Bar Exams

California Bar Administers The Wrong Question To Test-Takers

This is a massive bar exam screw-up.

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I was told there'd be no crim pro...

I was told there’d be no crim pro…

Welp, this sucks. No other way around it, I am afraid.

Before we get into the horror of the California Bar screw-up, let’s talk about the bar exam some first-year law students have to take in California. Applicants that do not attend a school that is ABA or California Bar accredited have to pass the California First Year Law Students’ Exam, which is colloquially referred to as the Baby Bar. (So cute! And not at all panic-inducing!) Accuse me of being in an ABA-accredited New York bubble, but I had no idea this existed, and while it seems horrifying, when you have as many unaccredited law schools as California, I suppose you need some measure of quality control.

In any event, the exam consists of four essay questions and 100 MBE multiple choice questions, which seems pretty expected for the Baby Bar. And it tests students’ knowledge of three standard first-year courses: torts, contracts, and criminal law. Except this June, one of the essay questions went off topic. That’s right, they ask a question about a subject they weren’t supposed to ask about. Yikes.

As a tipster reports:

The exam covers three first year subjects: contracts, torts, and notably, CRIM LAW. Generally, these three subjects are covered in random order in the first three essays, and the fourth essay covers one of those subjects one more time.

On this fateful day, Questions 1 and 2 were what you expected, involving torts and contracts. But then Question 3 arrived and it asked about whether two different incidents constituted SEARCHES under the FOURTH AMENDMENT. You read it correctly: a crim pro question on a question that expressly does not cover that subject. It’s the equivalent of admiralty law being tested on the California Bar Exam.

The California Bar has admitted its error in a memo issued to applicants noting:

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[T]he subject of Criminal Procedure (Question 3), which is not a subject that should have been tested on the examination, was included as one of the four essay questions administered during the morning session on June 28, 2016.

So they have to do… something about it.

The Cal Bar didn’t want students to feel like they’d wasted their time writing the answer to the infamous Question 3 (even though they obviously did) so they will grade the essay, it just won’t be included in the final grades. So I guess students will learn how well they’ll do in the crim pro class they haven’t taken yet, or it is a reflection on how much they retained from the last time they binge-watched Law & Order.

Then the Cal Bar goes on to note:

[T]he Committee’s psychometrician will evaluate the best method for calculating final scores to ensure that any adverse impact of the incident is addressed to the highest degree possible.

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Does that mean there will be some wiggle room in the final essay since students were probably freaking out? Will the pass rate be lowered to account for this?

It is unclear what exactly the psychometrician (which is a person (as a clinical psychologist) who is skilled in the administration and interpretation of objective psychological tests) will be doing to ensure the fair grading of the exam, but rest assured students are freaking out. We’ve reached out to the California Bar to get more details on how this incident will be handled, and will update this story if we hear anything.

UPDATE: 2:51pm: We received a statement from Admissions Director Gayle Murphy, and were also pointed to the memo issued to students who took the exam, available on page two of this post:

New procedures are in place to ensure this does not happen in the future. The Committee of Bar Examiners believes that the appropriate steps necessary to ensure all applicants are being treated fairly are now being taken.

In the meantime, here’s some advice for the poor students who took the jacked-up version of the Baby Bar this June: Try to keep calm until results are announced August 13. If you (fingers crossed) passed, it’ll be a great bar exam horror story to scare future generations of law students with. If you aren’t that fortunate, at least you’ve already survived the worst-case scenario — it can only get easier the next time you take the test.

(Read the full memo from the California Bar to students who took the June 28, 2016, California First Year Law Students’ Exam on the next page.)

Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or with your own bar exam horror stories. Follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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