The state of Arkansas just charged a former court official with 65 felony counts of tampering with public records — each carrying up to 10 years in prison — for allegedly deleting 11,400 files and rigging bar exam scores for at least 64 aspiring lawyers over five years. Ordinary Americans who entrust their property, freedom, and children to attorneys have no idea whether the lawyer across the table actually passed the test or was handed a passing score by a bureaucrat playing God.

According to Arkansas Online, Nancie Givens — until February the executive director of the Arkansas Supreme Court's Office of Professional Programs, which administers the bar exam — allegedly took points from some examinees and added them to others, lifting some to the passing score of 270. In at least one case, an alteration dropped a person who should have passed into the failing column. In another, the rightful top scorer had that distinction stolen and given to someone else. Robert Brech, the executive director of the court's Office of Professional Conduct — the office that disciplines wrongdoing attorneys — took over supervision after Givens left and uncovered the damage.

The backdrop makes clear this isn't one bad apple. It's a rotten barrel.

In 2024, the discipline office lost three of seven staff members. The court fired Executive Director Lisa Ballard — who, before taking the job, had been Justice Courtney Hudson's divorce attorney. That's the revolving door in plain view: a justice's personal lawyer gets installed to oversee attorney discipline. Ballard's personnel file, obtained by the Arkansas Advocate, contains no resignation letter and no stated reason for termination. The public has no right to know, apparently.

When a reporter sought Ballard's emails with Hudson under the Freedom of Information Act, Hudson and Justice Karen Baker declared none of the records were public. Every other justice disagreed and ordered the emails released. Hudson then sued in a lower court to block her own court's majority ruling — a justice of the state Supreme Court litigating against her own institution's decision. The majority had to step in and kill the suit. They referred Hudson to the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, which Arkansas Online's source described as a "feckless third (and likely unconstitutional) entity that exists outside the court system." Baker, freshly sworn in as chief justice, responded by asking that same commission to investigate the justices who referred Hudson. I'm-rubber-you're-glue, but with robes and gavels.

This is the protection racket in action. A justice's personal attorney gets a plum oversight job. When caught, the records are sealed. When forced open, the justice sues to block her own court. When referred for discipline, the target refers the referees. And the disciplinary body is structured to be powerless — a third entity with no real authority over the people who created it.

Meanwhile, Givens allegedly corrupted the gatekeeping exam for the legal profession itself, and nobody in the system noticed for five years. The same apparatus that claims competence to regulate every lawyer in the state couldn't detect that its own exam director was manipulating scores. The people who might have failed the bar and are now practicing law — and the people who passed but had their scores stolen — have no remedy the system is offering.

The question isn't whether Givens goes to prison. The question is why a system this broken is allowed to police itself at all.