a pulse - is class rank. That determines law review. That determines what summer jobs you will get. It determines if you will get a clerkship; and whether that is with a state judge, a federal district judge, or a federal appellate court. It determines if you get a job with a "white shoe" law firm. That is really all they care about.
So this is different from other fields. If you and other student both have a 3.8 GPA, that is all they care about. The fact the other student did well does not harm you. Here, since it is a ranked-order list (basically), the fact you did better or worse than another student is all that matters. Not the results themselves.
So these are incredibly high stakes exams, so law schools are certainly correct to take the most stringent precautions to ensure "exam security."
But that can be done. I have taken much lower stake tests during COVID with an individual (theoretically) watching me on zoom. They can make clear that if the exam is given early, and he or she gives the content away in any manner, it will result in expulsion. These are not new concepts.
They are afraid if they grant an accomodation for a pregnant woman; someone will demand an accommodation since their hamster died.
Policies are the 2020's version of Linus's blanket. (If you don't get that reference, immediately leave and spend the next hour reading Peanuts comics.) People with responsibility need to make actual decisions based on reason and stand behind those decisions.
This is deeply unbecoming (and frankly expletive-provoking) behavior on the part of Georgetown Law's administration, and it's good that Ms. Lovely stood up for her rights and fair treatment. There's nothing about moving a final exam date in and of itself that disadvantages other students, so the administration's stubbornness on this point makes it sound like they really just didn't want to deal with her—ironic, as lawyers of all people should understand the fairly broad scope of the ADA and Title IX's accommodation requirements. Not only that, but a Catholic school of all places should be bending over backwards to support students who've made the choice to become mothers, not tell them "they could have planned better."
Case in point: I was born 10 weeks premature while dad was still deployed to the Persian Gulf. My mom's undergrad professors (in Washington state in the 90s, no less) greatly reduced her classwork requirements, and at least one held me for an hour when she needed to take an exam and couldn't get a babysitter. Who truly offered cura personalis?
I’m a Georgetown law alumna and I am simply enraged by this story. I’m so mad I don’t even have a constructive comment to offer. This entire story is appalling.
I'm not at all comfortable with classifying pregnancy and childbirth as a "disability".
Me neither but there are real physical limitations imposed by pregnancy that need to be reasonably accommodated even if they are temporary.
Fun fact- many women whose companies don’t offer maternity leave as such (or not enough) are able to get the time off they need after childbirth through Short-Term Disability. Maybe quibble with the word, but as the article and the student point out here, there are actual, real physical challenges (bleeding, tearing, perhaps surgery recovery and inability to drive for 2 weeks) that persist for weeks after childbirth. Those who are not in the position of having given birth before (for instance, male or childless female law school leadership) often do not know this, or fail to realize it
"The ADA defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity." This is from https://adata.org/faq/what-definition-disability-under-ada. The common meaning is somewhat more derogatory, but in this sense childbirth is most definitely a temporary disability---there is a physical impairment and you receive formal medical instruction to limit many normal activities (such as climbing stairs) and perform others in an unusual way (e.g. peri, as the article noted). A disability doesn't need to be a bad thing or something to avoid, by that definition. It's just a fact and a way to group conditions so that people can have a legal right to reasonable flexibility in certain environments... specifically so that people with unusual needs, whether temporary or long-lasting, can receive what they need without feeling shame.
> The common meaning is somewhat more derogatory
I have noticed that certain kinds of categorical words ultimately have to be retired from common use because over time they become unusable (due to the natural but reprehensible human desire to look down on one another and insult one another, and, on top of this, the tendency to treat entire categories of people very badly as though not human like ourselves), and then they have to be replaced with a new word because we still need to describe what the word originally meant, until the same thing happens to the new word. I would give examples of this succession of words replacing words but it is better not to unearth the old and warped and rotted ones.
I’ve heard this called the “euphemism treadmill”
Pregnancy and childbirth involves many things that we would not have been comfortable with beforehand! (Such as "checking to see how dilated you are"!) So we could include "classification as short-term disability" among those things. When I was very pregnant and still taking the bus to grad school (having no car of my own), and one time people would not stand up to offer me a seat in the disabled section on a standing-room-only crowded bus (everyone likes the idea but everyone thinks someone else will do it), I basically pointed to someone seated who was not elderly and said (approximately) "I'm going to sit there, thanks" and he stood up and let me sit there. Perhaps, before I had been in this circumstance, I would not have recognized that I no longer had the ability to stand in the aisle and let people go past me who are getting off at their stop (it was just literally not possible). But in fact I no longer had that ability and was no longer too proud to admit it. Ergo: short-term disability. After I gave birth my mother cautioned me (since I lived in a house with the kitchen and bathroom on different floors) "don't go up and down stairs more than once a day - pick what floor you're going to be on and stay there - or you will bleed longer" and comparing notes across children later I found that she was right (probably from experience, either hers or her mother's handed down); this too is a short term disability because ordinarily I could traipse up and down stairs any number of times in a day to fetch something I had left in another room. I was originally planning to defend my thesis shortly before giving birth but one of my thesis advisors wanted another chapter anyway... so it was a while longer... but my entire committee, being older and having children or having seen a few things, had known better already and did not expect that schedule not to slip (and understood that, as soon as an infant was involved, everything would take much longer)... sometimes we have unrealistic ideas of what we can do until we are in a situation.
