A total of 13 per cent want the exam to be scrapped forever, while roughly the same percentage were content with an exam in March, subject to them being allowed to practice until then.
Less than 5 per cent think the BCI should hold the exam on 6 March and not allow graduates to practice until after they pass it.
This is a fairly unexpected result, also judging by the regular comments left on Legally India by disgruntled students. And after all, most graduates can be expected to vote in their own interest and in favour of making their life easier by not having to study for and sit another exam.
Perhaps more interesting than the results, however, was a technical glitch.
Due to a technical error on Legally India, which was entirely my fault, multiple voting was possible on the poll in the first 24-odd hours.
Total votes rapidly climbed to more than 1,200. We fixed the error when we noticed it by consolidating all duplicate votes, reducing the total vote count to only 251 (don’t worry, no legitimate votes were lost, even of multiple voters!).
But on further analysis of the recorded voting data it became blatantly apparent that at least 15 voters had submitted between 50 and 120 votes each. Yes, 120!
And, of the worst offending duplicate voters every - yes every single one - voted to have the exam cancelled either completely or just for the exam for the 2010 batch. Over and over again.
For the most click-happy voters this process took an average of between 10 and 30 minutes of repeatedly clicking “Vote”, “Back” and “Vote” again, or refreshing the page over and over again.
Now again, let me raise my hands and say that the only reason that this was even possible is because of my own clear and admitted negligence, and you can not expect a poll which allows multiple voting to not get abused.
However, several questions can now be asked, employing some cod psychology.
- Do some 2010 grads hate the idea of the bar exam so much they are willing to ‘cheat’ slightly and spend considerable time and effort to try and skew the results?
- Why did only those 2010 grads opposing the bar exam from being held spend so much time trying to rig an online poll? Some of those who voted for the other options did vote more than once, but roughly 90% of all of the almost 1000 duplicate votes wanted to scrap the exam.
- Do those opposing the exam completely this year or forever have lower moral standards about what, although benign, must have been apparent at the time was ‘cheating’. I.e., is opposing the bar exam the preserve of the ‘bad’?
- Do ‘good’ students who do not ‘cheat’ do not oppose the bar exam as vehemently?
Food for thought or random correlation?
And for the avoidance of doubt, no offence intended to any ‘cheaters’, nor is this blog meant to address any of the relative merits of having a bar exam or not having one, nor am I saying that it is wrong or right to oppose or support the bar exam. Nor, just to be clear, do I mean that all bar exam opponents are ‘cheaters’ (clearly not, judging by the poll result). All I looked at here in this blog was the statistical correlation between ‘cheating’ and not ‘cheating’.
Call it an unintentional psychological experiment if you will.
Anyway, should we hold another poll to find out what you think?
Comments
Also, GS is not [...] to represent PM in 2G scam, he is not [...] to be president of BCI. He shud resign and retire ASAP. He has already wasted 7-8 months of each law grad. [...]
1. What is the use of enrolment as an Adocate if ,you don't practice.
2. Why the BCI & SBC allowed enrolment before clearing Bar Exam, if it was so necessary.
3. Why BCI wants to waste 9 months of successfully paseed law graduate and preventing them from earning their breads.
4. How Rainmaker was selected to conduct this Exam without any compeitive bidding from the similar servivce providers.
5. Why BCI didn't take into confidence the SBC.
6. Why section 24 of the Advocates Act not amended.
7. Is BCI superior than the Hon'ble Supreme court , which in the case of V. Sudeer vs. BCI (AIR 1999 SC 1167) has held -" Any additional criteria for the practice pf law over and above sec. 24 of the Advocates Act is unconstitutional.
8. Is BCI a private property of its Chairman, who was removed by the PMO from representing it in the Apex Court.
9. Is arbitrarily choosing Rainmaker ,not a Scam like CWG and 2G Spectrum.
1. It was clearly a tongue-in-cheek and intentionally provocative blog on what I thought was an interesting and surprising correlation.
2. I never said cheating, I only said 'cheating'.
3. I never called you (either individually or collectively as bar exam opponents) 'cheaters', unless you did in fact try to 'cheat' a little on the poll.
4. Those who did vote more than dozens of times, would probably fairly admit they tried to 'cheat' a little bit by rigging this poll, right?
Again, no offense was intended and I hope not taken either.
Best regards
Kian
Where does it say that I'm supposed to vote only once?
And btw... it wasn't a glitch Kian - I think you did it on purpose
If every 2009-2010 graduate have to vote against the Exam then the percentage would be much higher.
It was literally a matter of not having checked two checkboxes in the poll back-end to check for duplicate votes, which was completely unintentional and my fault, as I freely admit.
To be completely honest, if a poll allowed multiple voting I too would probably click back and forth several times although I imagine I would get bored after 5 or 10 clicks or so (as dozens of other voters did).
What was interesting was not that some people voted multiple times, but that a few of those against the exam were happy to vote more than 100 times, which definitely shows some above average conviction on their part, which the ones less opposed to the bar exam did not seem to possess.
When I saw this trend I did find it quite amusing and hoped this blog post would be taken in the right spirit of gentle jesting.
Best regards
Kian
If you have taken all of the 2009-2010 batch then the percentage would be much higher than 82%