July 2025 Cal Bar Exam will use NCBE’s MBE questions

The Cal Supreme Court issued an Administrative Order approving scoring adjustments to the February exam (approving the Bar’s Petition of April 29, and nothing more).

Note the final sentence of the Order:  “At this time, the Court orders that the Multistate Bar Examination [the NCBE’s questions] be used for the multiple choice portion of the July 2025 California Bar Examination.”

To Ellin Davtyan, Kirsten Galler, and Jean Krasilnikoff, thank you for drafting page 62 of your Petition.  The Cal Supreme Court noticed.  I noticed.  And we (and trust me, the July 2025 applicant pool is included here), thank you.

 

February 2025 Cal Bar Exam results DELAYED until Monday, May 5, noon

UPDATE:

The Cal Bar will publish the results of the February exam on Monday, May 5, noon.  This comes from the Cal Bar’s Pass List page, which is located here:

https://apps.calbar.ca.gov/exam/

 

February 2025 California Bar Examination Pass List

 

Notice: Release of results from the February 2025 bar exam has been delayed. The pass list itself will be released on Monday, May 5, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. (PDT) on the Examination Pass List webpage.

For those who did not pass the exam, letters detailing results with more information will follow later in the week.

An email update will be sent shortly to notify applicants.

 

NOTE:  as of now students hadn’t been emailed.  The Bar Exam’s Notices pages hasn’t been updated.  The Exam Results page hasn’t been updated (as of 7:35 pm).  But the Pass List page has been updated.

February 2025 Cal Bar Exam results update, as of 4 pm

As of May 2, 3:55 pm:

 

On the Exam Results page, no changes:

 

https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Admissions/Examinations/California-Bar-Examination/Exam-Results

Exam results release

Results from the February 2025 bar exam will be released through the Applicant Portal to applicants. The pass list will be posted on the Examination Pass List webpage. The initial release date was scheduled for May 2, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. Unfortunately, this may be delayed.

On April 18, the Committee of Bar Examiners recommended scoring adjustments and the minimum raw passing score for the February 2025 exam. The State Bar filed a petition with the Supreme Court on April 29, to adopt the Committee’s recommendations. Due to the timing, the Court may not have sufficient opportunity to issue a decision that would allow for implementation of any adopted changes before May 2. We will update this page with a firm release date as soon as it is confirmed.

 

On the Pass List page, there was a countdown clock indicating how many hours remained until results were published.  The Cal Bar has traditionally done this for years.  The clock was there this morning.  It’s not there now.

 

Also, the sentence indicating that “Unfortunately, this may be delayed” is still on the site, but now it’s in bold:

 

Notice: Results from the February 2025 bar exam will be released through the Applicant Portal to applicants. The pass list will be posted on the Examination Pass List webpage. The initial release date was scheduled for May 2, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. Unfortunately, this may be delayed. We will update this page with a firm release date as soon as it is confirmed.

 

You can see if the text is the same, or if there are any further updates, here:  https://apps.calbar.ca.gov/exam/.

 

I’m guessing the applicant pool and the website may receive an update after 6 pm, but not before.  We’ll see.

 

 

 

 

Cal Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson to step down

Today, multiple reports confirm that Cal State Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson will not seek another term.  Her last day is July 7 and she will retire from state service.

 

Separtately, as of 12:45 pm, the Exam Results page of the Cal Bar website does not include a firm date/time for the publication of results of the February 2025 Cal Bar Exam.

 

https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Admissions/Examinations/California-Bar-Examination/Exam-Results

 

Exam results release

Results from the February 2025 bar exam will be released through the Applicant Portal to applicants. The pass list will be posted on the Examination Pass List webpage. The initial release date was scheduled for May 2, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. Unfortunately, this may be delayed.

On April 18, the Committee of Bar Examiners recommended scoring adjustments and the minimum raw passing score for the February 2025 exam. The State Bar filed a petition with the Supreme Court on April 29, to adopt the Committee’s recommendations. Due to the timing, the Court may not have sufficient opportunity to issue a decision that would allow for implementation of any adopted changes before May 2. We will update this page with a firm release date as soon as it is confirmed.