When I was a student at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law 20+ years ago, I had a baby in the middle of my 1L year; I buried him at the end of the 1L year (right in the middle of exams - I was allowed to take my remaining exams late). I had another baby near the end of my 2L year. The faculty, administration, and my fellow students were 100% pro-life insofar as how they treated me both as a pregnant woman and then as the mother of an infant, a fact and experience which surprised me given the political activity of many of them. The experience informs me to this day that people are so much more than the signs they carry or the causes they champion. I am sorry Ms. Lovely's experience was not like mine. I had to earn my degree, but it just made sense for Loyola to treat me the way they did. I am thankful for that - it made me a better lawyer in the long run and I was able to be a mother to my little children while also being a law student.
This sounds like the BS my mother got from her female honours supervisor who told her she was disappointed my mother was getting married and “wasting her life”. My mother wasn’t even pregnant yet! She then poo pooed a possible research project exploring the relationship between heart rate and oestrogen and sent my mum articles that claimed NFP causes more Down Syndrome babies to be born because of ‘old eggs’… not that NFP users are Catholic and pro-life and won’t abort conceived babies with downs. 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️ this was a secular university, but the fact is women can be nastier than men when it comes to driving other women out of professions. Especially if they have a chip on their shoulder about ‘struggling in a man’s world’.
We could have had a heart rate monitor that could detect ovulation 20 years ago if not for this idiot making it clear that women like my mother don’t belong in scientific research.
For what it’s worth, my own experience of growing a family and higher degree research at a Catholic university was excellent. I thank god for that experience and I offer it up for the numpties at Georgetown.
I'm an alum. I signed the petition. I have absolutely NO idea how a pregnant lady offering to take a law school exam a week EARLY is unfair to other students. If anything, it's unfair to herself because she loses a week of time to study for the exam. Her professor was perfectly fine with accommodating her. What kind of administrative bozos is Georgetown hiring to run their law school that they did not realize this was going to be a PR disaster AND a lawsuit risk if the lady couldn't get a reasonable accommodation? This is just so stupid, especially for a law school. I hope whoever told her "no" gets fired because that's just unbelievably incompetent as well as sexist and unfair and probably illegal.
Right that’s what killed me. She said EARLY. As in opposite of unfair. The hard no on early just screams “we hate babies how dare you” but this article showed me they just have a generally nasty - NOT VERY CATHOLIC CAN THE TAKE AWAY THEIR NOMINAL STATUS ALREADY - attitude slash approach to any reasonable disability accommodations of ANY type. The freaking grinch is running those departments! because even the professor was like I’m happy to help in any way!
Maybe this is because law school is different, but throughout undergrad and grad, when I experienced medical difficulties, (and i had a lot of them) I just went straight to the professor to ask for accommodations. It seems bizarre to me that even though her professor was on board with her taking it early, she still needed to file paperwork and get it approved by someone other than her professor.
Any ideas why they would have made their system *more* stringent than it previously had been? Not offering incompletes is just weird to me. A person takes 15 weeks of a 16 week class and you tell them to withdraw at the very end?
That person who told her she should have planned better needs to be fired. How is this whole story not a giant title IX violation?
Most law school classes don't have any work assignments due throughout the semester, so it's hard to give an "incomplete" when the whole class for grading purposes basically is the exam. For many classes you could just skip class all semester and then show up for the exam and if you pass it, fine.
Law schools tend to be more concerned than other types of schools with students requesting exam accommodations because they worry about students getting some unfair advantage or trying to cheat, and the exam grades, especially for the first year and especially at a large school like Georgetown, are going to have a significant impact on what you'll be able to do at the school during the next 2 years and on your future employment prospects. It may also be that this student who has an unusual background had some history of "asks" that other students typically don't. However, none of this justifies the school acting as it did here imo.
That was exactly the kind of context I was hoping someone would provide - thanks!
The “ask your professor” system works great, until a single professor denies reasonable requests. Then someone complains to the administration, and the administration imposes a formal system that everyone is supposed to follow to receive accommodations. No more just asking your professors; the professors will get reprimanded for issuing informal accommodations. Everything must go through The System. Everyone must file forms. Forms must be approved. Bureaucracy always wins.
I read this as a direct quote by Georgetown on another website regarding this, “It would be inequitable to all the other non-birthing students in her class.”
Lord have mercy.
Somehow that verbiage completely explains this very obvious title ix violation bc they clearly have already rejected title ix to begin with.
