Bar exam pass rate hits 60-year high amid troubled testing

The California State Bar announced on Monday the pass rate for the troubled February bar exam was the highest in 60 years. The news came three days after the California Supreme Court ordered scoring adjustments because of a plethora of technical and other problems with the new California-only exam.

In its order on Friday, the court also directed the bar to return to using the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) in July. Critics of the State Bar welcomed the news. But one outspoken law professor said, "California's spectacular failure" at creating its own bar exam represents a missed opportunity for much-needed reform.

In a news release, the bar said 2,172 exam takers, 55.9% of the total, passed the February 2025 General Bar Examination. Another 264, or 76.5%, passed the one-day Attorneys' Examination.

"The GBX pass rate is the highest spring pass rate since 1965 (57.1%), and the Attorneys' Exam is the highest since February 1992 (78.2%)," the release stated.

"The State Bar extends its congratulations to these test takers during what was a difficult experience for many," said State Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson in the release.

Wilson announced Friday that she would resign, effective July 7. In her comments, she also tried to dispel any notion that the high-pass rate should make anyone look askance at those who passed the February test.

"Given the technical and other issues this cohort faced, the perseverance applicants showed is commendable and impressive," Wilson said. "Particularly notable is that, despite these challenges, February 2025 test takers appear to have performed well, with mean written scores that suggest positive performance as compared to prior year February cohorts."

Meanwhile, critics of the bar hailed Friday's news that the court ordered a return to the MBE. The order was issued in response to a petition from the bar suggesting remedies for the February exam problems. Proposed Raw Passing Score and Scoring Adjustments for the February 2025 California Bar Examination, S290627 (Cal. Sup. Ct., filed April 29, 2025).

"In light of all of the questions surrounding the newly-drafted questions (the recycled questions from the baby bar, the questions drafted by the psychometrician using AI, the questions with new subject matter), I think that if the bar-takers are to have faith on the validity and reliability of the questions and the exam generally, the State Bar needs to use the established questions from the MBE," said Elizabeth T. "Eli" Edwards, a reference librarian and adjunct lecturer at UCLA School of Law, in an email.

Robert F. Kane, a sole practitioner and adjunct professor at UC Law San Francisco, agreed.

"While there may be issues with the MBE, now is not the time to experiment at the expense of the students who will be taking the July bar exam," Kane said in an email.

The court's one-page order issued Friday agreed to a series of scoring changes for those who took the February test. This included a "raw passing score of 534 or higher." In a news release last month, the bar said this recommended adjustment "represents two standard errors of measurement below the psychometrician-recommended raw passing score of 560."

"Although the State Bar's petition indicates that the February 2025 examination contained a sufficient number of reliable multiple-choice questions, the Court remains concerned over the process used to draft those questions, including the previously undisclosed use of artificial intelligence, and will await the results of the impending audits of the examination," the en banc order continued.

"Based on the Court's order, I'm hopeful our justices will scrutinize any further petitions from the State Bar to revert to other multiple-choice vendors without adequate prior validation," University of San Francisco School of Law professor Katie Moran wrote in an email.

"The State Bar had already decided to return to in-person testing, so using the MBE questions for the multiple-choice portion of the exam brings additional much-needed predictability and stability back to the already challenging exam," Mary Basick, assistant dean for academic skills at UC Irvine School of Law, wrote in an email. "The bar takers now know how to properly prepare for the exam."

Basick added, "California's spectacular failure at attempting to break away from the NCBE's [National Conference of Bar Examiners] bar exams will likely have an unfortunate chilling effect on important bar exam reform. Society has changed so much in the past twenty years, but the bar exam remains stuck in a time warp requiring memorization and multiple-choice testing, though every lawyer will concede that is not how one practices law."