Cal Bar Committee on Exams recommends provisional licensure for February exam applicants
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.