But bishops still letting them call themselves catholic cool cool cool 🙃🙃🫠
This story infuriates me. I'm speaking as a disabled person, here, in case that matters to anyone (not), and I have personal experience with educators being unwilling to grant me accomodations for my physical disabilities in my nursing program. The only accomodations available were to students with *learning disabilities,* which I don't have. This comment is just to amplify the point of Ms. Lovely's experience at Georgetown: she's by no means alone.
I needed physical accomodations for doing my clinicals, since I'm an ambulatory wheelchair user (meaning I can stand and pivot, stand over someone, certainly long enough to assess, administer meds, etc., and do the many nursing tasks which can be done while seated as evidenced by my many hospital stays) and I could've done it, had I been given a chance. Oh, and my career goal was hospice nursing, which wouldn't be a bunch of running around anyway. I also had to obtain a religious exemption from assisting with elective abortions, and I was vocally pro-life in class and in projects. Only a few other students agreed with me and would only say so in whispers, secretly. I can't imagine that helped my cause much.
It seems to me that, whatever any particular school or program in any particular university may *say* about their supposed dedication to their students' wellbeing, and their so-called diversity, they actually don't care in the slightest. Certainly not about physically disabled students (pregnancy sometimes being a short term disability in some circumstances) at least. Not that it matters now, but I was the top of our whole class, and it seems to me that they ought to have made an effort to help me get through my remaining clinicals. Too bad I didn't reach out to an attorney at the time.
I'm happy for Ms. Lovely, and I share her hope that at least Georgetown will treat its students better regarding accomodations going forward. What an unnecessary struggle for her. I also hope reasonable accomodations are improved for other short term and/or permanently disabled students. It would improve justice for us.
It undermines the pro-life witness of the Church when Catholic schools and employers are willing to intimate that a mother should have “planned” pregnancy timing better as a way of avoiding accommodations.
Agreed! Did they imagine she should have aborted when she realized the 'timing was bad'???
As a GU undergrad alum, it is disheartening to see what has happened to my alma mater. I feel very little connection to the University anymore as it has systematically abandoned its Catholic identity in favor of worshiping at the Blue Cathedral of Woke Ideology under the faux veneer of Catholic Social Teaching. While I am sure there are still many good Catholics at the University in both the student body, the faculty, and the administration, the University for some time has been more concerned with recognition from DC elites than from adherence to the Gospel. How a so called Catholic University could take such an anti-family stance and then only make the accommodation when sufficient negative publicity was brought to bear should be a statement that the administration at the Law Center should be cleaned out as it is currently staffed by unChristian morons. Unfortunately, having lived there long enough and experienced it, unChristian morons makes up a super-majority of DC's population.
It's not just that Georgetown Law's initial decision was an egregious affront to the mother-student (that likely violates Georgetown's own policy regarding obligations to accomodation requirements of the university), but that this decision is completely tied-up with transgender and DEI policies. Georgetown made executed its decision precisely because it would be "inequitable to non-birthing students"
"Non-birthing"! Really! What a deplorable thing, entirely worthy of the utmost derision and contempt by all. Utterly "woke" both in speech and in conduct.
Okay. I am genuinely surprised the university didn’t counsel her to obtain an abortion.
When I was in grad school at the university of Illinois 60 years ago, the professor I worked for as an assistant let me re-arrange my work hours to accommodate my pregnancy and another professor dispensed me from turning in a term paper for his course for the same reason. He simply looked at my research notes and quizzed me on the subject. Neither man thought in terms of departmental rules or needing permission for their generous gestures. Ah, it was a simpler time . . . .
To be a little bit of an "advocatus diaboli"; legal education is unique.
The grade for a class is determined almost exclusively based on one or two tests; and the results of these tests can determine a student's legal career. The only thing future employers care about - if they are not looking for someone with bar admission and a pulse - is class rank. That determines law review. That determines what summer jobs you will get. It determines if you will get a clerkship; and whether that is with a state judge, a federal district judge, or a federal appellate court. It determines if you get a job with a "white shoe" law firm. That is really all they care about.
So this is different from other fields. If you and other student both have a 3.8 GPA, that is all they care about. The fact the other student did well does not harm you. Here, since it is a ranked-order list (basically), the fact you did better or worse than another student is all that matters. Not the results themselves.
So these are incredibly high stakes exams, so law schools are certainly correct to take the most stringent precautions to ensure "exam security."
But that can be done. I have taken much lower stake tests during COVID with an individual (theoretically) watching me on zoom. They can make clear that if the exam is given early, and he or she gives the content away in any manner, it will result in expulsion. These are not new concepts.
They are afraid if they grant an accomodation for a pregnant woman; someone will demand an accommodation since their hamster died.
Policies are the 2020's version of Linus's blanket. (If you don't get that reference, immediately leave and spend the next hour reading Peanuts comics.) People with responsibility need to make actual decisions based on reason and stand behind those decisions.
That is the fundamental problem.
Jesuits gonna Jesuit. Christ have mercy on us sinners who speak your name while we crucify you with our sins.