Hello everyone,

Congratulations to those who passed the Cal Bar Exam last night!  Well done!

If you have the honor and privilege of retaking the exam, join the club.  I’ve been there and done that.  It’s going to be OK.  No, failing the Cal Bar Exam is not fun.  Lots of people fail the nation’s hardest bar exam.  For some, there are great reasons for it.  You didn’t finish the exam.  Prep didn’t go well.  You had one or more major life events occur.  For others, it’s more frustrating.  You finished the exam, your prep program went well, and for some reason you didn’t make it.

That’s OK.  You’re retaking an exam.  You’re not going to war.  You don’t have a terminal illness.  And, in some respects, you’re lucky.  Olympians have to wait four years just to try again!  That’s not you.  The February exam is less than four months away.  The opportunity is available.  You will meet the moment.

For the students who graduated in May and failed the July exam, you will have some complications this time around.  For many, you will need to work and study at the same time, which is different from your first attempt.  You will have to deal with the Psychology of Failure, which did not exist on your first attempt.  You wake up, and first thought of the day:  haven’t passed yet.  Last thought of the day:  haven’t passed it.  And many other times per day:  haven’t passed yet.

I’ve been where you are right now.  It is no fun.  But the sun will come up tomorrow.  Promise.  Don’t let a good crisis go to waste.  I can help.  I speak the Psychology of Failure.  Fluently.  I have bespoke plans to help you navigate work and bar prep.  I will meet you where your weaknesses are, and I will help you get from where you are to where you need to go.

I have the tools you need to pass:  next level Essay Writing Lecture and PT Lecture, tools to help you save time and words and finish your exams on time.  The industry’s only systematic issue spotting plan.  What about all that fun you had memorizing for 15 finals on the same day?  I have the industry’s lone remaining memorization program, specifically calibrated to the Cal Bar Exam.  And did I mention 1-on-1 MBE tutoring?

I’ve helped many students pass the Cal Bar and UBE exams over the last 25 years.  I heard some great news last night from Cal accredited law students who passed, and remarkably, from a law office/judge’s chambers student who passed on their FIRST TRY!  Incredible!

Reach out to me on calweasel@gmail.com or (510) 301-2791.  I tutor 20 students total, always 1-on-1, and you will get the individualized attention you need.  Spaces are filling up now.  If you need help on the February 2026 exam, reach out now while I’m still available.

Let’s generate some points!

In early October, Governor Newsom signed SB 253, which requires the Cal Bar to use the NCBE’s questions, and not ones drafted by a private vendor until at least 2027.  The bill indicates that the Cal Bar must provide 18 months’ notice that it intends for a private vendor to draft MBE questions.  Separately, the Cal Bar must provide two years notice before the Cal Bar can return to remote testing.

Eighteen months after October 15 is April 2027, which means that the absolute earliest that Kaplan (or someone else’s) MBE questions could be used is July 2027.  For remote testing, two years notice is October 2027, which means the earliest return to remote testing would be February 2028.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cal Bar’s press release appears below.  Main takeaways:

1. The press release says the first exam that Kaplan will help draft is the next one, February 2025.  We’ll see if NCBE sues for copyright infringement about Kaplan’s questions and if that results in a delay in the use of Kaplan’s questions to a future exam.
2. The press release vaguely indicates a transition time for remote and test-center based exam administration (think Prometric sites a la the MPRE).  When does that begin?  The press release is unclear.
3. If the Cal Bar will go remote and/or test-center based exam administration, what impact does that have for hard-copy materials and scratch paper for exams?  Will students be able to print fact patterns for essays and Library/File for the PT (which they could NOT do during the COVID exams on remote testing)?  At a minimum, will students be able to use scratch paper for essays (which they could NOT do during the COVID exams) or for PTs (which they COULD do during the COVID exams)?  We shall see.

We shall see what we shall see.  Look for more updates this fall!

State Bar, Kaplan, Sign Five-Year California Bar Exam Development Contract

The State Bar of California and Kaplan Exam Services, LLC (Kaplan), a subsidiary of Kaplan North America, LLC, signed an $8.25 million, five-year exam development agreement on August 9, authorizing Kaplan to create multiple-choice, essays, and performance test questions for the California Bar Exam. As part of the agreement, Kaplan will also provide faculty and student study guides, which the State Bar will distribute at no cost. Kaplan will also exit the retail bar prep business specific to California, while continuing to serve other bar exam jurisdictions.

