Welcome to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast. Today we're talking about breaking news from the California Bar about what they are calling the "California Bar Experiment", or as everyone else calls it, "What the heck is my bar going to look like in 2025?" Your Bar Exam Toolbox hosts are Alison Monahan and Lee Burgess, that's me. We're here to demystify the bar experience, so you can study effectively, stay sane, and hopefully pass and move on with your life.
We're the co-creators of the Law School Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and the career-related website CareerDicta. Alison also runs The Girl's Guide to Law School. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on your favorite listening app, and check out our sister podcast, the Law School Toolbox podcast. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can reach us via the contact form on BarExamToolbox.com, and we'd love to hear from you. And with that, let's get started.
Welcome back to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast. Today we are sharing some updates that have recently come from the California Bar, as we watch unfold how on earth California is going to launch its own bar exam by February - it is now mid-September - partnered with Kaplan Bar Review. It's just weird every time I say it.
It's going to be interesting. Definitely going to be interesting.
Yeah. Well, if you missed our last update on this, a quick little background. So, in August, we got the final word that the California Bar had executed a contract with Kaplan to provide multiple-choice questions for the California Bar starting in - wait for it - February 2025. That's instead of using the MBE from the National Conference of Bar Examiners, which they totally could have continued to do for a couple more years. I know.
Yeah. Yeah. For people playing along at home, that would be the next bar exam that we're talking about.
Yeah, that's the next. It gets weirder, guys. It gets weirder, because now they're calling this the "California Bar Experiment", which when I read that, I kind of had to read it twice, because I was thinking, "Is this like a drug trial?" What is this, the California Bar Experiment? This is an experiment? These are people's careers that we're talking about.
Yeah. When I read this, I actually thought you were making it up.
I know, right? I was like,
"That's not really what they're talking about."
Lee's brainstorming some really kitschy phrases to include in our podcast.
Have you been talking to the AI about a kitschy phrase for this mess? "How about we call it the California Bar Experiment?" Who doesn't love a good experiment with a professional licensing exam?
I know, yeah. So, super comforting. Thanks, California Bar. Waiting for the memes to come on that one. Alright, but we do know more than we knew a couple of weeks ago, the last time we did a podcast about this. Now there are two phases. See why I mentioned the drug trial? It's kind of starting to feel like that. There are two phases. So the first phase of the experiment, yes, of the experiment - the first phase is going to happen on November 8th, 2024. November 8th.
Right after the
election. Right after the election. Aren't there like 50-some days until that time? Under 50. Okay, cool.
To the election.
To the election, and this is right after that. So we'll just use that. Okay, so phase one will happen on November 8th and is going to test multiple-choice questions by Kaplan and - oh, this is also exciting - a new platform for remote and test center exam delivery, because boy, testing software has never gone wrong on the bar exam. ExamSoft, anyone?
Yeah, exactly. I feel like if I were setting this up, I would definitely be like, "You know what? We should totally write the questions from scratch with a company that doesn't write questions for tests, in under six months. And also, we should totally change the format of how we're going to administer this. Maybe, or maybe not. Let's just decide that, I don't know, what, January maybe?"
Yeah, I know, we'll get to that part. It gets worse, guys. Okay, the good news is that the multiple-choice exam is supposed to cover the same stuff as the MBE. Cool, so we at least
know this. I knew, I trusted them.
There we go.
There we go. We're not going to be testing Family Law on this, at
least. No, so you can use all those other materials. That's good. That's good. Okay, so we now at least know what's on the test - pretend test, experimental test - in November. Okay, so that was phase one. We're going to get back to phase one because they also gave us a few more tidbits. But before we move on to phase two, what do you want to share about phase one?
Well, I just want to make clear that the fun part of this is that people who are planning to sit for the bar next year, soon to be next year, actually can participate in these fun experiments. Yeah, so we'll get to the details later, but if you're wondering like, "Why is this relevant to me?", you might be able to get in on the experiment.
It's like a reality TV show.
Yeah. I think of it like flying the plane while simultaneously building the plane, but that's just me.
I know. It's the Love Is Blind - that's what they call the experiment. That's what I was trying to think of. It's not like a drug trial; it's Love Is Blind. Oh my goodness. Anyway, okay.
You don't get to see your exam until you show up.
my gosh, seriously.
But you have to marry it first.
Marry it first. You have to commit for sure, and there's a lot of uncertainty.
You just have to be engaged
first. You have to be engaged, yeah.
