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.

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.

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.

UC Law SF recently informed me that I received a Teacher of the Year award for my 1L Legal Research and Writing Fall semester class!

I’m deeply honored to receive the award.  I have already accepted my offer to teach the class for Year 26 this fall.  Can’t wait to help a new group of students and meet them on the first day of law school!

Hello everyone,

Remember how you and I were exceedingly unhappy about the announcement of the February 2025 Cal Bar “Retake” on March 3-4?  Only to be surpassed by the announcement that one rogue actor published (evidently accurately) one of the questions around March 1, and so the “retake” was moved a few weeks later, to mid-March?  And how that seemed SO UNFAIR because the Bar announced that they were using the same questions?  And the psychometrician also said there was no other way to have a reliable exam than to have the same questions?

That seemed SO unfair.  And it seemed like some people theoretically could have gotten quite an unfair advantage by consulting the deep reddits or the darkest parts of the web and found out what the questions were about before they saw them?

Well, the Cal Bar caved.  Even thought they said there was NO WAY they could provide new questions in time for the March 17 test, well, what do you know, they found a way.

Today, April 16, I discovered that the Cal Bar published the questions that people saw from the original exam on February 25… AND the re-test questions from mid-March.  I expected to see one new question because that’s what the Cal Bar said was going to happen.  Replace the spoiled question with a new one and retest the other 4 essays and a PT.

Nope.  What did I see today?

February 25 (original exam… note the questions were inexplicably presented in a different order for people, but they took the same questions)

1. Crim Pro
2. Wills/Trusts
3. Property
4. Contract Remedies
5. PR

And on the re-test?

1. Evidence
2. Community Property
3. Con Law
4. PR (different fact pattern/calls of question)
5. Contract remedies (different fact pattern/calls of question)

Whither the PTs?

The PTs were different.

Totally different exams, people!  I’m guessing State Bar Counsel informed the Bar that they risked SERIOUS legal exposure if they used the same questions.  Regardless of the rationale, one thing is clear:  the questions were different on Feb. 25 than they were in mid-March.

Now what does that all mean for July predictions?  Who knows? Totally unprecedented circumstances.

The Cal Bar Board of Trustees met on April 2.  In a press release summarizing the meeting, this tidbit was of interest:

At the April 18 CBE [Committee of Bar Examiners] meeting, psychometrician Dr. Chad Buckendahl of ACS Ventures also will present initial grading results as well as recommended score adjustments for November experiment participants. In addition, Dr. Buckendahl is expected to provide recommendations on scoring adjustments for impacted February exam test takers. 

So… for those of you who participated in the Cal Bar Experiment in November 24, you will get further clarity on April 18.  And we hope, February bar takers will get more clarity about scoring adjustments as well.

https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News/News-Releases/board-approves-testing-locations-vendor-for-in-person-july-bar-exam?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–4BIDfMHEjoMUptoqEhBWAnU7cZzUJd8FYviGs4mKKncmJ2sL0bau_1gT7X0RLEY1-soN5R6CTMWel-M2PjKA3OW55GqWvnhThtkHGTPJZj3sDZdo&_hsmi=2&utm_content=2&utm_source=hs_email

FYI:  it’s open now.

The Cal Bar stated on its Notices page today:

March 20, 2025

The July 2025 bar exam application will be available on March 27, 2025, in the Applicant Portal.

Found here:

https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Admissions/Examinations/California-Bar-Examination/February-2025-Bar-Exam-Notices

At its March 14 meeting, the Committee of Bar Examiners voted to recommend that applicants who took the February 2025 Cal Bar Exam — and those who registered but withdrew and didn’t take the exam — be allowed to participate in the provisional licensing program.  The length of the provisional licensing program wasn’t voted on.  The Cal Supreme Court will have final say on the matter.

Separately, the Committee voted to return to “traditional, in-person testing” for July 2025 as the Supreme Court directed the Bar to do.

So:  hardcopy fact patterns for essays, hardcopy Library and File for PT, and scratch paper for both.  However, nothing was finalized about the MBE.  The Committee doesn’t like scantrons.  They seemed to want applicants to click their answers on their laptops.  However, a lot of debate ensued about whether the MBE questions should be digital, provided in hardcopy, or both.  Nothing was finalized.  That said, we all know what “traditional” means regarding the administration of the MBE in 2000, 2009, and 2019:  hardcopy questions and scantrons.  And, not for nothing, returning to NCBE’s questions, not Kaplan’s.  That didn’t seem to be on the table for consideration on March 14 at the meeting.