(Reuters) - Last-minute changes to Florida"s bar exam in the early months of the pandemic have complicated at least one early career lawyer"s bid to be admitted to practice outside the state. Mitchell McBride, an associate with law firm Phelps Dunbar in Tampa, asked the District of Columbia Court of Appeals last week to suspend a rule blocking his admission into the D.C. bar. He argues he has fulfilled the requirements to practice there despite the unusual circumstances under which he took the bar exam. The District of Columbia waives admission requirements for lawyers who pass the Florida bar. But the Court’s Committee on Admissions in November denied McBride’s application because he took the written portion of Florida’s bar exam and the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) — the 200 multiple-choice question part of the exam — at separate times. Florida delayed its July 2020 bar exam multiple times due to COVID-19, before administering a stripped-down online exam in October that did not include the MBE. McBride passed the October exam, and then took the MBE separately in February 2021 in order to be eligible for admission in D.C. But D.C.’s Admissions Committee said those scores are not transferable because his MBE score was not part of his admission to practice in Florida. “I was surprised,” said McBride, who graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2020 and clerked for a D.C. Superior Court judge afterward. “The essential purpose of the rules had been fulfilled." Dual admission in Florida and D.C. will help him gain clients and job prospects, McBride said, adding he"s unaware of other aspiring D.C. lawyers caught in the same bind. Administrators with the Committee on Admissions did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday on McBride’s situation or whether the court has received similar petitions. McBride said he spent half a year studying for the bar on his first go-round and hopes to avoid having to sit for the licensing exam again. “I would understand if the D.C. Court of Appeals didn’t want to grant this waiver if something I did was wrong,” he said. “But these circumstances were thrust upon me. I did the best I could.” (CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that McBride"s petition was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. It was filed in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.)