Los Angeles (AP) -The State Bar of California has announced that some multiple-choice questions have been developed in a problem with the plagued bar exam with the help of artificial intelligence.
The Legal Licensiebody said on Monday in a press release that it will ask the High Department of California to adjust test scores for those who have taken the Balkexamen of February.
“The debacle that was the Bar exam of February 2025 is worse than we had thought,” said Mary Basick, assistant of academic skills at the University of California, Irvine, Law School, at the Los Angeles Times. “I am almost speechless. The questions have drawn up by non-lawyers who use artificial intelligence is simply incredible.”
In February the new exam led to complaints after many test-makers could not take out their bar exams. The online test platforms repeatedly crashed before some applicants even started. Others struggled to finish and save essays, experienced screen delays and error messages and could not copy and paste text, the previously reported times.
According to a recent presentation of the State Bar, 100 of the 171 multiple-choice questions were asked by Kaplan and 48 were from a first-year exam for law students. A smaller subset of 23 scored questions was asked by ACS Ventures, the psychometrician of the State Bar, and developed with artificial intelligence.
“We have faith in the validity of the (multiple-choice ask) to accurately and fairly assess the legal competence of test-makers,” said Leah Wilson, executive director of the State Bar, the newspaper in a statement.
Katie Moran, associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law that specializes in the preparation of the bar research, said the newspaper: “It is a stunning admission.”
“The State Bar has admitted that they have hired a company to have a non-Lawyer AI used to prepare questions given in the actual bar exam,” she said. “They then paid the same company to assess the questions about the exam and ultimately approve it, including the questions the company has written.”
