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I think what gets me is--maybe there won't be any noticeable consequences. Most, maybe all of these states implemented an "hours of supervised practice" prerequisite. If supervised practice really is enough to accomplish the goals of the bar exam, why in God's name would we continue administering bar exams? That's an expensive, deeply unpleasant process to subject people to for literally no reason at all (queue Meditations on Moloch electroshock discussion).
Conversely, if the exam really does protect consumers in ways that can't be accomplished by supervised practice, what possible justification could there be to shrug your shoulders and say, "well, this year we're just not going to bother?" "Yes, hundreds of lawyers whose legal education was interrupted by COVID, also never had to prove that they learned anything to the state, so... just watch out for lawyers who graduated in 2021 I guess? One in ten should probably not be practicing law?"
But no--we get total doublethink on the matter. The bar exam is absolutely crucial to protecting consumers from incompetent representation, and also a completely optional exercise with no serious relevance to professional competence, somehow.
No, there are reasons for it. Maybe not good reasons for it, but definitely reasons. Just off the top of my head, we have:
(1) the bar filters for people who are either capable of ingesting and processing lots of information, or working like cast-iron bastards for six months to simulate the brainpower. These skills are extremely useful in the legal field.
(2) the bar filters for people who are able to write well (for a certain definition of "well") and with clarity (for a certain definition of "clarity") under high stress, significant time pressure, and over an extended sequence of continuous tasks. This is also a very valuable skill for many lawyers (though not all).
(3) the bar does at least require a certain amount of basic legal knowledge about a number of different legal sub-fields. Most of these fields are quite complex in their own right, and can take whole careers to become an expert in, but the bar means that no attorney is going to be completely clueless when it comes to, e.g., family law, or the remedies available in different kinds of litigation, or the steps necessary to form a contract. As long as we're going to be pretending that all lawyers are members of a sacrosanct professional guild, some degree of basic generality is required so the number of lawyers providing affirmatively wrong information and advice is cut down somewhat.
(4) the bar functions as a literal bar-to-entry to the lawyering guild, increasing compensation in the industry.
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