Pressure Grows On California Bar To Switch To NCBE For July Exam Following February Exam Debacle

Following up on Saturday's post, California Supreme Court Demands Answers From State Bar On Its Use Of AI In Preparing Bar Exam Questions:  Los Angeles Times, Pressure Grows on California State Bar to Revert to National Exam Format in July After Botched Exam:

An influential California legislator is pressuring the State Bar of California to ditch its new multiple-choice questions after a February bar exam debacle and revert to the traditional test format in July.

“Given the catastrophe of the February bar, I think that going back to the methods that have been used for the last 50 years — until we can adequately test what new methods may be employed — is the appropriate way to go,” Sen. Thomas J. Umberg, chair of the state Senate Judiciary Committee, told The Times.

Thousands of test takers seeking to practice law in California typically take the two-day bar exam in July. Reverting to the national system by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, which California has used since 1972, would be a major retreat for the embattled State Bar. Its new exam was rolled out this year as a cost-cutting measure and “historic agreement” that would offer test takers the choice of remote testing.

Alex Chan, an attorney who chairs the Committee of Bar Examiners, which exercises oversight over the California bar exam, told The Times earlier this week it was unlikely that the State Bar would revert to the NCBE exams in July.

“We’re not going back to NCBE — at least in the near term,” Chan said.

The NCBE’s exam security would not allow any form of remote testing, Chan said, and the State Bar’s recent surveys showed almost half of California bar applicants want to keep the remote option.

Last year, the financially strapped State Bar made the decision to cut costs by replacing the test questions developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Multistate Bar Examination, which does not allow remote testing. If the State Bar developed its own questions, it figured it could save money by sparing the expense of renting massive exam halls for all test takers.

The State Bar hired a vendor, Meazure Learning, to administer the exam and announced an additional $8.25-million five-year deal authorizing test prep company Kaplan Exam Services to create multiple-choice, essays and performance test questions.

But after the botched rollout of the new exam in February — when many test takers complained of a litany of technical problems, glitches and irregularities — the state’s highest court, which oversees the State Bar, directed the agency to plan on administering the July exam in the traditional in-person format. ...

This week, the State Bar enraged test takers and legal experts when it revealed that it had hired ACS Ventures, its independent state psychometrician that validates and scores exams to ensure they are reliable, to develop a small subset of multiple-choice questions using artificial intelligence.

“They have to go back to the multi-state bar exam this summer,” said Katie Moran, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law. “They have just shown that they cannot make a fair test.”

The Recorder, California Law School Deans Want NCBE Questions Returned for July Bar Exam 

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• California Bar Exam Suffers Catastrophic Meltdown: ‘I’ve Never Had This Much Despair And Hopelessness’ (Feb. 27, 2025)
• The California Bar Exam Fiasco: Is Provisional Licensure The Appropriate Remedy? (Mar. 1, 2025)
• New York Times: California Bar Exam Fiasco Enrages Test Takers And Clouds Their Futures; Chemerinsky Calls For Provisional Licensure (Mar. 3, 2025)
• 17 Deans Ask California High Court To Provisionally License Grads Who Fail February Exam And Scrap New Kaplan-Written Questions And Revert Back To In-Person Exams In July (Mar. 4, 2025)
• California Supreme Court Reverts Back To In-Person Bar Exam In July (Mar. 5, 2025)
• Law Profs: California State Bar Must Be Held Accountable For Its Catastrophic Failures (Mar. 6, 2025) 
• California Bar Orders Investigation Of February Exam Disaster As Beleaguered Test-Takers Fume (Mar. 9, 2025)
• California Bar Blocked Law School Deans And Professors From Vetting Troubled Bar Exam (Mar. 15, 2025)
• California Bar Recommends Provisional Licensure For All Who Failed And Withdrew From The February Bar Exam (Mar. 16, 2025)
• State Bar Of California Announces Remediation Actions For The February Bar Exam And Plans For The July Bar Exam (Mar. 18, 2025)
• California Bar Still Can't Decide How To Make Applicants Whole After Botched February Bar Exam (Apr. 8, 2025)
• California Bar Allowed Non-Lawyers To Use AI To Draft February Exam Questions, Will Ask Supreme Court To Lower Cut Score (Apr. 23, 2025)
• California Supreme Court Demands Answers From State Bar On Its Use Of AI In Preparing Bar Exam Questions (Apr. 26, 2025)

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