No firm release date for February 2025 results as of Thursday, 9:40 pm

Per the Cal Bar’s Exam Results page, retrieved on Thursday, May 1, 9:40 pm.  No firm release date as of this time.  Keep checking this page for a firm release date of the results:

https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Admissions/Examinations/California-Bar-Examination/Exam-Results

Exam results release

Results from the February 2025 bar exam will be released through the Applicant Portal to applicants. The pass list will be posted on the Examination Pass List webpage. The initial release date was scheduled for May 2, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. Unfortunately, this may be delayed.

On April 18, the Committee of Bar Examiners recommended scoring adjustments and the minimum raw passing score for the February 2025 exam. The State Bar filed a petition with the Supreme Court on April 29, to adopt the Committee’s recommendations. Due to the timing, the Court may not have sufficient opportunity to issue a decision that would allow for implementation of any adopted changes before May 2. We will update this page with a firm release date as soon as it is confirmed.

Cal Bar invites Cal Supreme Court to bring back the NCBE’s MBE questions to the Cal Bar for July 2025

In Section VI of the Cal Bar’s Petition to the California Supreme Court on April 29, the Cal Bar discusses improvements for the MBE for the July 2025 exam.

There are several parts to this plan to improve the Kaplan MBE experience.  In fact, the process is so intricate, that the Cal Bar admits it needs “ample time”

to implement them:

“ample time is required to do the following:

• Select applicants with the input of the CBE;
• Confirm eligibility of selected applicants based on the
CBE’s adopted criteria;
• Perform attorney complaint and disciplinary history checks
on selected applicants (which is anticipated to be part of
the CBE’s selection policy);
• Execute contracts;
• Securely transmit the questions to the subject-matter
experts; and
• Provide ample opportunity for subject-matter experts to
review the questions for legal accuracy.”  Petition, at 61.

As a result, the Cal Bar admits this process may not be able to be completed in time for the July 2025 exam.

So, what’s the alternative?

Buried on page 62 of the 63-page Petition, the Cal Bar states (note, the reference to MBE means the traditional NCBE questions):

Up until this point, neither the State Bar nor the CBE have
considered returning to the [NCBE] MBE. But as the State Bar continues
to work with the CBE to improve the multiple-choice question
review process, this Court may conclude that, pursuant to its
plenary authority over admissions to the bar in this State, the
State Bar should be directed to utilize the MBE for the July 2025
General Bar Examination so that there is not a risk that the
process improvements are not effectively implemented before the
next administration of bar examination.

The Court’s Administrative Order 2024-10-21-01, filed on October 22, 2024,
which refers only to 200 multiple-choice questions, does not
require amendment for the Court to make this directive.

Friends, this is an earnest, eager entreaty by the Cal Bar to the California Supreme Court:

We can’t sort out 200 properly vetted MBEs by the July 2025 exam.  We need more time to implement

a proper plan.  So please, California Supreme Court, order us to use the NCBE’s MBE questions,

so we can buy enough time to put our MBE house in order.

 

And, while we’re at it, folks, I’d go even further.  I would ask the California Supreme Court to

direct the California Bar to use the NCBE’s MBE questions until further notice until such time

that the Cal Bar can properly, confidently, and in a manner worthy of the public’s trust, roll out 200

MBE questions for use on future exams.  If the Cal Bar’s plan takes 6 months, great.  If it takes 2 years, great.

Just get it right.

 

Two final notes of interest: 

 

1) the NCBE will stop creating MBE questions after the July 2028 exam.  As such, the California Supreme Court can 

provide the Cal Bar and Kaplan with over two years of runway to ensure that it gets its collective MBE house in order.

 

2) the NCBE published a statement Monday indicating that if the California Bar wants to use the NCBE questions 

on the July 2025 exam, the Cal Bar must notify the NCBE by June 10, 2025.

 

 

Psychometrician drafted 14 of 49 questions in Cal Bar Experiment (OpenAI and Chat GPT used)

In the Petition from the Cal Bar to the California Supreme Court filed April 29, the Cal Bar indicated that the psychometrician and his firm were asked

to draft 14 questions for the Cal Bar Experiment.  Based on how the Petition was written, the psychometrician’s firm was asked to draft 14 questions

“so that the November study would test a total of 49 questions.”  The inference is that Kaplan couldn’t generate the requisite number of questions on time.

