State Bar of California considers provisional licenses for February bar exam takers
The State Bar of California's Committee of Bar Examiners has placed the option of provisional licenses for candidates who fail or withdrew from the February California bar exam on the table. (Image from Shutterstock)
Updated: The State Bar of California’s Committee of Bar Examiners has placed the option of provisional licenses for candidates who fail or withdrew from the February California bar exam on the table.
At its March 14 meeting, the committee voted to recommend that the California Supreme Court continue a prelicensing program put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. It allows law school graduates to practice under the supervision of a licensed lawyer until they pass a bar exam and ends Dec. 31.
The committee’s recommendation includes those who took the troubled Kaplan-authored exam, as well as those who decided to withdraw during the run-up to the administration of the test. Of the more than 5,600 candidates originally registered to take the new exam Feb. 25 and 26, about 1,300 withdrew, according to the state bar.
“They’re also still impacted,” said committee member Ashley Silva-Guzman during the meeting. “They made a decision, and I don’t think that they should be excluded from any remedies.”
Unlike the widely used Uniform Bar Examination, which is administered and developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the new hybrid test, written by Kaplan Exam Services and deployed by Meazure Learning, was designed to be taken remotely and at test centers. The state bar’s decision this fall to launch a new exam was motivated by its need to save money to ease an anticipated $3.8 million deficit.
But the ongoing outcry by February bar candidates concerning a variety of issues—including delayed start times, technical glitches, grammatical and factual errors in the questions, rampant cheating, proctors arguing and fellow test-takers screaming out of frustration—has forced the state bar to consider remedies.
Historically, there is a lower pass rate for the February administration of the California bar exam, with 33.9% passing in February 2024, according to a May 2024 state bar news release.
“If people are truly not competent at practice, the provisional licensure program has been good in determining and finding that out just as well as the bar and probably even more accurately,” Silva-Guzman said. “We’ve had positive feedback from the participants in the 2020 provisional licensure program. Both supervisors and licensees have infrastructure ready.”
Offering provisional licensure to the February examinees has the support of 17 deans of ABA-accredited California law schools, who signed a March 3 letter to California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero offering to help the program find mentorship via alumni networks.
Next, the proposal has to be approved by the state bar’s board of trustees before heading to the state supreme court.
Throughout the meeting’s two-hour public comments session, a group of California law professors gave coordinated comments about issues with the February test questions. They also asked why their invitations for vetting the bar exam questions were rescinded.
Testing expert Chad Buckendahl, founder of ACS Ventures, a company that focuses on testing and credentialing, offered the committee an early look at the multiple-choice questions’ validity, showing that they “functioned well” and met the expected range of statistical criteria for a licensing exam.
Although he found that 33 questions were flagged as “too easy” and seven as “too difficult,” this did not influence overall reliability, he said. Some questions had fewer than three functioning response options and will require further review, potential revisions and possible removal from future consideration, he added.
Like the Multistate Bar Examination, only 175 out of 200 multiple-choice questions will be scored, he said, selected by their statistical performance.
The committee determined that it will continue reviewing Kaplan questions in the same manner that it had before the exam.
Although several candidates licensed in other states are demanding that they receive reciprocity during the public comments session, the committee did not discuss options for that group.
While other mitigating options, such as changing the passing score or adding points to candidates, were discussed by the committee, no additional recommendations were made. Those options would also require the state supreme court’s approval.
But another remedy—a retake—is set to start March 18. But only about 80 of the more than 4,000 candidates who took the February test were offered the March 18 and 19 retake and a chance at a redo, according to the state bar.
California tests the second-highest number of bar examinees, according to the NCBE, behind only New York. In 2024, 3,944 examinees took the California bar exam in February.
Updated March 19 at 10:41 a.m. to report that the State Bar of California’s Committee of Bar Examiners determined that it will continue reviewing Kaplan questions in the same manner that it had before the exam.
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