California law school deans demand action after botched bar exam sparks chaos
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- The State Bar of California sought to save money with a new bar exam that offered the choice of remote test taking.
- Test takers complained of glitches and chaos when taking the test.
Test takers seeking to practice law in California experienced chaos this week as the State Bar of California fumbled the rollout of its new attorney licensing test, leaving many unable to complete their bar exams and some filing a proposed federal class action lawsuit.
The online testing platforms repeatedly crashed before some applicants even started. Others struggled to finish and save essays, experienced screen lags anderror messages and could not copy and paste text from test questions into the exam’s response field — a function officials had stated would be possible.
“It was quite a debacle,” David Drelinger, a 2023 graduate of Lincoln Law School in Sacramento, told The Times.
After logging on remotely at around 9:45 a.m. Tuesday — 15 minutes ahead of his 10 a.m. remote exam — Drelinger said the testing platform crashed when a proctor logged on. He rebooted multiple times, eventually trying three laptops and knocking on neighbors’ doors to access passwords to different internet connections.
After 35 attempts at logging on, he gave up.
“Today was one of the worst days of my life,” Drelinger wrote in an email to the State Bar. “There were a few points that I thought I was having a panic attack and almost had to call an ambulance because I didn’t want to die alone today at my computer.”
The new exam was promoted by the State Bar of California as a cost-cutting measure that would offer test takers the choice of remote testing. But the deans of many of California’s top law schools had raised concerns to the State Bar and California Supreme Court in the run up to the exams.
On Thursday night, a dozen California law school deans sent an urgent letter to the California Supreme Court requesting urgent intervention.
“It is stunning incompetence from an entity that exists to measure competence,” Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, told the Times. “There’s no way to describe it other than than outrageous and inexcusable. This is a test that students prepare for months for, it determines whether or not they can be employed.”
The deans requested that the Supreme Court take a number of steps: immediately block a proposed March retake of the exam, initiate a process for review and accountability, determine an equitable remedy, and publish a statement to reassure the public that there is appropriate oversight going forward.
Some students also filed a complaint Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing Meazure Learning, the company that administered the exam, of “failing spectacularly” and causing an “unmitigated disaster.”
The proposed class action does not list the State Bar as a defendant — test takers typically sign legal waivers that limit the agency’s responsibility for any computer hardware or software application malfunction. But it alleges the regulatory agency overseeing the state’s attorney licensing and discipline “fast-tracked” the new exam format in a bid to save money.
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In an email to test takers Tuesday night, the State Bar acknowledged that many had experienced “significant” technical and customer service challenges.
“For that we are truly sorry,” the bar’s Office of Admissions wrote. “These technical and support issues were and are unacceptable. Ensuring a fair and reliable exam experience is our top priority, and we are actively evaluating next steps.”
The State Bar told applicants Tuesday it had planned, ahead of the botched tests this week, to let remote applicants who experienced technical problems retake the exam on March 3 and 4, but now it was also exploring additional remedies, such as making scoring adjustments.
But on Thursday, the California State Bar rescheduled the retake exams to March 18 and 19 after, it claimed, some individuals were trying to prevent the retake from being carried out by posting exam questions online.
“This conduct is strictly prohibited,” the State Bar said in a statement, noting that they would engage forensic experts to identify those responsible and then impose “strict sanctions.”
“Individuals who are found to have engaged in this type of prohibited and unethical behavior will find it difficult if not impossible to secure licensure with the State Bar of California.”
Over the last few days, frustrated test takers have logged on to Reddit and Facebook message boards to complain about the exam’s rollout. Some said the challenges they encountered caused them physical and mental harm after they had taken time off work, paid for test prep and made travel arrangements.
Drelinger, a single father who has full custody of his 11-year-old son, said he had a lot riding on passing the bar. He had accumulated more than $100,000 in student debt and hoped putting the exam behind him would allow him to improve his life for his son and move out of their cramped one-bedroom apartment.
“What really stings is the time I’ve ignored my son to study for this test only to now have to tell him that it’s not over and won’t be anytime soon,” Drelinger wrote to the State Bar. “I’m not sure where to go from here.”
Another exam taker, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, said he was exhausted and his head ached after experiencing multiple glitches Wednesday. The clock kept on ticking, he said, as he sought help from more than 10 technicians. In the end, he had just 10 minutes to complete his performance test, a process that is supposed to take 90 minutes.
“I feel cheated,” he said.
The exam, which consists of five one-hour essay questions, one 90-minute performance test and 200 multiple-choice questions, is offered only two weeks a year — in February and in July. If the State Bar were to allow him to retake the exam in March, he would have to take more time off work — and he was not confident the problems would be fixed in just a few days.
