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Time of India
3 days ago
- General
- Time of India
Lawyered by luck? Hundreds moved from fail to pass in California bar exam mix-up
California bar exam grading error moves hundreds from fail to pass. (AI Image) California bar exam result 2025: More than 200 candidates who initially failed the California bar exam in February 2025 have now been notified that they passed after a major grading recalibration. This unexpected reversal pushes California's overall pass rate to a record 63 percent, nearly doubling the state's long-term average of 35 percent. The sudden change has sparked widespread debate about fairness, competence, and the integrity of the legal profession. The February bar exam was plagued by technical glitches and lawsuits, leading to a wave of public outrage. The State Bar responded by adopting a new grading method, giving test-takers the benefit of the doubt by awarding the higher score for each written question rather than averaging multiple readings. As a result, 230 candidates who were on the borderline crossed the passing threshold, dramatically altering the final results. Historic pass rate surge amid controversy The revised pass rate of 63 percent is unprecedented for California, known for its traditionally difficult bar exam. According to the USA Herald, a spokesperson for the State Bar said, 'This recalibration was necessary to address the flaws in the original grading process and ensure fairness to all applicants.' However, critics have expressed concern that the change may compromise the quality of legal professionals entering the field. Legal experts and bar exam critics warn that the remedy could flood the market with underprepared lawyers, undermining public trust. As reported by the USA Herald, some allege a pattern of 'lowering the bar' influenced by DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) pressures, which has intensified calls for increased oversight and legal challenges. Supreme court weighs in amid mounting pressure Amid ongoing litigation, the California Supreme Court is considering granting itself broad new authority over the State Bar's exam process. Another proposal under review would allow all February test-takers, including some who did not complete the exam, to practice law provisionally. The USA Herald reports that this unprecedented move reflects the extraordinary nature of the current crisis. For the 230 candidates whose status shifted from fail to pass, the decision is life-changing. But for the legal community and the public, the grading recalibration raises serious questions about the balance between fairness, competence, and the profession's future. The debate over California's bar exam shake-up is far from over. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Axios
29-05-2025
- Business
- Axios
California bar exam's AI scandal sets stage for high-stakes retake
Two months out from the July bar exam, the State Bar of California is still dealing with fallout from its most recent test and the agency's admission of using AI to formulate some questions. Why it matters: The fiasco has heightened concern about the State Bar's ability to properly prepare and license attorneys amid increased demand for legal representation in California. Nearly three-quarters of households in California reported experiencing at least one civil legal problem in the previous 12 months, according to the State Bar's 2024 Justice Gap Study. State of play: February marked the rollout of a new hybrid exam, but it quickly descended into chaos when applicants reported online testing platform crashes, a bevy of error messages and continuous screen lags. Driving the news: The State Bar formally asked the California Supreme Court this week to approve a limited provisional licensure program and a more direct pathway to admission for out-of-state attorneys. Approval would allow the roughly 1,300 candidates who failed or withdrew from the February exam to practice under the supervision of a licensed lawyer until they pass a bar exam. The move comes as the agency faces nearly $6 million in additional costs to return to the in-person format for July. Catch up quick: The State Bar finalized an $8.25 million deal with test prep company Kaplan Exam Services last August to replace the traditional national bar exam with its own version — one that includes a remote format. The deal, which authorized Kaplan to produce the state's exam for the next five years, was estimated to help the agency save up to $3.8 million per year. Its disastrous debut, however, has further dragged the agency into a financial crisis. Friction point: Shortly after test takers reported widespread technical difficulties with the February exam, the State Bar revealed that over 20 multiple-choice questions had been drafted using AI. Executive director Leah T. Wilson also acknowledged that the agency did not copy edit test questions and that she learned some questions had typos only when she "saw it on Reddit," the Los Angeles Times reported. The state Supreme Court lowered the passing score for the exam as a result and ordered the State Bar to return to the traditional in-person test format. California's Senate Judiciary Committee also gave the state auditor its approval for an independent review of the exam. What they're saying: At a committee hearing earlier this month, test taker Andrea Lynch testified about her experience with constant disruptions from proctors and computer crashes. Lynch said a message notified her that her exam had been submitted before she'd even seen the final section. The ordeal amounted to "a systemic failure, a breakdown in the integrity, accessibility and fairness of one of the most important professional milestones in the legal profession," Lynch added. What we're watching: The State Bar hit Measure Learning, the company that proctored the February exam, with a fraud lawsuit in early May. The suit accuses the vendor of failing to "deliver on its promises" and misrepresenting its ability to conduct a large-scale assessment both in person and online. A survey of February test takers found that 95% reported experiencing at least one technology issue, while over 90% reported at least one issue with proctors, per the State Bar's complaint. Nearly 80% said they had issues with typing delays, 75% said the copy-and-paste functionality did not work and 43% said the testing platform froze and became unresponsive.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A blood feud rocks O.C. law enforcement with claims of 'dirty cop,' 'corrupt' D.A.
