The Recorder, Deans Ask California High Court to Provisionally License Grads Who Fail February Exam:

Seventeen California law schools on Monday asked the state Supreme Court to scrap the state bar’s new remote-testing platform and to return to in-person testing in time for the July bar exam.

In a four-page letter to Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, deans of the American Bar Association-approved schools also called on the court to grant provisional law licenses to anyone who fails the February test that was marred by severe technical failures last week.

Dear Chief Justice Guerrero and Members of the California Supreme Court:

We write to offer our partnership in your efforts to restore the public’s trust after the myriad and widely reported issues in the content and administration of the February Bar Examination. Like you, we have collectively fielded thousands of communications from students, graduates, and members of the Bar over the last several days expressing deep and justifiable concern about what the absence of a valid and reliable mechanism for assessing preparedness for licensure means for candidates and the public. We are committed to offering every resource we have at our disposal to address both the immediate and emergent challenges created by the new exam.

Law school graduates who sat for the February administration of the California Bar Exam experienced exam administration failures that were, as the State Bar recently noted “unacceptable in their range and severity.” 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.

For the candidates who sat for this February examination, but were unsuccessful, we hope you will provide provisional licensure under the supervision of experienced attorneys. We are committed to working with candidates and our extensive alumni networks to find experienced attorneys willing to provide mentorship and oversight until the candidates are able to sit for and pass a valid and reliable assessment of their competence. Provisional licensure would allow candidates with offers of employment contingent on bar passage to retain them. 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. It would also maintain a steady pipeline of new lawyers available to help address our state’s unmet legal needs. Finally, this path would provide the time necessary to develop a valid, reliable test and proven testing method before asking these candidates to invest the time, resources, and trust to try again.

As of today, we are fewer than five months away from the July exam, when we can reasonably expect more than twice the test-takers, including those who accepted the State Bar’s offer to defer from February to July. This period 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. We urge you to return to an in-person administration of the Multistate Bar Examination, which would provide immediate reassurance to the public and candidates and help prevent our graduates and those from other law schools from seeking licensure and employment elsewhere. This decision would have the added advantage of allowing for a full and thoughtful exploration of whether the NextGen Bar examination, supplemented by the California essays, could successfully meet the requirements of the Court’s order in response to the Blue Ribbon Commission. We believe that it could.

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 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. Were the decision made to return to the MBE and California essays for the July exam, each of us would offer spaces on our respective campuses around the state to the State Bar at no cost. We understand that the State Bar already used one law school as a testing site for the February bar, so there are lessons from this experience that we could apply at our own institutions. We would also be willing and committed collaborators in developing strategies to close any remaining gap, including by drawing on our networks for proctors.

In sum, we stand ready to assist in your efforts to address the challenges created by the February bar exam and to protect the integrity of our licensure system. We can be reached by contacting Dean David Faigman.

Sincerely,
Paul Caron
Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean
Professor of Law
Caruso School of Law

Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean
Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law
UC Berkeley Law

Marisa Cianciarulo
Dean and Professor of Law
Western State College of Law

Brietta R. Clark
Fritz B. Burns Dean and Professor of Law
LMU Loyola Law School

Darby Dickerson
President and Dean
Southwestern Law School

David L. Faigman
Chancellor & Dean and John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law
University of California College of the Law, San Francisco

Johanna Kalb
Dean and Professor of Law
University of San Francisco School of Law

Michael Kaufman
Dean and Professor of Law
Santa Clara University School of Law

Austen Parrish
Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law
UC Irvine School of Law

Paul Paton
Dean and Donald P. Kennedy Chair in Law
Dale E. Fowler School of Law
Chapman University

Robert Schapiro
Dean and C. Hugh Friedman Professor of Law
University of San Diego School of Law

Michael Hunter Schwartz
Dean and Professor of Law
McGeorge School of Law

Sean Scott
President and Dean
California Western School of Law

Franita Tolson
Dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law
University of Southern California Gould School of Law

George Triantis
Dean and Richard E. Lange Professor of Law
Stanford Law School

Michael Waterstone
Dean and Professor of Law
UCLA Law

Mark Yates
Dean and Professor of Law
Golden Gate University School of Law

Cc: State Bar of California

Bloomberg Law, California Bar Must Cut Ties With New Test Proctor, Report Says:

The California State Bar must cut ties with exam administrator Meazure Learning, State Bar staff wrote in a new report, following the proctoring company’s botched administration of the February Bar Exam.

Such a change, just months ahead of the July exam, will likely lead to continued challenges, as state administrators seek to recalibrate and recover from the chaos in February.

The Bar should not try to provide a remote test-taking option in July, staff said in a report posted Friday, ahead of a Wednesday Board of Trustees meeting. However, seeking to add sites for the exam at this late date will likely increase costs and inconveniences for applicants, and increase the costs of putting on the exam for the Bar by more than $1 million, the report said.

February Bar applicants, after raising alarm for weeks, reported widespread and severe issues with the testing platform provided by Meazure Learning when they sat last week for the licensing exam. The glitches and customer service problems physically prevented many test takers from completing the test, draining their hopes of soon becoming lawyers in the Golden State.

A proposed class action was filed Thursday against Meazure. The California Senate Judiciary Committee will launch an investigation into the Bar’s handling of the February exam, its chair announced Friday.

The Bar broke off in 2024 from the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ licensing test to save money.

Reuters, After California Bar Exam Chaos, State Poised to Nix Remote Testing:

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, opens new tab 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 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.

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 (May 3, 2025)

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