From page 12, footnote 3:

Prior to this, in late September 2024, Admissions staff
requested that ACS draft two questions per subject area for
inclusion in the November bar examination study, so that the
November study would test a total of 49 questions. ACS drafted
14 questions for the November bar examination study using
OpenAI ChatGPT, and the remaining 35 questions were drafted
by Kaplan. Of the 14 ACS-drafted questions, 11 were carried over
and used on the February 2025 bar examination because they
were among the top performing questions from the November
study.

 

Observations:

  1. Kaplan couldn’t generate 49 questions in time.
  2. Why ask psychometricians — who don’t necessarily have legal training — to draft MBE questions?
  3. Psychometrician’s firm used AI (Open AI and ChatGPT, specifically).  Kaplan’s contract indicates (Article I, section 1.1.5.5) that it “shall not use artificial intelligence in a manner that violates the provisions of Article 18.”  Evidently psychometricians can?  Article 18 states:  18. 1 Contractor warrants and represents that it (including its Representatives) shall not
    use artificial intelligence (“Al”) in a manner that causes or may cause a dilution of Intellectual
    Property Rights for, or in any way preclude the copyrightability or State Bar copyright ownership
    of, any Work Product, Test Materials, or individual test item, including any stimulus, stem, and
    response options. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, Contractor warrants and
    represents that (a) it shall not use Al in a manner that does not conform to the US Copyright
    Office Guidance (https://copyright.gov/ai/ai_policy_guidance.pdf) (or any update, amendment,
    or new guidance) regarding the requirements for copyrightability and ownership; (b) the
    elements of authorship in any Work Product, Test Materials, and individual test item (the literary
    expression and any elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) shall be conceived, executed, and
    actually formed by humans, not the Al; (c) any use of Al tools shall be solely to enhance limited
    elements of existing human-created Work Product, and any Al contributions shall be the result
    of human original mental conception; (d) any Al-generated content shall be de minimis; and (e)
    any use of Al shall not require the State Bar to exclude or disclaim any content from any copyright
    registration application for any Work Product.
  4. If the psychometricians used Open AI and ChatGPT to generate questions, where did Open AI and ChatGPT get those questions from?  Wouldn’t they have consulted NCBE-related content that was available online?  If not that, what alternative materials were available?

Cal Bar knew in October 2024 that Kaplan couldn’t draft enough questions for February 2025 exam

Hello everyone,

In its Petition filed April 29 to the California Supreme Court, the Cal Bar indicated that it knew months in advance of the February 2025 exam that Kaplan could not meet its contractual obligation to draft 200 MBE questions that could be properly vetted in time for the February 2025 exam.  Page 10 of the Petition states:

“However, in late October 2024, Office of Admissions’ staff
determined that there were not enough multiple-choice questions
for each of the subtopics of the seven subject areas tested.”

So what did the Cal Bar do to solve this problem?  Affirmatively ask the psychometrician’s company to draft more MBE questions.  Also from page 10 of the Petition:

“As such, staff requested that ACS Ventures, LLC (ACS)—the
psychometric and test development consulting company with
which the State Bar contracts to assist with examination
analysis, grading, and related services—draft additional
questions for the February 2025 bar examination.”

 

Page 12 of the Petition clarifies this date as approximately October 30, 2024:

 

“On or around October 30, 2024, State Bar Admissions’ staff
requested that ACS draft additional questions for the February
2025 bar examination to ensure that there were a sufficient
number of questions in all subtopics of the subject areas.”

 

The Petition confirms (page 12, footnote 3) that a few State Bar staff made this decision and did not communicate this decision to State Bar leadership.

 

The decisions by Admissions staff to request that ACS
develop questions for the November bar examination study and

for use on the February 2025 bar examination were not clearly

communicated to State Bar leadership. Structural changes within
Admissions have been made to address this issue.

