Admissions
What We Do
Working as an administrative arm of the California Supreme Court, the State Bar oversees all activities required for admitting attorneys to the practice of law in the nation’s most populous state.
The State Bar develops, administers, and grades the California Bar Examination and conducts moral character investigations required for admission. California offers more pathways to the law than any other state.
The agency administers programs for several admissions pathways beyond graduation from a traditional, nationally accredited law school.
Bar exam applicants
tested
15,596
Applicants granted testing accommodations
923
Moral character applications
reviewed
8,945
New attorneys
admitted
10,578
Provisionally licensed lawyers approved
661
Enabling alternate pathways to licensure during the pandemic
The Supreme Court-ordered Provisional Licensure Program opened in October 2020 and enabled law graduates during the pandemic to begin practice as fully licensed attorneys and postpone taking the exam. In January 2021, the Court expanded eligibility for the program to include law graduates who scored 1390 or higher on any July 2015 to February 2020 California Bar Exam. By applying for provisional licensure, completing 300 hours of supervised legal practice, and fulfilling all other requirements, these provisionally licensed lawyers can be licensed without retaking the bar exam. Since the program launched, 418 individuals have achieved licensure through the program. Unless extended by the Court, the program will terminate June 1, 2022.
Attorney Samantha Feak talks about her pathway to licensure through the State Bar’s Provisional Licensure Program.
Setting a course for the future of the bar exam
The Blue Ribbon Commission on the Future of the Bar Exam, a joint committee of the State Bar and the California Supreme Court, held its first meetings in 2021. The commission is exploring comprehensive recommendations to chart the future of the California bar exam. The commission is reviewing several alternative approaches, including whether a bar exam is the correct tool to determine minimum competence for the practice of law. The commission is also exploring alternative pathways to licensure, such as the provisional licensure program approved by the California Supreme Court during the pandemic, for their long-term appropriateness as alternatives to a bar exam.
Eliminating potential bias in exam content and grading
The State Bar has been working for years to identify and eliminate any potential bias in the California Bar Exam. The current effort began in 2019, when an expert consultant conducted a differential item functioning (DIF) analysis of a decade’s worth of State Bar exams. While the data did not identify any overt bias, the results indicated that the State Bar still had work to do to eliminate any possible differential performance. In 2020, the Board of Trustees entrusted a joint group made up of members of the Committee of Bar Examiners and the Council on Access and Fairness to review and make recommendations on the statistical data. The DIF Working Group met throughout 2021 and presented its final recommendations, a list of guiding principles for future bar exam development and bar exam facilitators, to the Board in early 2022.
Overcoming challenges in delivering the bar exam remotely
In 2021, the State Bar continued to adapt its admissions processes for applicants themselves needing to adapt to greater remote interactions required by the ongoing pandemic. The February and July bar exams were the second and third administered primarily remotely due to the pandemic. The State Bar stepped up communication with applicants to prepare them for the remote exam. And for the first time, those who passed the July exam were able to digitally sign and process their oath cards.
The July 2021 exam was affected by technological issues nationwide reported by vendor ExamSoft, in which some applicants encountered black or blue screens that required them to restart their laptops to continue. The State Bar investigated and took unprecedented measures to treat affected examinees fairly. All who encountered the technological issues received a scoring adjustment. In addition, the nearly 1,300 applicants affected by the technological issues who did not pass the exam were able to apply their July 2021 exam fees to the February 2022 or July 2022 exam or request a full refund.
Surveys taken after each administration of the remote bar exam found that the majority of examinees were satisfied with the remote testing experience; this was true across all demographic groups by race and ethnicity.
