LOS ANGELES (AP) — The State Bar of California has revealed that artificial intelligence played a role in developing some multiple-choice questions on February’s troubled bar exam.
In a statement released Monday, the legal licensing agency said it plans to ask the California Supreme Court to adjust scores for the February 2025 exam following widespread technical failures and growing concerns about the test’s integrity.
“The debacle that was the February 2025 bar exam is worse than we imagined,” said Mary Basick, assistant dean of academic skills at UC Irvine School of Law, in comments to the Los Angeles Times. “I’m almost speechless. Having questions drafted by non-lawyers using AI is just unbelievable.”
The exam faced immediate backlash when many test-takers encountered repeated crashes, lagging screens, error messages, and problems saving or copying their essays. Some were unable to even begin the exam due to platform failures, the Times reported.
According to a recent State Bar presentation, 100 of the 171 scored multiple-choice questions were created by Kaplan, and 48 were taken from a first-year law student exam. The remaining 23 questions, developed by ACS Ventures — the Bar’s psychometrician — were produced using artificial intelligence.
Despite the controversy, State Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson defended the exam, stating, “We have confidence in the validity of the multiple-choice questions to accurately and fairly assess the legal competence of test-takers.”
Katie Moran, a bar prep expert and associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, called the revelations “a staggering admission.”
“The State Bar acknowledged hiring a company where a non-lawyer used AI to draft actual bar exam questions,” Moran said. “Even more troubling, they then paid that same company to evaluate and approve the very questions it created.”
