California Supreme Court denies plan for new bar exam
The California Supreme Court put the brakes on the State Bar of California’s plan to launch a proprietary bar exam created by Kaplan Exam Services in February 2025. (Image from Shutterstock)
The California Supreme Court put the brakes on the State Bar of California’s plan to launch a proprietary bar exam created by Kaplan Exam Services in February 2025.
The bar’s petition to allow Kaplan to create a 200-question multiple-choice exam for the February 2025 administration was denied without prejudice just two weeks before registration opens, according to the bar’s website. The Committee of Bar Examiners is ultimately responsible for the bar exam’s format, scope, content, questions and grading process, according to the California Rules of Court, but the Supreme Court reviews and approves all proposals. The bar must comply with those rulings.
“As we understand it, the court’s filing is a procedural denial and one we hope to quickly rectify,” wrote Bridget Gramme, special counsel in the division of consumer protection, admissions, and access and inclusion at the State Bar of California.
The committee is scheduled to meet Sept. 30, and “the state bar will file a petition as quickly as possible” after the meeting, adjusting the plans as necessary to meet the court’s direction, according to the bar’s website.
“This is big news,” Deborah Jones Merritt, professor emerita at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, told the ABA Journal in an email. “From the exam-making perspective, the time frame was tight but doable, and the same may still be true. From the perspective of students and graduates preparing for the exam, I think the time frame was too short. And this will create still more uncertainty and anxiety among those test-takers.”
Applicants will still state their preference for a remote or in-person exam, and the bar will notify the applicants as details emerge, according to the website. “Applicants should prepare for the exam as they always have,” the website states.
“The court’s decision today confirms what we already know: Everything related to the bar exam is complicated in California,” wrote Joan Howarth, emerita professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law and author of Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing. “Each new wrinkle makes the planned changes more difficult to achieve by February.”
Russell Schaffer, communications director of Kaplan, referred all questions to the State Bar of California.
“It would be premature to consider the possibility of Kaplan not providing the multiple-choice questions for the February exam,” Gramme wrote.
Although the court allowed the bar to push back the application date to Oct. 15, “at this point, the state bar still intends to launch the February 2025 bar exam application on Oct. 1, 2024,” according to the bar’s website.
“As an arm of the California Supreme Court, we respect its decision and welcome the Committee of Bar Examiners’ engagement,” Brandon Stallings, chair of the State Bar of California’s board of trustees, said in a statement. “The CBE is an essential partner in our efforts to address the fiscal crises that leave the admissions fund facing potential insolvency, while also focusing on the integrity, quality and validity of the bar exam.”
The State Bar of California’s admissions fund faces insolvency in 2026, with its 2024 budget forecasting a $3.8 million deficit while projecting it will end this year with $3.3 million in reserves, according to a May 16 memo.
The decision in California could have implications for Nevada, where the state supreme court approved a three-pronged pathway to the bar that might include using the Kaplan-created test as an interim step. Members of both states’ bars met earlier this week, Richard M. Trachok II, chair of the Nevada Board of Bar Examiners, wrote to the ABA Journal.
“Nevada will continue to work with potential providers” to create the multiple-choice portion of the pathway, he wrote. “We will also closely monitor the Cal Bar’s efforts to create a multiple-choice exam.”
The National Conference of Bar Examiners has not been approached by California officials about using its Multistate Bar Exam for February, Judith Gundersen, NCBE CEO and president, wrote in an email to the ABA Journal.
“NCBE contacted the State Bar of California in May to share a contingency plan we had created for their February 2025 bar exam and indicated that it could be put in place as late as Nov. 1,” she said.
Unlike the planned new exam for California, the MBE must be administered in person. “NCBE has not given permission for the MBE to be administered remotely to examinees in their homes/offices or in third-party testing centers,” Gundersen added.
Additionally, the State Bar of California asked the state supreme court for approval to bump up the bar exam scores of those willing to take a trial run of the new test. These trial runs will take place in November and July, according to the State Bar of California website. If approved, examinees could boost their scores by as much as 40 points. The court did not rule on this matter.
This is not the first obstacle faced by the cash-strapped state bar as it plans to save money by creating its own exam that can be administered remotely. NCBE wrote Kaplan to remind the test prep company that creating questions based on NCBE-produced tests could violate their licensing agreement. The state bar moved forward with the Kaplan agreement in August.
The terms of the five-year, $8.25 million contract include Kaplan delivering a multiple-choice question test to be administered in February 2025, along with applicant and faculty study guides by fall of 2024. Essay and performance test questions will be delivered in 2026, and Kaplan must exit the retail bar prep business in California.
California tests more bar candidates than any other state but New York. In July 2023, there were 7,555 examinees who took the test; 3,944 took it in February, according to the NCBE.
See also:
California law deans have ‘grave concerns’ about new bar exam plans
