After bar exam fiasco, State Bar staff urge return to in-person exams

After California’s bar exams were plagued last week with technical problems, the State Bar of California is recommending that the agency return to in-person tests as it scrutinizes whether the vendor behind the new testing system met the obligations of its contract.

“Based on the administration of the February Bar Exam, staff cannot recommend going forward with Meazure Learning,” Donna Hershkowitz, chief of admissions for the State Bar, wrote to the agency’s Board of Trustees in a staff memo, referring to the vendor. Instead, she wrote, staff recommend reverting to in-person testing for the next round of exams in July.

The State Bar’s 13-member board, which is scheduled to meet March 5, will ultimately decide on plans for the July bar exam and remedies for test takers who faced problems.

In a statement Monday, the State Bar said it is “closely scrutinizing whether Meazure Learning met its contractual obligations” in administering the February State Bar exam and will be “actively working with its psychometrician and other stakeholders to determine the full scope of necessary remediation measures for February 2025 bar exam test takers.”

It is not yet clear exactly how much this episode will cost the State Bar.

The agency has not conducted an updated fiscal analysis, a spokesperson for the agency said. “However, given that the Board authorized expansive refunds for February and free July exams for those February applicants who do not pass the February exam or who withdrew before the exam,” he added, “we are unlikely to realize any cost savings in 2025.”

Saving money was the key reason the State Bar overhauled its exams. Facing a budget deficit last year of $22.2 million, the agency decided to save money by ditching the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Multistate Bar Examination, a system used by most states, and switching to a new system of in-person and remote testing. It cut a deal with test prep company Kaplan Exam Services to create test questions and hired Meazure Learning to administer the exam.

The result was a disaster for many test takers: Some reported they were kicked off the online testing platforms; experienced screens that lagged and displayed error messages; and had proctors who could not answer basic questions. Others raised issues with the multiple-choice test questions, complaining they consisted of nonsense questions, had typos and left out important facts.

The State Bar said that the Committee of Bar Examiners will discuss possible remedial measures, which could include a discussion of the Provisional Licensure Program.

“The Board of Trustees has expressed its support for the PLP program in the past, most recently in its proposal submitted to the Supreme Court in December 15, 2023,” it said in a statement. “Only the California Supreme Court can authorize a new provisional licensure program or extension of the current program.”

As the State Bar homed in on the problems with Meazure Learning, deans of some of California’s top law schools noted that the issues were not confined to the technology.

“While the State Bar has focused on the issues caused by the platform administrator (Meazure), our graduates also reported typos and errors in the new multiple-choice questions that mirrored those we saw in the practice questions published this past fall, as well as disruptive conditions at the testing centers,” 17 deans of California’s American Bar Assn. accredited law schools wrote Monday in a letter to the California Supreme Court.

The deans urged the California Supreme Court to allow test takers who sat through the exam and were unsuccessful to obtain provisional licenses under the supervision of experienced attorneys.

“Provisional licensure would allow candidates with offers of employment contingent on bar passage to retain them,” the deans wrote. “It would give those who have spent down savings or taken out loans to study for the bar examination the opportunity to earn the income they may need to prepare for another attempt.”

The deans also urged the state to go back to using the Multistate Bar Exam multiple-choice questions instead of the Kaplan questions, noting there was not enough time to fully investigate and solve the problems with the technology and the multiple-choice questions.

“We understand that the initial departure from the nationally used MBE was prompted by budgetary considerations caused in part by the need to rent large spaces for test-takers,” the deans wrote. “The alternative exam has proven to cost far more than initially anticipated, so the shift did not solve the financial problem, but likely exacerbated it while creating many others.”

If the State Bar returned to the Multistate Bar Exam and California essays for the July exam, the deans said, they would offer spaces on their campuses to the agency at no cost.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, applauded the State Bar staff for recommending a return to in-person exams.

“Last week was a fiasco and returning to in-person makes total sense,” he told The Times, adding that he hoped the State Bar also would reconsider California’s departing from national standards to work with Kaplan. “The problem is much larger than Meazure Learning. It was the choice to abandon the National Conference of Bar Examiners prepared tests for Kaplan.”

Last year, when the State Bar announced a new $8.25-million, five-year deal authorizing test prep company Kaplan Exam Services to create multiple-choice, essay and performance test questions, it promoted its new exam system as saving up to $3.8 million annually.

In September, the board approved up to $4.1 million for Meazure Learning to carry out the February and July 2025 exams. But Hershkowitz noted in the staff memo that the State Bar planned to seek additional funding from the board for Meazure to execute the July exam.

The hybrid model with Meazure was projected to cost $3.9 million for the July exam — about $1 million less than the traditional in-person model, Hershkowitz noted in the memo. But “actual costs may be higher,” she noted, “as we are anticipating increased numbers of test takers due to the offer to waive July exam costs for many applicants.”

Switching the plan five months ahead, Hershkowitz also wrote, would create additional challenges. “There may be fewer locations for applicants to select from, resulting in higher costs for applicants who may have to travel further from their local community to take the exam.”

About 1,066 of the 5,600 people who had registered for the February exam withdrew. About 67 applicants who took the test were notified Friday that they were eligible for a March 18-19 retake.

Michael Kaufman, the dean of Santa Clara University School of Law, said there was always a question about whether the State Bar’s shift away from the national system was a wise decision.

“Another question is whether it’s actually been realized,” he said, noting that last week’s fiasco could ultimately cost the State Bar more money rather than less. “I think their efforts to save money have gone by the wayside.”

Law school deans, he said, were motivated to work with the state to come up with new and fair ways to assess aspiring attorneys’ competency.

“The time is now for a productive, careful, measured conversation with decision makers, including the California Supreme Court, so this doesn’t happen again,” Kaufman said. “And so that we can actually come up together collaboratively with a fair, reliable mechanism for assessing competency to practice law in a way that will serve the public in the community and the clients. That’s the goal.”

Some test takers who opted to take the exam remotely did not welcome a return to in-person testing.

“I can’t afford to go to California,” said test taker Ray Hayden, who took the test from Lake County, Fla. He said it would cost him $1,000 to travel across the country and find accommodation for several nights.

“What they really need to do is to push through with remote,” he said. “Find a better provider that can actually handle the bandwidth.”