 

 

 

Cal Bar Files Petition with the California Supreme Court April 29

From the Cal Bar’s website:

 

State Bar Files Petition with California Supreme Court

 

The State Bar of California today filed a petition with the California Supreme Court, advancing recommendations made by the Committee of Bar Examiners regarding a raw passing score and scoring adjustments for the February Bar Exam. The petition also responds to the Court’s recent request for information regarding the development and reliability of multiple-choice questions.

The State Bar recognizes and apologizes for the delay in filing the petition. The State Bar will share exam results as soon as possible.

We ARE getting results on Friday… right?!

Just when you thought this couldn’t get any worse…

On Friday, April 18, the Cal Bar’s Committee of Examiners decided to reduced the raw passing score on the February 2025 Cal Bar Exam from 560 to 534.  Problem?  The Cal Bar can’t do that unilaterally.  It must file a petition to the California Supreme Court.  If the Court approves (ideally before April 28, so that the Cal Bar could implement those changes in results letters), then the Cal Bar felt that it could still publish results on time, on May 2.

Sooooooo…. the Cal Bar didn’t exactly file that petition on April 18.

Then, last week, the Cal Bar revealed that its psychometric vendor, ACS Ventures, used artificial intelligence to craft 23 of the 200 multiple choice questions that applicants saw on the February exam.  In addition, 48 questions were taken from the Cal Bar’s  bank of questions for the First-Year Law Students’ Exam (aka, the Baby Bar, which consists of 100 contracts, crim, and torts MBEs).  Kaplan, you know, the firm that received all that money to create the MBE questions, drafted only 100 of the 200 questions.  No word on who drafted the 29 questions deemed to be experimental and which were not graded.

Remember, the Cal Bar said it would file its petition with the Court on April 18.  As I said, it didn’t happen.  Then, the Cal Supreme Court found about the non-lawyer psychometrician drafting MBE questions with AI just like the rest of us, via press release (trust me, the justices were NOT amused, on multiple levels).  Then, last Thursday, on April 24, the Cal Supreme Court issued a statement:  “Because the court was not made aware of the use of AI to draft some of the multiple-choice questions for the February bar exam, the court has asked the State Bar, in its petition regarding the scoring of the exam, to explain to the court how and why AI was used to draft, revise, or otherwise develop certain multiple-choice questions, efforts taken to ensure the reliability of the AI-assisted multiple-choice questions before they were administered, the reliability of the AI-assisted multiple-choice questions, whether any multiple-choice questions were removed from scoring because they were determined to be unreliable, and the reliability of the remaining multiple-choice questions used for scoring.”  As of Friday, April 25, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Cal Bar hadn’t sent its petition to the Court regarding lowering the passing score for the February 2025 exam.  This is probably because the Court asked the Cal Bar to address how and why they used the 200 questions they used for the MBE on the February 2025 exam.

NOW it comes to pass that tonight, Monday night, April 28, the Cal Bar sent applicants an email:  the Cal Bar still hadn’t filed the petition that it was going to file on April 18.  The Bar said that “we anticipate doing so tomorrow, on April 29.  The timing of our petition submission will not give the Court much time to rule in a manner that allows us to apply the scoring recommendations adopted by the Court and then release February Bar Exam results on May 2.  There may therefore be a slight delay in releasing results.(emphasis mine).

And, at the end of the email, the Cal Bar said that it is “committed to sharing exam results as soon as we are able.”

Unprecedented, this.  The Cal Bar results may not publish on time.  We’ll see when the Cal Bar files its petition.  We’ll see how quickly the Cal Supreme Court rules on the petition.  Remember, the Cal Bar cannot control the Cal Supreme Court in any way:  what it decides, or when it decides.  Do you think the Supreme Court will adjust the cut score given the Cal Bar’s fundamental alteration of the MBE, by allowing non-lawyers to use AI to generate MBE questions?  Not to mention the use of seemingly easier questions (48 questions for a 1L exam used on a Cal Bar exam), which may have been deliberately used to improve student performance to dilute the impact of Kaplan’s inability to deliver more than 50% of what it promised to do?

Either way, as the Cal Bar said, “there may therefore be a slight delay in releasing results.”  I hope applicants receive results on Friday!  We shall see.