(Reuters) – The State Bar of California is looking to develop its own bar exam, parting ways with the National Conference of Bar Examiners and rejecting its overhauled licensing test set to debut in July 2026.
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The state bar’s board of trustees on Thursday or Friday will consider a proposal, opens new tab to hire test prep company Kaplan North America to develop multiple-choice bar exam questions comparable to those that now appear on the Multistate Bar Exam, also called the MBE. The Kaplan-designed questions would replace the day-long MBE—which is produced by the National Conference of Bar Examiners—starting with the February 2025 bar exam, under the proposal.
That change would save the state bar up to $4.2 million annually in bar administration costs. The ability for the state to administer the test fully or partially online would eliminate the costs of renting convention centers and other large spaces twice annually, according to a staff memo, opens new tab outlining the proposal reviewed by Reuters.
The arm of the state bar that handles attorney admissions is facing insolvency and is projected to overspend its revenues by nearly $4 million this year.
“While the impetus of this proposal is budget-driven, applicants will also benefit from the change to a new administration approach,” reads the memo, adding that a remote exam or a test delivered partially at small testing centers around the state would save examinees travel and lodging expenses.
About 10,000 people sit for the California bar exam each year. A California state bar spokesperson did not immediately provide comment on the proposal Tuesday morning. A spokesperson for the National Conference of Bar Examiners said the organization respects the role of states to determine lawyer licensing standards “and we will continue to support California, its applicants, and its law schools however we can.”
California’s current two-day bar exam consists of the 200 multiple-choice-question MBE given over one day, with an additional day of five one-hour essays and a 90-minute performance test that are developed by the state bar.
The state bar now pays the National Conference of Bar Examiners about $1 million annually to use the MBE and would pay Kaplan up to $1.475 million annually for five years to produce MBE-like exam questions, with overall cost savings derived from remote testing, according to the staff memo. Kaplan would stop providing bar exam prep services in California under the agreement.
The National Conference does not allow any of its test components to be delivered remotely, and its Next Gen Bar Exam, which 18 states have already committed to use in the coming years, will also be given exclusively at testing centers.
The California state bar’s proposal represents a rejection of the Next Gen exam, which aims to emphasize legal skills and rely less on the memorization of laws, and calls for the continuation of the current bar exam format, but with Kaplan-produced multiple-choice questions instead of the MBE.
Because the exam will essentially remain the same, law schools won’t need to modify how they prepare students and the transition can occur by February 2025, according to the state bar memo.
But 13 deans of California-accredited law schools, raised concerns over that “aggressive timeline” in an April letter to the bar asking it to delay any changes. They said “cost consideration alone” was not a compelling justification “to rush toward a hasty, risky, and poorly planned” test implementation.
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