A former Arkansas court official has been charged with 65 felony counts of tampering with a public record after investigators found what the state’s Supreme Court called “extensive irregularities” in bar exam results spanning five years.
Nancie Givens, who resigned in February as executive director of the Supreme Court of Arkansas’ Office of Professional Programs, is accused of taking points from some bar exam candidates and adding them to others’ scores across at least eight administrations of the test between July 2020 and July 2025. Prosecutors announced the charges on Thursday. Court records show Givens pleaded not guilty on Wednesday. She has not responded to requests for comment, and she is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
In a statement, several members of the Arkansas Supreme Court said evidence showed Givens “harvested points from a number of examinees’ scores and then added them to other examinees’ scores within the same test administration”, unilaterally lifting some candidates to the minimum passing score of 270 or above. In at least one case, the court said, an examinee who had earned a passing score was reduced to a failing one.
The court said Givens also deleted or modified about 11,400 files and electronic communications before leaving her post, including bar exam score sheets the office is required to retain for 25 years. A criminal investigation by the FBI and the Arkansas State Police began in April, after an internal review uncovered the discrepancies.
The figures tell part of the story. The overall pass rate for Arkansas’ July bar exam rose from 57 per cent in 2019 to 70 per cent in 2020, the first year covered by the charges. It fell to 65 per cent this year, after Givens resigned, with 249 people taking the July 2026 exam. The court has not said how many applicants received incorrect scores, or whether anyone was admitted to practise law on the basis of an altered result.
The National Conference of Bar Examiners, which designs the national components of the exam but does not handle final scores, said on Friday that it was unaware of any other instance of results being intentionally manipulated. “Confidence in the integrity of the bar admissions process is critically important to examinees, jurisdictions, and the public,” a spokesperson said.
The scandal is the most serious in a run of problems that have plagued American bar exams in recent years, though the others were administrative rather than criminal. California’s first hybrid remote and in-person exam in February 2025 was marred by widespread technological problems and several rounds of scoring errors, costing the State Bar of California an estimated $6 million to address. In Georgia, officials mistakenly failed 90 people who took the July 2015 and February 2016 exams, later discovering they had in fact passed. And testing software failed across multiple states during the July 2014 exam, an episode dubbed “Barmageddon”.
Whether the Arkansas candidates affected will have any remedy remains unclear. States do not typically compensate applicants when something goes wrong with an exam’s administration or scoring, said Saint Louis University law professor Marsha Griggs, but she added that the scale of the alleged harm may force a rethink. “With the shocking harms we’ve seen recently, I sense that the courts are going to have to consider remedial avenues for those affected,” she said.
The case is Arkansas v. Nancie Michelle Givens, Little Rock District Court, No. 26-5292.
Sources: Reuters, “Arkansas court official tampered with bar exam results, prosecutor says” and “Latest US bar exam scandal brings a new twist: criminal charges”; ABA Journal, “Former state official charged with tampering bar exam results”.
