The finger-pointing and attempts at rectifying the fallout from the disastrous February administration of California’s new bar exam continues, as the State Bar of California considers returning to an in-person administration for the July exam, scrutinizes its vendor’s failed performance for possible breach of contract, and faces a potential audit.

“Last week’s administration of the bar exam in California was a fiasco. It was made all the worse because it was foreseeable in advance,” wrote Erwin Chemerinsky, the Dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. “It was stunning incompetence by an entity that exists to ensure competence.”

On March 4th, the California Supreme Court directed the State Bar “to plan on administering the July 2025 California Bar Examination in the traditional in-person format,” which would seem to signal an admission that the remote exam was a failure.

The Court earlier asked the Bar and Meazure Learning for a detailed report about the issues experienced by applicants to “provide appropriate remedies for affected applicants who deserved and expected better.”

Unlike the widely used Uniform Bar Examination and its components administered and developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the new hybrid test was designed to be taken remotely and at test centers. The decision this fall to launch a new exam was motivated by saving money to ease an anticipated $3.8 million deficit.

According to the State Bar’s Board of Trustees’ agenda for its March 5 meeting, the Bar’s staff “cannot recommend going forward with Meazure Learning and are instead recommending returning to the in-person administration” for the July exam. The memo was posted by Donna Hershkowitz, the State Bar’s Chief of Admissions and Legislative Director.

A fact sheet created by the Bar enumerates the host of issues that the bar candidates experienced, including the inability to use copy and paste functions in the performance test, being kicked off the platform and unable to reenter without restarting the exam and being unable to connect at all, and delays of 90 minutes before starting the multiple-choice section of the test.

Meazure Learning is under review by the State Bar after widespread technical delays and glitches affecting in-person and remote test-takers, according to a March 5th statement, and the Bar is “closely scrutinizing whether Meazure Learning met its contractual obligations.”

Democratic California State Senator Tom Umberg, Chair of the California Senate Judiciary Committee, recently called for an audit of the State Bar’s handling of the February 2025 Bar Exam.

And last week, a group of examinees filed a class action complaint in the Northern District of California against ProctorU Inc. alleging that the vendor “failed spectacularly” to administer to the test through its Meazure Learning unit. On March 3, ProctorU was hit by a similar, second class action lawsuit in the Northern District of California filed by a bar candidate who alleges that the company was aware of the software’s failings but failed to rectify the glitches.

Concerns about the administration of the new test started before the exam’s administration.

The Board of Trustees heard about the issues surrounding the Meazure Learning platform’s functionality at its February 21 meeting. That followed a September 17 letter from 15 ABA-accredited law school Deans expressing “grave concerns” about administration of the new hybrid exam.

Law School Deans continue to be frustrated. On March 3rd the Deans again wrote to California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero and the State Supreme Court recommending that candidates work under the supervision of experienced attorneys to “allow candidates with offers of employment contingent on bar passage to retain them,” according to the letter.

Noting that the July exam is “fewer than five months away,” the California Law School Deans urged the “return to an in-person administration of the Multistate Bar Examination.” A second letter signed March 3 by more than 40 Law School Deans outside California, including those from the University of Washington School of Law, the Duke University School of Law and the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, echoed their California peers’ recommendations.

You can read more about this  here.

And If you are planning to take the bar exam this July and want to get a head start (which is always a good idea), just email or call us to discuss Marino Legal’s Early Start bar review program.