Every day, I discover something new to dislike about my current home state.
Today, I learned that the State Bar of California has publicly acknowledged that artificial intelligence (AI) was used to develop a subset of multiple-choice questions for its February 2025 bar examination.
This revelation, made in an official news release, has triggered widespread criticism and concern among law school faculty, bar exam applicants, and legal education.
Nearly two months after hundreds of prospective California lawyers complained that their bar exams were plagued with technical problems and irregularities, the state’s legal licensing body has caused fresh outrage by admitting that some multiple-choice questions were developed with the aid of artificial intelligence.The State Bar of California said in a news release Monday that it will ask the California Supreme Court to adjust test scores for those who took its February bar exam.But it declined to acknowledge significant problems with its multiple-choice questions — even as it revealed that a subset of questions were recycled from a first-year law student exam, while others were developed with the assistance of AI by ACS Ventures, the State Bar’s independent psychometrician.“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 Law School. “I’m almost speechless. Having the questions drafted by non-lawyers using artificial intelligence is just unbelievable.”
Over 20 of the exam questions were generated using AI.
The State Bar disclosed that its psychometrician (a person or organization skilled in administrating psychological tests), ACS Ventures, created 23 of the 171 scored multiple-choice questions with AI assistance. Another 48 questions came from a first-year law student exam, while Kaplan Exam Services developed the remaining 100 questions.The State Bar defended its practices, telling the LA Times that all questions underwent review by content validation panels and subject matter experts before the exam. “The ACS questions were developed with the assistance of AI and subsequently reviewed by content validation panels and a subject matter expert in advance of the exam,” wrote State Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson in a press release.
The revelation occurred after numerous complaints about the February exam were lodged.
In February, the new exam led to complaints after many test-takers were unable to complete their bar exams. The online testing platforms repeatedly crashed before some applicants even started. Others struggled to finish and save essays, experienced screen lags and error messages and could not copy and paste text, the Times reported earlier….Katie Moran, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who specializes in bar exam preparation, told the newspaper, “It’s a staggering admission.”
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