California Bar says it has sued vendor over exam meltdown

By David Thomas

May 5 (Reuters) - The State Bar of California said on Monday it has sued exam vendor Meazure Learning following the disastrous rollout of its February bar exam, accusing the vendor of failing to live up to its promises that its systems could handle thousands of bar examinees.

The state bar, represented by partners from Hueston Hennigan, said it is seeking an unspecified amount of damages from Meazure. The state bar signed a $4.1 million contract with the company in September 2024 to administer the exam.

A spokesperson for Meazure did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters could not independently verify a lawsuit was filed.

California's February exam was a hybrid, two-day remote and in-person test that did not use any components of the national bar exam, which the state has used for decades.

Some test takers were unable to log into the bar 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 alleged that Meazure disabled its own spell-check feature because it froze the platform.

"Test takers reported that copy and paste, highlighting, and annotation functions did not work. Even basic typing exhibited significant lags," according to the lawsuit the state bar said it filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

State Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson on Friday said she was stepping down from that post in July, citing the botched rollout of the new bar exam.

Meazure is already facing two proposed federal class actions from two people who took the February test. Both lawsuits are pending in Oakland, California, federal court. Meazure has not answered the allegations in those lawsuits.

California was the first state to break away from the national bar exam developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, as part of an effort to cut costs. The California Supreme Court on Monday ordered the state bar to use the Multistate Bar Exam for the upcoming July test.

Meazure, based in Birmingham, Alabama, bills itself as the "largest and most experienced remote proctoring operation in the market" with more than 1,500 test centers in 115 countries. Meazure was formed through the 2020 merger of testing companies ProctorU and Yardstick.