California lawmakers impose bar exam controls after February meltdown

By Karen Sloan

Oct 8 (Reuters) - California enacted three new pieces of legislation this month to strengthen oversight of the state’s bar exam and to determine what caused its February attorney licensing test to unravel.

The most sweeping of those bills, signed into law Tuesday by Governor Gavin Newsom, requires the State Bar of California's Committee of Bar Examiners to provide two years' notice before switching from in-person to online testing and to give 18 months' notice before changing the vendor that provides the exam’s multiple-choice questions. It also requires the state bar to give notice if artificial intelligence is used to create exam questions or in grading.

That bill, sponsored by California Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Tom Umberg, locks the state bar into its traditional bar exam format and content through 2027 and came in response to the state's botched February test.

The state bar fast-tracked the development of a hybrid online and in-person February bar exam with multiple-choice questions developed by Kaplan Exam Services instead of the long-used Multistate Bar Exam developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

The change was expected to save the state bar as much as $3.8 million annually, but the February test was marred by widespread technical problems and has cost the bar upwards of $6 million to address them. California returned to the MBE and in-person testing in July.

Newsom on October 1 signed a separate Umberg-sponsored bill that requires the California State Auditor to conduct an audit of the February bar exam, with the state bar footing the bill. That audit is due “as soon as possible” to the California Supreme Court and state lawmakers.

Umberg said Wednesday that the two bills "will provide public oversight into what happened and hopefully ensure that all future bar exams are administered fairly and competently.” The state bar did not immediately comment but its Committee of Bar Examiners is slated to discuss some of the recently passed legislation when it meets Friday.

The final bill signed into law this month requires the state bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners to perform a cost-benefit analysis before altering the bar exam and examine whether California should adopt a uniform bar exam recognized by other states instead of the current state-specific test. The only uniform bar exam now offered is the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ UBE, which is being replaced by the NextGen UBE starting in July.

The state bar previously rejected switching to the NextGen UBE, which is the first major redesign of the national bar exam in 25 years. The updated exam aims to rely more on practical legal skills and less on the memorization of laws. Thus far, 45 states and jurisdictions have announced plans to use the NextGen UBE.

Read more:

California bar exam meltdown on Tuesday prompts offer of March retakes

California scraps new bar exam for July, adjusts scores on botched February test