The multiple-choice questions will replace the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ (NCBE) Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) in time for the February and July 2025 exams (SPH emphasis added). 

The agreement will help the State Bar transition to remote and test center-based exam administration, both of which test takers prefer. These test administration changes will also help the State Bar close a significant gap in its Admissions Fund, which is projected to reach insolvency in 2026, absent further efforts to reduce costs. The State Bar projects that the new arrangement will result in annual cost savings of up to $3.8 million in exam-related expenses—enough to significantly reduce if not fill the gap.

At its July 18, 2024, meeting, the State Bar Board of Trustees voted to authorize the Board Chair and Executive Director to negotiate the terms of and, if appropriate, execute, an agreement with Kaplan.

“This historic agreement allows us to provide applicants with exam options that they prefer and also helps us close a significant deficit in the State Bar Admissions Fund,” said Board Chair Brandon Stallings. “I want to thank the Board of Trustees for its leadership and State Bar staff and our partners at Kaplan for their significant efforts in ushering in this agreement, which represents a generational change for applicants and the State Bar.”

“Kaplan is honored to be selected by the State Bar of California to help further its mission of producing qualified and practice-ready lawyers,” said Steven Marietti, Chief Commercial Officer, Kaplan North America. “We look forward to supporting the State Bar of California in the creation of this new exam.”

The State Bar initially sought approval from the Board in the spring but deferred until July due to contractual concerns including safeguards against intellectual property and copyright infringement. The parties have worked diligently to build a legally sound deal structure and method for independent question development, including Kaplan creating a new unit in the company to develop material and oversee the effort.

In a bold act of collaboration, the contract includes a cost-sharing provision whereby the State Bar and Kaplan will share potential copyright infringement litigation costs. The State Bar’s cost is capped at $6.75 million over the life of the contract, which amounts to the lower end of net projected cost savings over the five-year term. The parties also agreed to a mutual indemnification provision with a $1.65 million cap.

Even in the unlikely event that the State Bar would have to share in the cost of litigation, the caps ensure that the new arrangement would still be cheaper, or cost neutral, compared to the projected status quo exam administration costs that were leading Admissions to insolvency.

The questions developed pursuant to this agreement will not substantially modify the training or preparation required for passage of the exam. For years, the State Bar has utilized the NCBE’s multiple-choice question set, the MBE. However, the NCBE does not allow remote or test center-based exam administration, and NCBE will be phasing out the MBE as a stand-alone product in 2028.

In relevant part, the Cal Bar press release appears here (https://www.calbar.ca.gov/About-Us/News/News-Releases/Board-of-Trustees-Authorizes-Pursuit-of-a-California-Bar-Exam-Development-Contract-with-Kaplan):

At its July 18 meeting, the State Bar of California’s Board of Trustees voted to authorize the Board Chair and Executive Director to negotiate terms of and, if appropriate, execute a five-year bar exam agreement not to exceed $8.25 million with Kaplan North America, LLC. If an agreement is reached, Kaplan would create California-specific multiple-choice, essays, and performance test questions for the California Bar Exam. The multiple-choice questions would replace the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) in time for the February 2025 exam. The agreement will help the State Bar transition to remote and test center-based exam administration, both of which test takers prefer. These test administration changes will also help the State Bar close a significant gap in the Admissions Fund, which is projected to reach insolvency in 2026, absent further efforts to reduce costs.

For years, the State Bar has utilized the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ (NCBE) multiple-choice question set, the MBE. The NCBE does not allow remote or test center-based exam administration.

“The State Bar Admissions Fund must be self-sustaining, and the Board has been working to close a significant deficit by raising fees and cutting costs,” said Board Chair Brandon Stallings. “It is essential that the Board make financially prudent decisions while offering California bar exam takers options that meet their needs and help them save money. An agreement with Kaplan would preclude the need to balance the budget through further increases in applicant fees, and we look forward to working with Kaplan on this new endeavor. We also want to thank the NCBE for their partnership over the last four decades that the State Bar has utilized the MBE.”