Senate committee hears emotional testimony on February bar exam failures, advances bill for state auditor review

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday advanced SB 47, author Senator Josh Umberg(committee chair on this bill), after hours of testimony from February 2025 bar-exam applicants, law school deans and State Bar leaders about widespread technical and administrative failures during the February bar exam.

The bill, authored by Senator Umberg, would require the California State Auditor to audit the February bar exam administration and related decision-making at the State Bar of California. Committee members said the audit is intended to identify systemic causes and recommend steps to prevent recurrence.

The committee heard first-hand accounts from four examinees who described repeated technical failures, proctoring interruptions and other problems that they said materially disrupted their testing. Andrea Lynch testified that proctors repeatedly took control of her mouse, interrupted her and that answers failed to save; her exam later crashed and "my exam had been submitted on my behalf prematurely before I'd even seen the final session." Amy Cassini (testimony spelled in transcript as Kasuni) described an exam platform that "crashed nonstop for 30 minutes" during a performance test and said the day-2 multiple-choice section included questions she called "absurd." Steven Zendejas told the committee the test interface repeatedly kicked him offline and that some multiple-choice items were "oddly worded," and noted the State Bar had not disclosed which version of an AI tool it used to draft some questions. Tanya Sahili said she had documented platform failures during a November experimental administration and warned the same system would not scale to the 4,300 applicants who sat the February administration.

Academic witnesses told the committee that the problems fell into two categories: (1) content validity and question development, and (2) test administration and technology. Professor Mary Basic, who volunteers on bar-preparation work and has written on bar testing, told the committee that multiple-choice drafting, review and pretesting were rushed or handled without typical subject-matter and multiple-choice expertise. She said the State Bar had excluded many question-development experts from review panels and that Kaplan- and vendor-drafted items contained drafting errors and inaccurate legal statements. Dean Jessica Willenberg (transcript alternately spelled Weilenberg) of UC Davis School of Law told the committee the failures were predictable given the compressed schedule and lack of consultation with law schools and other stakeholders.

State Bar leaders acknowledged "major missteps." Brandon Stallings, chair of the State Bar Board of Trustees, apologized and described steps the board has taken, including reimbursing some fees and travel costs, offering free retakes and retaining an independent investigator (a former U.S. attorney) while also pursuing litigation against the vendor Measure Learning. Alex Chan, chair of the Committee of Bar Examiners (CBE), said the CBE recommended scoring adjustments to the California Supreme Court and that the court approved those adjustments; Chan described the adjustments as "psychometrically sound" and "narrowly tailored." The committee was told the Supreme Court accepted the committee's scoring-adjustment recommendations and that the committee also recommended to the Court two non-scoring remedies: provisional supervised licenses in limited circumstances, and an admission-on-motion pathway for qualified out-of-state attorneys.

Committee members asked for data. The CBE reported the adjusted overall pass rate for February 2025 at 55.9% compared with a multi-year average near 32.61%; the committee's psychometrician had initially recommended a higher raw cut score, and one described alternate models that would have produced a lower pass rate (the transcript recorded a numerical example showing a 46.9% pass rate under one model). State Bar staff described a two-percentage-point effect from a November experimental-session adjustment that had been carried forward in scoring.

Committee members also pressed State Bar officials on procurement, vendor oversight and disclosure. Leah Wilson, State Bar executive director, said the July 2025 exam will be administered in person using ExamSoft and the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) MBE product. Wilson told the committee the State Bar had relied on a November field test and vendor assurances but "we should have done more" to anticipate risks and vendor failures. Staff estimated direct net costs to the State Bar related to remedies, site security and contract penalties in the multi-million-dollar range (the transcript included figures around $5.6 million in immediate net costs and an estimated $6.1 million remaining contract exposure to Kaplan under a five-year agreement).

Committee action and next steps: the committee voted to advance SB 47 out of committee (motion carried; committee roll call recorded a favorable tally in committee). Committee members said the audit language is intended to produce an independent factual record and recommendations for legislative and administrative remedies. Several members said they did not intend to revisit the admission status of applicants who have already been sworn in.

Why it matters: The bar exam is the sole statewide licensure gate for new attorneys in California. The February administration's technical failures, combined with questions about question validity and vendor selection, raised concerns among test takers, law schools and legislators about fairness, due process and public protection in the licensure process. Committee members said the audit would inform whether statutory or oversight changes are needed.

What the bill would and would not do: SB 47 requests a state audit of the February 2025 bar exam and related State Bar and Committee of Bar Examiners actions; it does not itself change the Supreme Court's authority over admissions or automatically reverse prior admissions. The committee also discussed non-scoring remedies the CBE forwarded to the Supreme Court (provisional supervised licenses and admission-on-motion proposals), which remain subject to the Court's approval.

Voices: The committee heard emotionally charged testimony from applicants and detailed technical critique from law school faculty and psychometric experts. Test takers described financial, emotional and career harms; deans and bar-preparation experts warned that valid test creation typically requires years of development and multi-step review. State Bar leaders described remedial steps and litigation against vendors while defending the integrity of grading procedures.

Ending note: Senators and witnesses repeatedly framed the issue as both a consumer-protection and public-protection problem: ensuring that licensed attorneys meet minimum competence standards while also ensuring the licensure process is fair, transparent and reliably administered.