The Hawaii Supreme Court issued today an order extending the deadline for bar exam applicants to decide whether to take the in-person exam or to defer taking it at a later date with no additional fee.

Those who defer sitting for the bar may pursue a provisional license, which is good through July 1, 2022. The original deadline was July 28 of this year to choose to defer taking the exam to a future date. Bar applicants now have until Sept. 9 — the first day of the state bar exam — to make a choice.

The examination will be administered at the Hawai‘i Convention Center in a 59,000-square-foot exhibition hall Sept. 9 and 10. Currently the number of applicants has dropped to 120. There were 140 as of Thursday, and typically 200 take the exam.

Each applicant will sit alone at an 8-foot table with at least 10 feet between each table and use his or her own laptop.

Students had concerns sitting in the same room for eight hours for each of the two days given the surge in COVID-19 cases.

Applicants said they did not have details about the size of the room, spacing and so forth when they were given six days to make a decision by July 28. However, a court order in early August did include an attachment with safety precaution details.

Department of Health Director Bruce Anderson, in response to queries from law school graduates who are faced with the decision, said in an email that he “did not think it was wise to have 200 people to sit in a single classroom together for 16 hours over two days given the high prevalence of COVID in Hawaii today.”

He said it would be contrary to current county orders regarding gatherings and would be impractical to expect out-of-state candidates to endure a 14-day mandatory quarantine period to take the exam.

Some applicants said law firms were not hiring students with a provisional license since that would require having another attorney oversee their work and that their malpractice insurance would not allow it.

At least one lawyer said his firm would hire graduates with a provisional license if there were openings.