An influential legislator from California is pressing the California California Bar Association to reduce her new multiple choice questions after a debacle of the February bar exam and reverse the traditional test format in July.
“Given the catastrophe of the February bar, I think that returning to the methods that have been used during the last 50 years, until we can prove the new methods, is the appropriate way,” said Senator Thomas J. Uberg, president of the Judicial Committee of the State Senate.
Thousands of test tests that seek to practice the law in California generally take the examination of the two -day bar in July. Reduce to the National System for the National Conference of Boarders of Lawyers, which California has used since 1972, would be an important retirement for state addressing. His new examination was implemented this year in a cost of cost reduction and a “historical agreement” that would sacrifice the evidence that takes the choice of remote tests.
Alex Chan, a lawyer who presides over the examiners committee of the Bar Association, who exercises supervision on the examination of the California Bar Association, told The Times earlier this week that it was unlikely that the Reebd state returned to the NCBE exams in July.
“We will not return to NCBE, at least in the short term,” Chan said.
The NCBE exam security would not allow any form of remote tests, said Chan, and the state bar polls recently showed that almost half of California bar applicants want to maintain the remote option.
Last year, the State Financial Barra made the decision to reduce costs by replacing the test questions developed by the multi -state bar exam of the National Conference of Busin of Bar Associations, which does not allow remote evidence. If the state bar developed his own questions, he thought he could save money by saving the spending of renting mass exams for all examined.
The state bar hired a supplier, Meazure Learning, to administer the Examm and announced an additional $ 8.25 million in a five -year contract Authorization of Kaplan test preparation exams to create multiple test questions, tests and performance tests.
But after the failed launch of the new exam in February, when many tests complain about a litany o Technical problems, failures and irregularities -The the highest court of the State, which supervises the State Bar Association, ordered the agency to plan the July exam in the traditional format in person.
The Supreme Court has not yet addressed to the state bar to return to the NCBE system, even the thinking test complained that some of the multiple choice questions in the new test included typographic errors and questions with more than two correct answers and important facts.
This week, the test status of evidence and legal experts when it revealed that Ventures ACS had hired, its independent psychometric that validates and qualifies the exams to guarantee Cye’s relaxation, to develop a small subset of multipurpose option.
“They have to return to the bar of several states this summer,” said Katie Moran, an associated professor at the Law School of the University of San Francisco. “They have only shown that they can’t do a fair evidence.”
On Friday, the deans of more than the boxes of the law schools accredited by California Aba wrote to Patricia Guerrero, president of the Supreme Court of California, to express “serious conerns about the equity and validity of the exam.” The deans urged the court to disseminate the 200 multiple choice questions in the February exam, to reveal the identity of the authors of 29 questions for which the state bar has not attributed the sending of the author and re -use the multiple choice of the NCBE for it.
“The bar exam is too important for them to experience as they did and continue to do,” said Erwin Chemendnsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Faculty, who signed the letter.
The state senator Uberg, former prosecutor, compared that a non -lawyer who used artificial intelligence to write questions for a bar exam “to non -physical ones who design questions with the help of AI to decide who is qualified to be a surgeon.”
As president of the Senate Judicial Committee, Uberg exerts considerable influence on the State Bar Association. The recent Senate bill 40, a new law that requires the state Senate to confirm the future appointments of the Executive Director and General Advisor of the State Bar Association. After the February exam, Uberg presented legislation to launch an independent review of the California state auditor exam, to find out what was so “spectacularly wrong.”
This bill is scheduled to be reviewed at a hearing of the Judicial Committee of the Senate of May 6, together with bill 253 of the Senate, the draft authorization of license fees for the State license, which grants legislators leverage to promote the State Bar Association to make improvements.
Uberg said the next hearing will go beyond the administration of the February bar exam.
“We are going to look at the leadership of the bar,” he said. “Let’s see what happened since the last supervision hearing in terms of responsibility and transparency.”
He was asked if he had confidence in the leadership of the state bar. Uberg said: “My trust is tremor.”
Uberg did not say if the executive director of the state bar, Leah Wilson, should resign, but said the question is “one of the problems we will examine here in the coming months.”
The State Bar Association announced this week that it will ask the Supreme Court to adjust the test scores for those who play) its February bar exam.
For the critics of the State Bar Association, the problem is not only that it used AI to develop questions, but that it did it without the knowledge of the California Supreme Court and the lawyer examiners committee.
The State Bar Association told the Times that the decision that ACS Ventures develops questions with the help of AI programs “was taken by the staff within the Admissions Office and did not clearly communicate to the leadership of the Bar Association.”
“This was a breakdown, and structural changes have been made with admissions to address it,” said the State Bar Association, noting that he has disseminated a new main level role on the director of admissions reports and “a new team structure.”
At the same time, the state bar minimized the importance of hiring ACS companies to develop questions, pointing out that “general support of the company’s bar exam, or that the CBE and the Board are aware, is covered by its existing contract.”
All multiple choice questions, including the “initially initiated initially initiated with the help of AI,” said the State Bar Association: “Subsequently they were reviewed by content validation panels composed of lawyers and a lawyer issues. Experts.” “
Whatever happens later, said Uberg, the State Bar Association should take the time to avoid the debacle of the February bar exam that occurs again.
“Taking the bar exam, it is really a test that people prepare for three years or more,” said Uberg, and said that two or their children had it in recent years. “The fact that those examined, in essence, were Indian bunches for the February bar is absolutely unacceptable.”
“That’s why,” said Uberg, “we’re going to the old methodology here in July.”
