California bar leaders have declined to lock in a direction for the future of its bar exam, following the disastrous rollout of an attempt to create its own test in February 2025.

Instead, they have selected two options for the July 2028 bar exam for further research. The bar will look into adopting the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ new NextGen exam, and it will also look into administering a test using multiple choice questions that were developed for last February’s exam.

“I am forever mindful of the February 25 bar exam,” said Chair Jose Cisneros, adding “I want to do everything possible to make sure we never, and our test takers never, have to experience that again. Which means I’m all about risk. I’m all about, what are we sure we can deliver? What are we sure is going to work? What is our highest confidence to be able to get it done?”

The NCBE test that the bar currently uses will phase out after February 2028. The bar has until this July to get approval from the state’s Supreme Court on how it should test prospective lawyers when the Multistate Bar Exam is no longer available, under a new state law requiring two-years notice to switch exam vendors.

But a number of steps need to be completed before then. The bar has to run a state law-mandated cost-benefit analysis, and the final proposal must be approved at the Board of Trustees’ meeting in May to reach the justices in time.

That time crunch is why the bar needed to decide Friday on the high-level form California’s next bar exam could take, said Chief of Admissions Donna Hershkowitz.

Leaders of the Board of Trustees and the Committee of Bar Examiners, still haunted by the fallout of the rushed previous administration, which was marred by software crashes and revelations that a contractor used ChatGPT to write some questions.

California law school deans and dozens of associations of practicing lawyers presented diametrically opposed takes on the best path forward, with the deans urging adoption of the NCBE’s test and the lawyer associations pushing for a California-specific test.

At one point, Vice Chair Mark Toney proposed the state bar not run an exam in July 2028 at all, an idea that other leaders dismissed and which he admitted said “may sound like sacrilege.”

Cisneros said his choice would be to use the NextGen test in the short term as the bar continues developing a California-specific exam.

The motion the trustees ultimately adopted—changing direction from the Committee of Bar Examiners’ 8-6 vote taken minutes earlier, which was to only consider the NextGen test—was Toney’s idea.

“The point of my motion is that we make a final decision not today, but after the staff has given a little more information for us to do a comparison,” Toney said.

The Board of Trustees voted 9-2 on researching both options, but did eliminate a few other ideas for 2028. Staff will not research administering the NextGen test with an additional California-created component, or creating a shorter test that could be administered more frequently, similar to efforts underway in Nevada.

“I think that we’re in a very weird room right now—we have a ton of attorneys that are all going to be extremely risk averse by nature,” said Committee of Bar Examiners Member Ashley Silva-Guzman. But, she said, there’s no guarantee the NCBE will get the NextGen test right either.

You can read more about this matter  here.

There is a month until the February bar exam, but there is still sufficient time left to get help understanding those concepts that you still don’t quite “get“ or how to earn extra points on your essays even when you don’t know or remember the applicable law. We can provide this assistance to get you on track to pass before it’s too late. You can learn more about our famed bar exam tutoring program here or email us at info@marinolegal.com.