California Supreme Court approves state bar exam modifications News
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California Supreme Court approves state bar exam modifications

The Supreme Court of California confirmed the 2025 bar exam will be the first to implement the new exam modifications on Tuesday.

The exam, currently only offered in person, will be administered remotely or in person starting in February 2025. The exam will occur over two days, and the format will comprise three primary sections. Day one of the bar exam will include five written essays and a performance test. Day two will entail the multiple-choice questions part. This approval enabling eased completion mediums comes less than two weeks after the court rejected a request for an alternate exam system of ‘supervised’ practical work replacing one of the bar exams, which was requested on a similar basis.

The court also approved a scoring adjustment system in response to a request from the State Bar whereby Kaplan, will write the Californian bar exam. The Californian Bar “finalized an agreement with Kaplan to independently develop questions for the California Bar Exam.” The study will be comprised of two separate phases of rolling out the new Kaplan exam questions. 

The purpose of “Phase One is to field-test the Kaplan questions and the new remote and test center exam delivery vendor.” Individuals who participate in phase one of the study occurring on November 8 and 9 2024 will have their 2025 bar scores adjusted, pending they achieve a specific score or higher. Neither the minimum score needed nor the scaling adjustment value has been determined. The same system of scaling and adjustment has been denied for phase two of the study because of the need to test the effectiveness of phase one before determining if phase two requires scoring evaluations.

Dissatisfaction with the approval of the new testing and grade adjustment system is imminent, with division occurring over the importance of the study compared to bar scores. Before approval, numerous California law school deans condemned the decision to use Kaplan for the exam questions and subsequent scoring adjustments as well as phase one of the study in a letter addressed to the Supreme Court of California. Within the letter, they voiced concerns about the rushed nature of the exam modifications. They were particularly concerned with “the idea that students should take time away from their legal studies to focus on this experiment is concerning.”

 

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