Mandy Powers Norrell

Two very different energies from the freshmen senators caucuses. 🇺🇸

On November 5, 2026, Nancie Givens, the former executive director of the Arkansas Supreme Court's Office of Professional Programs, was arrested and charged with 65 felony counts of tampering with a public record for altering Bar Exam scores for at least 64 test takers - changing most to a passing score from a failing one and changing at least one to a failing score. But why?

I have gone down a rabbit hole on this case and cannot find the answer to the question of why. If you know, please tell me.

What she allegedly did: July 2020 through July 2025 - Ms. Givens is alleged to have “harvested” exam points from some test takers who passed and redistributed them to at least 64 test takers who failed - Robin Hood Style - to get them to the passing score of 270. In at least one case, she allegedly harvested so many points, a test-taker who passed ended up with a failing score.

How it was discovered: Ms. Givens resigned as executive director of the Office of Professional Programs in February of this year and her successor noted that 11,400 electronic files had been modified or deleted from their system in January. They included exam applications, profiles, and score sheets that the state is required to keep for 25 years.

Her explanation for the deletion was that she had to terminate an employee and wanted to insure that the employee would not have access to the files, so she put them on a flash drive that she kept in her purse.

Did they fix it? Kind of. In March, the IT people had been able to restore just over 8,000 of those files but they didn’t all match the originals, so an audit was done. It showed scores for at least 64 individuals had been manually manipulated across eight exam cycles. One might imagine this may not be a complete list since several files are still missing.

The implications are big. What if one of the people who should not have been licensed was your defense attorney and now you’re convicted and serving a sentence? And what of the person who passed the bar and wasn’t admitted to the bar bc his or her score was manipulated down?

It appears that the test-takers didn’t know they had actually failed the Bar. Imagine getting that call after you’ve been practicing law for years!

And WHY would someone allegedly do this? There’s no allegation that I’ve seen that she stood to benefit personally.

abajournal.com/news/article/a…

I bet they’re feeling like life happens SO fast! Love seeing @AnnieAndrewsMD wearing her light blue suit repping SC!

I have now seen You Can See Everything and now I don’t know what’s real. I need to see everything again. 👀

Help me understand why people on here are so angry about these new brackets.