More than 200 people who took California’s bar exam in February will have their scores changed from “fail” to “pass” after a California Bar committee approved new scoring adjustments.
The grading change affected 230 test takers in the State Bar of California’s latest attempt to mitigate the fallout of its disastrous February test, which was plagued with technical and logistical problems. That exam prompted several lawsuits, including at least two filed by test takers and one filed by the state bar against the company that administered the exam.
With the changes approved on Friday, the exam’s overall pass rate jumped from 56% to 63%, nearly double the state’s historical average of 35%.
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Applicants who nearly passed and received a second read on their written questions will be given the higher of two scores for each question, as opposed to the average of the first and second-read scores that the Bar had initially done.
Test takers will be notified this week if the adjustments gave them passing scores. This change, unlike many other remedies, does not require approval from the state Supreme Court, the Bar told Bloomberg Law.
Applicants for the July exam will automatically be withdrawn if the Bar determines they passed the February test, the Bar said.
The scoring changes are the latest in a series of remedies Bar leaders are approving for thousands of applicants whose legal careers were impacted by the exam that crashed on test day.
After approval from the state Supreme Court, the state bar has already implemented a lower raw passing score and “imputed” scores for test takers who failed to complete significant portions of the two-day exam.
The Committee of Bar Examiners will soon ask the state Supreme Court to also approve a scoring method that could increase some scores on the performance portion of their exams using statistical analysis, according to Bloomberg Law.
The state Supreme Court was also asked to consider a proposal to allow all February applicants — including those who withdrew before the exam — to practice law provisionally under an attorney’s supervision.
The February exam was the debut of California’s hybrid remote and in-person test without the components of the national bar exam the state has used for decades. The change aimed to save as much as $3.8 million annually, but resolving all its issues for the July exam is now expected to add nearly $6 million in costs.
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Some state Bar trustees have expressed discomfort with some of the exam’s proposed remedies and the higher pass rate, pointing to the bar’s duty to protect the public from unqualified lawyers.
The Bar said it faced the difficult task of finding “fair solutions” that maintained the exam’s integrity. The Bar “would never take any steps to detract from its public protection mission,” it said in a statement.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the State Bar of California.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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