You've got to commit to this exam before you show up to know what it
is. That's true. You may not know what the experiment is, but you have to commit to it. Okay, so that's phase one. We're going to talk about how you can be part of this experiment in just a minute. But let's talk about phase two, because this was a flashback for those of us who sat for the three-day bar exam back in the olden days of yore. They're going to do phase two as a third "surprise!" day of the California bar exam in July 2025.
You could take a third day of the bar, because who didn't love that? Let me tell you, that third day was so brutal, but you can do it and I'll give you reasons why in just a few minutes. And at that time, they're going to look at all sorts of things, like performance in remote versus in-person exam delivery. They're going to look at performance with different time limits. A little interesting. Performance with and without access to limited web content or personal notes.
Wow, that sure sounds different. It's also going to include some multiple-choice and essay questions. But then also, the thing I kept thinking about was that this kind of sounds like they're trying to do a NextGen-type experiment with not that much prep. I don't know, it seems like they're sure testing a lot of things. It's only supposed to be two hours.
Well, or kind of like what Canada does with their bar, where apparently you can bring notes in and things. I mean, yeah, getting creative here for the experiment.
I know. So, cool, cool. That sounds fun. Okay, so you can spend an extra night in a hotel, or not, because we don't know if you'll be taking the exam at a testing center or at home. I mean, who knows? We don't know. Anyway, so the good news is that each phase will require less than two hours of testing for standard test takers. And if you want to participate, you won't get dinged if you do really poorly. That was kind. If you fail, they're not going to like doubly fail you.
But they're doing a hard sell to get participants, especially I felt like for this November exam, which again, is less than 50 days away. Not very long. You might - we don't know, because the California Supreme Court hasn't said so - you might get 40 extra points to your bar score. Maybe. Up to. We don't know. And they're promoting it kind of like it's a sure thing, but then at the bottom they keep saying, "But the California Bar has not approved this yet, so don't rely on it."
Right. Yeah, it sounds like sort of an extra credit for the actual exam, that if you participate in one of these fun experiments, you get a certain amount correct, because they don't want people just totally dialing it in and showing up for no reason. And the NextGen apparently pays, I learned this today. They pay quite a bit, so people are pretty motivated.
Hey, California, you said you were in a budget crisis, but the NCBE put up money, man.
Yeah. So apparently California can just afford to hand out free points, maybe. So I think if you do phase one, you might get some extra MBE points later. If you do the other one, apparently you get possible essay points, but only if you're going to fail. So, my thought is, if I'm going to get an okay score on the ones that I'm not prepared to take, I'm just doing it as an experiment, I'm probably going to pass the bar too, and vice versa.
So, maybe there're some people that this could help, but who knows? I mean, you may or may not get the points, we don't know. But it's basically kind of a favor to California, it sounds like.
Yeah. I was thinking about why someone would want to do this. And one thing that I came up with is that there is a lot of anxiety, especially for first-time test takers, or even current law students can participate in this. And you would have experienced a bar, or part of the bar or a testing scenario, you would get exposed to what may or may not be the software that's going to be used for the test. There is something offered here as kind of a dry run with no penalties for poor performance.
I think for some students that could have a benefit.
I agree. I mean, I don't think there's necessarily a huge downside to people participating in this. If nothing else, it kind of gets you a look at sort of what they're thinking the questions might look like for the next exam.
The only downside I can really see for the person is, A) obviously it takes time, but B) if you go in and you really haven't prepared very much, or even if you have prepared, like maybe you're a repeat taker, you know you're going to be studying for the February exam anyway, you decide to go give it a shot.
And then you do really poorly, or you feel like you did really poorly, which most people walking out of the MBE feel like they did really poorly, so I could see that being a psychological hit. Because I'm assuming they're not really going to tell you how you did. But at the same time, I think it does have some upsides for individual people.
Yeah, that's true. They didn't tell anything about how they're going to tell people about their scores.
I don't think they're going to. I think it'll just kind of be like, "Oh, you took this thing for us and then at the end, you failed." I mean, I don't even know if they would tell you at that point, they might just pass you.
That's true. Oh, yeah. Okay. You
may never know.
You may never know if you were just part of the experiment. You don't know. So anyway, and who knows when the California Supreme Court will say what's going to happen. I don't know.
Yeah. I mean, I don't really think people should go through all this if they just think they might get a few extra points if they're on the verge of passing or failing. I would think of that as kind of like a bonus. I think people should do it either for altruistic reasons - they want to actually make this be better, or more importantly, for your own personal reasons that you think is going to help you.
