Maryland Is Smarter Than New York. Yep, I Said It. Take The Bar On Your Mac.

You may have heard that, while bar exam takers in New York can use their laptops, they can't use their Macs: PCs only, please. Fellow legal Mac bloggers discussed the story here (No Macs!) and here (New York State Bar Says No To Macs).

I was pleased to see that Maryland bar exam takers could use their Macs if they wanted. Maryland uses the same software as New York: Examsoft.

Here are the Maryland requirements:

The ExamSoft software works on PCs using the English language version of Windows Vista (any edition), Windows XP (Professional, Home, and Tablet PC editions) and Windows 2000 (Professional) operating systems.

The ExamSoft software also works on Apple laptops using Apple’s Mac OSX
v.10.4.4 (Tiger) or Mac OSX v10.5 (Leopard) running SofTest in Windows XP or Vista
installed via Apple’s Bootcamp.  ExamSoft CANNOT be run on Apple laptops running in
the native Mac operating system environment.

You can read the full laptop policy here (pdf). Congrats, Maryland Board of Law Examiners, for living in the 21st century.

Maryland bar exam takers, according to the Maryland Daily Record blog, had to disable wifi and then, before midnight on the night of the exam, had to find a place to upload their answers. The Daily Record covered the story here: The Laptop Effect.

Check the video below.