The California Supreme Court has lowered the passing score for the state bar exam and will administer the test this fall online as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The passing score has been dropped from 1440 to 1390, the court announced. The court also directed the California State Bar to create a provisional licensing program for 2020 law school graduates that will allow them to practice under supervision until they can pass the bar exam.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, believes the lower passing score for the bar should be retroactive to February 2020.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley
| berkeley.law.edu
“It seems fair to do this,” he told the Northern California Record. “A student who has a score above 1390 should be admitted under the new standard.”
Chemerinsky signed a letter from law school deans calling on the lower passing scores to be retroactive.
“These students have, but for the moment in 2020 when they took the exam, achieved a high enough score for admission,” the letter said. “Yet these students are being double-penalized, both by the score not applying to the February exam and by the fact that they, and only they, will have achieved that now-passing score and yet must wait several additional months beyond the usual timing of the regularly scheduled exam for a new exam and that exam’s results.”
The Supreme Court also has delayed the next bar exam from its previously scheduled date of Sept. 9-10 to Oct. 5-6, 2020.
“The court recognizes that postponement of the bar examination may impact employment prospects, delay incomes and otherwise impair the livelihoods of persons who recently have graduated from law school,” the court said, explaining the need for a provisional licensing program.
The deans said law students who scored above 1390 but below 1440 in February had a "near miss" and should be given the benefit of the retroactive passing score.
“For these students, the near miss is surely demoralizing enough,” the deans wrote. “When coupled by the extended period between exams, the uncertainty of how an online exam will work, and the foreshortened time between the October results and the possibility of having to take the exam yet again in February 2021, this is likely to be exceptionally demoralizing.”