Yeah. Okay, so, what do you need to know about phase one if you want to do it? So, it's mid- September, and any applicant who intends to sit for the February or July 2025 bar exam sessions can participate, even if you're in law school, so that's good to know. But also repeat takers.
So, if you've struggled with the bar, and for some reason you think this will either give you a shot of collecting possible other points, or that you want this dry run of the new material, repeat takers can do that too. Of course, there are limited spots. How many spots? I don't know, they didn't say on the FAQs. But the deadline to ask if you can participate is October 13th, which is less than a month away, and less than a month before the administration.
I don't know when they're going to tell you if you are participating, which was also kind of tricky. I mean, unless I missed that part, but I don't think I did.
No, and I don't think it really says it clearly if this is like an in-person thing, if you could do it from your house remotely, if you could go to a test center with Kaplan and do it remotely. I mean, who knows? So that might be something to consider too. I'm assuming at some point before you fully commit, they're going to tell you like, "Okay, you need to go to LA" or, "You can do this from the comfort of your own living room." But I would ask about that, probably, before you totally commit
to it. Yeah. I would say the gist of the... Isn't that a great legal word? The gist, the spirit of the FAQs sure made it sound like there were going to be options, because they're testing this new software. And I think one of their goals is to have everybody be able to take the test at home. But who knows? Because there's just this new exam delivery platform. I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't signed that contract either, let's be honest.
Yeah. I mean, who knows?
Who knows?
Yeah. Yeah. For people who get accommodations, there's a whole separate process. Read the FAQ, basically. Yeah,
because you have to file for the special accommodations, and then there's limited availability for any reviews. So, you're just asking more of yourself to file all that paperwork. So, if you were just going to mail it in and not even study at all, I don't know that it would be worth going through all those steps. But if you really want to give it a shot, then you have to do that if you want accommodations.
Yeah. So, I don't know. I mean, go read about it if you're interested. Kind of an interesting option. Could be part of the grand experiment, but also seems like kind of a hassle to me, got to be honest.
I know. Love Is Blind California Bar style, I guess.
That's right. I'm sure they are always like, "It's the great experiment." There's also the one where they wife swap or whatever.
I missed that one.
Yeah, I forgot the name of that one. There's a whole other show where they go in partnered and then they kind of switch to see... I think watched that one. I
forgot the name of
it. It's bad. It's really bad.
Okay. I recently Love Is Blind UK, which is what brought up the experiment for me. That was some airplane viewing that I had a while back, over
the summer. That sounds about right. . Yeah.
I do think one of the important takeaways, if you're still hanging in there with us, is this idea that the Bar may - make sure you appreciate that they used the word "may" be rolling out a new exam delivery platform even for February 2025. So for me, what that really puts people on notice about is like, don't make hotel reservations assuming you're going to be in a certain location. You may be able to take this exam remotely, which comes with its own mixed bag.
So, if that happens, we'll do some follow-up episodes like we did during COVID when people were taking remote exams. Others may go to these testing centers, but we don't really know what a testing center would look like or what will be. Apparently the participants in the February exam are going to be asked for your preference. Basically, if you are signed up to take the February exam, watch your email like a hawk, because they are clearly going to be sending out updates.
Even if you apply for this November examination, there's no decision date that they published to say like, "We'll get back to you by this date." So, you just need to be on your email. That's how it seems like they're going to be communicating. And you don't want to miss an update, especially if they're asking for preferences and things like that, because that can have major ramifications. So, stay dialed in.
We will keep trying to figure out what's happening and keep updating people, but you're also responsible for managing this chaos on your end as well, and staying on top of this issue for yourself.
For sure. I would definitely make sure if I was making a hotel reservation that it was refundable, because, hey, you might not need it. You might just take it from your house.
Yeah. And what fun. Well, if you want to read more about the great experiment, we will link to their helpful links and FAQs in the show notes. And I just can't wait to come back for the next installment of "What's California Doing Now?" Bar exam style.
We'll probably be here every couple of weeks with you, so we'll see you soon.
Bye.
Bye.
And with that, we're out of time. If you enjoyed this episode of the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast, please take a second to leave a review and rating on your favorite listening app. We'd really appreciate it. And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss anything. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out to Lee or Alison at lee@barexamtoolbox.com or alison@barexamtoolbox.com. Or you can always contact us via our website contact form at BarExamToolbox.com.
Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk soon!