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“I don’t see any hope for the future,” he said. “It’s just a money grab. We’re paying for our right to practice law and that can’t even be administered right.”
Ceren Aytekin, a 2024 master of laws graduate of UC Berkeley, said when she logged in at a center in downtown Los Angeles to write her first essay, her screen kept freezing and she couldn’t type 30% of the time.
When she complained during a lunch break, she was given a new laptop. But the lags became worse: she could only type 15% of the time. Then, she got an error message notifying her that her answer wasn’t saved. An IT technician told her not to worry.
“They told me, ‘You guys keep complaining. What do you expect? There are going to be glitches and lags. There are 2,000 takers that are using the Meazure at the same time.”
The next day, the director of the State Bar’s Office of Admissions allowed her to use her personal laptop at the test site and she experienced few technical problems. But she remained concerned about how the first day’s problems impacted her score.
“No one wants to retake the exam,” she said. “This is torture.”
California has long had one of the hardest bar exams in the nation: 54% of applicants passed in July 2024 and 34% of applicants passed in February 2024.
Last year, as the State Bar of California faced a $22.2-million deficit, it decided to replace the test questions developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Multistate Bar Examination, which does not allow remote testing. It announced a new $8.25-million five-year deal authorizing test prep company Kaplan Exam Services to create multiple-choice, essays and performance test questions.
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The new exam, it projected, would save the bar up to $3.8 million a year.
But problems were visible in the weeks before the February debut as some test takers struggled to schedule exams and had technical problems during mock exams.
“This new exam has not rolled out the way it should have, and we, the Board, apologize along with State Bar leadership and staff,” Brandon Stallings, chair of the State Bar Board of Trustees, said in a Feb. 21 statement. “The continued issues with testing locations, scheduling, technical issues, and communication lapses have distracted applicants from their studies and created confusion.”
The board of trustees offered test takers who withdrew from the February 2025 exam or failed the test to retake the exam in July at no extra cost. About 1,066 of the 5,600 people who had registered for the February exam withdrew.
Many of those who took the test this week are now demanding compensation for the litany of errors.
Some have called for a refund. Others hope they change the grading curve to allow a higher percentage of test takers to pass the exam.
“This was an utterly botched exam that fails every standard of professionalism,” one test taker said on Reddit. “We all deserve a refund, pass or fail, because this fiasco is basically a ******* breach of contract, AT MINIMUM. This is absolutely not what we paid for.”
Before all the exams were over, some shared contacts for class action attorneys.
“If your exam software crashed while you were taking the California State Bar, you may have a legal claim for compensation,” one Washington, D.C., class action firm said in a post shared on a Facebook group for 2025 California bar takers. “Contact us now for more information about your rights.”
“Where do you click to sign up?” an anonymous user asked.
Harshita Ganesh, an attorney who practices law in Massachusetts and flew into L.A. for the test because her law firm wants her to also practice in California, said she was interested in participating in a class action lawsuit.
“The incompetence has been astounding,” she said, noting that her experience taking the exam in California was completely different to her experience taking the equivalent exam last year in Massachusetts.
She could not copy and paste, the highlight function didn’t work most of the time and the software lagged severely. The questions in the new test, she said, appeared nonsensical, as if written by artificial intelligence.
“It’s not fair for the California bar to be charging us to be guinea pigs,” she said.
Ellin Davtyan, State Bar general counsel, said in a statement that the state bar understood some applicants might be considering potential legal remedies.
“That is certainly within their rights to do so,” she said, “and the State Bar will evaluate and respond to the merits of any such legal claims and actions, as appropriate.”
Edmond Aruffo, an adjunct professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, who passed the California bar exam in 2020 while navigating his own criminal case and has since authored several California Bar Exam test prep books, said he had fielded emails and calls all week from upset students.
“The amount of stress people had to go through was incomparable to anything I’ve ever seen in any examination,” Aruffo said, noting that many could risk losing their jobs if they didn’t pass.
But Aruffo said there is a steep hurdle for legal claims: California typically makes those who take the State Bar exam sign legal waivers. If test takers could show fraud is involved, that would eliminate any waiver. But Aruffo said fraud has a very specific legal definition.
“You would have to show that they purposefully misled people, knowing that they were purposefully selling them something that they were not going to deliver,” Aruffo said. “The Cal Bar can know that there are problems — and they did know there were problems because they gave a mock exam — but that doesn’t mean that they purposely defrauded someone.”
Whatever happened, Aruffo said, he expected the board to offer some sort of remedy — whether it is letting test takers take the exam in July for free or grading them only on what they successfully submitted.
“The bar exam breached their contract,” he said. “They didn’t provide a fair exam to the students to take that would allow them to be licensed. I think something has to be done.”
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