After California bar exam chaos, state poised to nix remote testing

By Karen Sloan

March 3 (Reuters) - California is likely to return to a fully in-person bar exam after the state's rollout of its new test was marred by widespread technical problems during its debut last week.

Staff at the State Bar of California on Friday recommended a return to in-person only testing in July, the next time the exam will be given. The state bar had moved to a hybrid format of in-person and remote testing with the goal of saving money by eliminating the need to rent out convention centers and other large spaces, which it had done for decades.

The state bar’s board of trustees, which has previously stated its dissatisfaction with the launch of the new exam at several public meetings, is slated to discuss the proposal Wednesday.

The state bar has acknowledged myriad problems on the Feb. 25 and 26 exam, which about 4,600 were registered to take after about 1,000 withdrew in the days before the test. Some test takers were unable to log into the exam at all, while many experienced delays, lax exam security, distracting proctors, and a copy-and-paste function that didn’t work.

The state bar initially expected to save as much as $3.8 million annually with the new exam. Moving to an in-person only July exam would cost about $1 million more than the budgeted $3.9 million, according to the state bar staff memo.

California is the first and only state thus far to break away from the national bar exam developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners. A majority of states have said they will transition to the national conference's NextGen Bar Exam — a new version of the national test set to debut in July 2026.

The state bar hired testing company Meazure Learning to administer the February and July exams remotely and at test centers. The Alabama-based company was sued on Thursday in a proposed class action of test-takers who alleged the company failed to provide a functioning test platform despite ample warning of technical troubles. A Meazure Learning spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

California’s new exam uses questions developed by Kaplan North America. Kaplan declined to comment Monday.

The deans of California’s 17 American Bar Association-accredited law schools endorsed an in-person July bar exam in a Monday letter to the California Supreme Court, which oversees the state bar’s attorney admission function. They also called on California to go back to using multiple-choice questions prepared by the National Conference instead of the Kaplan questions and offered up their campuses as free test sites if the bar makes that change.

The period before the July exam is “too brief to fully investigate and then correct the wide range of problems associated with the February exam, the underlying technology, and the substantive issues with the newly created multiple-choice questions,” the deans wrote.

State bar staff noted in a memo that returning to in-person testing in July will cost more than it had budgeted and that finding space to give the test on such late notice will be difficult.

Tom Umberg, chair of California’s Senate Judiciary Committee, on Friday said he is “beyond disappointed” in the administration of the February bar exam and said his committee will conduct a review. Umberg also said he will request the California State Auditor to audit what went wrong.

State bar board of trustees chair Brandon Stallings said on Monday that the board will initiate a similar "fact-finding investigation" at its meeting Wednesday.

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