The State Bar of California has decided to hold off on approving a proposal to enable those who took or withdrew from its troubled February Bar Exam to temporarily practice under the supervision of an experienced lawyer.
Members of the State Bar’s Board of Trustees now say they want to see the results of the February test before deciding whether to extend an existing provisional licensure program, which it enacted in 2020 when the bar exam was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, to include February examinees and those who withdrew in the run-up to that test.
Exam grading is slated to finish on May 2nd and will be announced shortly thereafter.
Trustee Mark Toney called the February Bar Exam a “huge failure,” but said the Board needs more data to decide “the right thing to do, not just the quick thing to do.”
The February exam marked the debut of California’s hybrid remote and in-person test without the components of the national bar exam the state has used for decades — a change that was intended to save as much as $3.8 million annually. But the test was marred by widespread technical and logistical problems. Some test takers were unable to log in to the exam at all, while others faced delays, computer crashes, lax exam security, distracting proctors and a copy-and-paste function that did not work.
At least two separate groups of February examinees have sued testing vendor Meazure Learning, alleging the company failed to provide a functioning test platform despite ample warning of technical troubles.
The Trustees directed the State Bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners to develop proposals for other potential remedies such as score adjustments or a portfolio bar exam that would enable law graduates to become licensed after spending four to six months working under the supervision of an experienced attorney and submitting an acceptable portfolio of legal work.
As they have during previous meetings, February examinees implored the trustees for a variety of remedies beyond provisional licensing, including allowing them to become licensed without taking another bar exam.
The State Bar Trustees have also approved contracts for software vendor ExamSoft to replace Meazure Learning for the upcoming July 2025 Bar Exam and rentals of 10 exam sites throughout the state. The California Supreme Court last month ordered the state bar to do in-person testing for July. Those changes will increase the projected costs of the July Bar Exam from $2.4 million to at least $4.75 million — an overage of $2.3 million.

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