Law Suits over Mismanaged Administration of the California Bar Exam
Both recent law graduates and the California Bar (the Bar) have sued ProctorU, d/b/a Meazure Learning (Meazure), in connection with California’s bar exam administered in February 2025. While past iterations of the bar exam were held in large convention centers, participants could take the February bar remotely, including from out-of-state. The new system was developed by Kaplan Exam Services, LLC and administered by Meazure.
According to the law graduates’ complaint, Meazure had one job, and it failed spectacularly. Meazure forced graduates to purchase its software so that they could take the California bar exam, but that software malfunctioned and crashed, traumatizing students and forcing many to delay the start of their careers as attorneys. They claim that Meazure’s software “crashed because it had insufficient infrastructure and/or lack of servers and server space to process the foreseeable number of exam takers.” They seek class certification and damages in excess of $5 million. The claims range from breach of warranty to statutory violations to tort claims. There’s an unjust enrichment claim but no straight-up breach of contract claim. I’m not sure why not.
Among the problems with Meazure’s software identified by the law graduates in advance of the exam were:
- Cancellations of site reservations;
- Conflicting information about testing rules, deadlines, and procedures;
- Assignment to inconvenient sites; and
- Problems with accessing mock exam, including glitches, delays, and random terminations of sessions.
When it learned of the glitches in the run-up to the exam, the Bar offered to refund payments for the February bar and to allow law graduates to take the exam in July instead. That was not an attractive offer to graduates who had been preparing for the bar and were eager to launch their legal careers.
On the actual exam, the software failed in myriad ways, ranging from crashes to features like cut and paste or spell-check not functioning as promised. Although experiencing tragedy, the bar takers did not lose their senses of humor. Some testimonials:
- Today felt like a bear attack;
- Yes I’m gonna cry nothing saved for me;
- WHAT IF ONLY PART OF MY ESSAY WAS SAVED/SUBMITTED? NOT THE FULL ESSAY?? [I can’t replicate the emojis, but this is close]
There are lots more details, but you get the idea.
The Bar names the same defendant plus ten John Doe defendants and alleges fraud and negligent misrepresentation, in addition to breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The Bar’s complaint provides a lot more detail about the representations Meazure made as to its ability to provide the test-taking technology that the bar exam required. It lacks the pathos of the exam-takers complaint, but it details a lot of representations that Meazure made that it was clearly incapable of fulfilling.
The Bar had some clear warning signs that Meazure was not up to the task. Problems arose in connection with scheduling and the mock bar, and so the Bar and Meazure renegotiated their Statement of Work. The Bar offered law graduates full refunds if they would put off the exam until July. The Bar describes the February administration of the bar exam as “chaotic.” The Bar surveyed test takers, and a shockingly high percentage of test takers reported experiencing problems with the software, the support from proctors, or both.
After the fiasco, the Bar sought data from Meazure that it claims Meazure was contractually obligated to provide within two days of the exam. Meazure eventually provided some data on March 10th, but it was incomplete.
On May 9th, the Bar announced that it was recommending the expansion of its Provisional Licensure Program to allow students to practice under the supervision of licensed attorneys. The must still pass the bar exam eventually, but they would have two years from the implementation of the expanded program or December 31, 2027, whichever is earlier. The recommendation must be approved by the State Supreme Court.
If I am reading this document correctly, it seems that other adjustments to the scoring of the exam were implemented with the result that the percentage of examinees passing the California bar in February shot up dramatically:
Exam results across all applicant types and demographic groups showed notable increases. The overall pass rate for the General Bar Exam reached 55.9 percent—the highest for any February or spring administration since 1965.
I’m not sure how to square that outcome with all of the evidence that the glitches in the software prevented test takers from performing optimally on the bar. This might be evidence that other states should adopt a Squid Game approach to the bar exam in order to motivate test-takers to take the exam as though their lives depended on it.