Following in the footsteps of a few other state bars, the State Bar of California has made the decision to adjust the scores of 2,429 test takers who encountered technical problems during the remote July 2021 Bar Exam.

Additionally, the State is giving nearly 1,300 unsuccessful bar candidates another try at no extra cost.

California Bar officials have now stated that examinees who faced technical issues and did not pass can get their test fees refunded or register for free for the upcoming February or July exams. That works out to more than $1.7 million in testing fees overall.

For test sections where examinees had technical problems, the bar adjusted scores based on item difficulty and examinees’ performance on comparable portions of the test.

An earlier state bar investigation found that 31% of the 7,742 people who sat for the remote July exam in California experienced these types of issues , and at least 2%, or 153 people, lost time or answers as a result.

Nationwide, online bar examinees complained of a variety of issues, including having their screen go black during the exam, requiring them to restart their computers. Software provider ExamSoft attributed the issue to the exam’s video monitoring feature using more computer memory than anticipated.

“The Board felt strongly that we needed to do everything possible to ensure fairness for this group of examinees,” said Ruben Duran, Chairman of the California Bar’s Board of Trustees.

The overall pass rate on California’s July exam was 53%. That’s a little lower than the October 2020 remote exam, but 3 percentage points higher than the July 2019 test.

You can read more about this ongoing issue here.

If you just got back your results and were not successful on the exam, we will give you a completely free score evaluation from our bar exam experts to show you what went wrong and exactly what you need to do to pass on the next try. Just submit you score report to us here or email us at [email protected].