When the gatekeeper fails: Lessons from California’s botched 2025 bar exam

In February 2025, the State Bar of California conducted what was supposed to be a streamlined, cost-efficient bar examination — an experiment in modern legal licensure. Instead, it devolved into one of the most publicized failures of professional credentialing in recent memory. As lawyers in Ontario and across Canada observe an evolving conversation around lawyer competence and access to the profession, California’s case serves as a stark warning about the dangers of opaque governance, overreliance on private contractors and the erosion of professional oversight in legal licensing.

To cut costs, the California state bar broke away from national exam standards and hired Kaplan to generate bar exam questions and Meazure Learning to administer the test online. Instead of offering the exam at traditional test centres, the bar opted for remote delivery with only limited in-person options. The stated goal: reduce the financial burden of hosting a paper-based exam across the state. The actual result: chaos.

Thousands of law graduates across California were met with technological failures — exams that froze, refused to load, or submitted automatically before they were completed. More troubling, the multiple-choice questions — many of which were reportedly generated using artificial intelligence — were riddled with grammatical errors, confusing syntax and legal irrelevance. Examinees complained that the questions bore little relation to the skills required of a competent lawyer. Many were not aligned with the exam’s published content outline, and over 50 new topics were introduced with only days’ notice.

The state bar’s approach raises legal concerns, particularly regarding procedural fairness and administrative law principles that resonate far beyond California. Under California law, the bar is required to maintain uniform testing conditions and to provide two years’ notice before introducing substantial changes to the bar exam’s content or format. No such notice was given. Furthermore, those who were rescheduled for a March makeup exam received entirely different questions under a different protocol — amounting to inconsistent treatment of applicants, with no indication that oversight bodies, including the California Supreme Court, had approved the changes.

Even more troubling is the bar’s refusal to release the actual multiple-choice questions — an unusual move. Traditionally, jurisdictions disclose at least part of the exam to allow scrutiny and ensure accountability. In this case, the decision not to release the problematic questions supports an adverse inference: that the content, if disclosed, would confirm the criticisms and expose further flaws. From an evidentiary perspective, this kind of withholding undermines transparency and would, in a judicial context, likely attract sanction or at least suspicion.

Why should Canadian legal professionals care?

While Ontario’s lawyer licensing process is markedly different — most notably through the Law Society of Ontario’s in-person bar exams and articling or Law Practice Program requirements — the same pressures exist: cost, access, and the need to balance technological innovation with professional integrity.

Ontario has seen proposals to modernize legal licensing, including calls for online or remote testing, modular exams and even performance-based assessments. These ideas are worth exploring — but California reminds us that innovation without accountability can erode public trust in the profession.

California’s 2025 fiasco also underscores the importance of meaningful professional involvement in exam design. The California bar’s increasing reliance on psychometricians and AI tools, without attorney oversight, created a test that lost sight of its purpose: assessing whether an individual is prepared to practise law ethically and competently. Legal licensure is not merely a test of memory or speed; it is a gatekeeping mechanism that serves the public interest. It must be designed by those who understand the practice of law, not just the science of testing.

In Canada, where the legal profession is self-regulating, California’s experience is a cautionary tale. The independence of law societies and the obligation to act in the public interest must be matched by procedural fairness and transparency in all aspects of lawyer licensing. Regulatory bodies should be held to a high standard, particularly when they impose high-stakes barriers to entry to the profession.

The fallout in California is ongoing. Lawsuits and petitions have been filed. Editorials continue to question the legitimacy of the February and March 2025 exam results. And yet, the state bar has offered no substantive plan to rectify the harm done to thousands of affected candidates.

Ontario — and other Canadian provinces — should pay close attention. If gatekeeping fails, or appears illegitimate, public confidence in the legal profession suffers. The legal community must resist the temptation to over-delegate and under-disclose. The legitimacy of legal licensure depends not only on fairness in substance, but also on transparency in process.

Jasmine Daya is a civil litigation lawyer practising primarily in the area of personal injury law at her

firm, Jasmine Daya & Co., in Toronto.

The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the author’s firm, its

clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is

for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.