California Bar Risks Going Bankrupt Rather Than Change Its Exam
Leadership delays bar exam reform while entity runs out of cash.
The California Bar removed a proposal from its agenda that would transition to a new bar exam author as early as February 2025. Officially, the proposal is not “dead” but in abeyance pending finalization of terms. A prudent move until you remember that the bar examiners say they’re going to be bankrupt if they don’t get a new exam vendor by next year.
Should the state have started working on finding a solution to this before they had $3.3 million in the bank knowing full well that it costs them $3.8 million a year to stick with the NCBE as its exam vendor? Probably! Given that they didn’t, isn’t the most responsible option to push forward with a deal that saves them upwards of $4 million per year? Sure… but if this organization understood how to plan ahead it wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.
Under the proposal, Kaplan would’ve taken over the role of writing the test and would then depart the California market as a bar prep provider. Unlike the NCBE, an entity that hates the prospect of remote test-taking so much that it had to be dragged kicking and screaming into even the most modest of accommodations during a global pandemic, Kaplan would allow the country’s third-largest state to relax the physical travel requirements that the in-person test places upon applicants. And more saliently, relax the examiners’ requirement of booking massive event halls to hold applicants during the test.
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Critics had objected to the compressed timeline for the Kaplan transition, given that Kaplan has not previously been in the bar exam writing business — as if writing a bar exam is rocket surgery or something. The standards for the test would not have changed and, in a nutshell, Kaplan’s practice exams would’ve just become the new exam. We have serious academic research demonstrating that the NCBE’s test is more or less useless as a licensure tool despite the organization’s protestations that its test questions reflect a delicate balance of brilliance that conveys incomparable insights.
Writing an exam is hard. Writing an exam is not impossible.
But rather than let a well-established business of bar exam experts write a test that could be used online, or limit the deal to Kaplan-provided locations, or create a slightly elongated timeline, California is gambling with running out of money.
Personally, I’d have chosen “any of the above.”
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[UPDATE: At one point this post said California was the second largest state? It’s obviously not. I’m just going to say it’s because I support giving Dallas to Oklahoma]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
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