It's a bitter feud the likes of which are seldom seen in law enforcement circles — or at least those that boil over into public view. For over seven years now, Orange County's top prosecutor and a decorated former cop have been locked in an acrimonious dispute that shows little sign of abating. Both parties have accused the other of fractured ethics and corruption, and even an independent arbitrator likened the situation to a simmering cauldron. Damon Tucker, a former supervising investigator for the county, has alleged in a lawsuit that he uncovered potential evidence of money laundering, terrorist threats and extortion by his then-boss, Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer. Tucker claims in his lawsuit that Spitzer and others quashed the probe and then fired the investigator as an act of retaliation, leaving him humiliated and shunned by law enforcement. Spitzer has publicly called Tucker a "dirty cop," and accused him of working with his opponents — including former Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas — to launch an investigation to hurt him politically. Tucker's behavior, Spitzer says, was a "disgrace to the badge." Now, in yet another escalation of this Orange County drama, Tucker has called on the California attorney general, the U.S. Department of Justice, the State Bar of California and other agencies to investigate Spitzer; the OCDA Bureau of Investigation Chief Paul Walters; and former Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Shawn Nelson, who is now an Orange County Superior Court judge. 'These allegations must be fully investigated,' Tucker wrote in a letter to those agencies.'Failure to investigate these men casts a shadow over our system of justice.' Read more: California security firm CEO, workers charged after woman forcibly removed from Republican town hall Tucker's call for an investigation of events dating back nearly a decade comes as the district attorney's office is already facing increased scrutiny over its treatment of employees. Both Spitzer and Nelson face a potential civil trial next week over accusations they retaliated against female employees who say they were sexually harassed by former Senior Assistant Dist. Atty. Gary LoGalbo, a onetime friend of Spitzer's who is now deceased. Spitzer and Walters have declined to discuss Tucker's accusations with The Times. Nelson, through a court spokesperson, also declined, saying judges were prohibited by ethical rules from discussing cases before the court or in media reports. The California Attorney General's office confirmed that it is reviewing Tucker's complaint but would not comment further. The State Bar has also begun a review of the allegations and has requested more information and documentation, according to a letter reviewed by The Times. A spokesperson for the State Bar declined to comment or confirm whether a complaint was received, adding that disciplinary investigations are confidential. The U.S. Department of Justice would neither comment nor confirm that it had received the letter. Tucker said he also sent a letter to California's Commission on Judicial Performance. The commission also declined to comment. A veteran investigator of nearly 30 years, Tucker was fired from the DA's office in December 2020 over allegations he had initiated a unilateral investigation into Spitzer shortly after he took office. Tucker sued the county — alleging he was fired and retaliated against for uncovering corruption — and in 2022 he won his job back, along with lost wages. Last year, he received a $2-million out-of court settlement from the county, according to Tucker's attorney. Kimberly Edds, a spokesperson for the district attorney's office, said a non-disparagement agreement signed by Tucker and Spitzer as part of the settlement prevented the office from commenting. Tucker's accusations date to an inquiry that was begun in October 2016, when another district attorney investigator, Tom Conklin, was assigned to assist the Fair Political Practices Commission in looking into allegations of campaign finance irregularities by Spitzer, who was at the time an Orange County supervisor but was considering a run for district attorney. In his recent letter to multiple agencies, as well as in his lawsuit, Tucker alleges the investigation into Spitzer was left unfinished and, even though he and another investigator at one point suggested it should be forwarded to the FBI or state attorney general, the investigation was never referred to an outside agency. A year after the 2016 investigation began, Conklin's report was leaked to the Orange County Register, and the newspaper reported that Conklin had been unable to corroborate the allegations. The leak came at a key time for Spitzer, who had just announced his campaign for district attorney. At the time, he told the Register the investigation had been politically motivated by his political rival, Rackauckas, and that nothing had been found. At the time, a spokesperson for Rackauckas confirmed the investigation but declined to comment on the allegations. The leak sparked an internal investigation in the district attorney's office and, when the initial investigator retired, Tucker was ordered to finish the case. Read more: 'I'm going to die': After frantic 911 calls, LAPD initially missed victims killed inside their homes Tucker was tasked with finding out who leaked the report, but after reviewing the case, Tucker concluded that Conklin's investigation was incomplete. At least 10 identified witnesses in the case were never interviewed, and several leads had not been followed, according to an investigative summary written by Tucker, and given to a senior deputy district attorney he consulted with in the case. During his investigation, Tucker reached out to superiors and colleagues at the district attorney's office and said the allegations against Spitzer needed to be sent out to an outside agency, such as the FBI, for an impartial review. Tucker said that as he continued to investigate and prepared to send the case to an outside agency, things suddenly changed. The day after Spitzer was elected district attorney in 2018, Tucker said Walters ordered him to stop digging into the accusations, and to remove any mention of Spitzer's name from questions in his investigation, according to an investigative summary and sworn depositions, taken in Tucker's lawsuit against the county. Two days later, Tucker was removed from the case. In a sworn deposition, Walters confirmed he ordered Tucker to remove questions about Spitzer from his investigation the day Spitzer became the district attorney-elect. "That's where I have to tell Tucker, 'You can't be asking all these questions about Spitzer," Walters testfied. "It's not the case. And I make him redact all that stuff." Tucker maintains that, up until the election, Walters supported his investigation. 'I was doing the right thing,' Tucker told The Times. 'This should have been sent out.' Walters declined to respond to The Times about that accusation. However, a spokesperson for the district attorney's office said it was Tucker who refused to turn over the investigation. 'He was given the opportunity and declined to do so,' said Edds, the D.A'.s spokesperson. 'He was offered the opportunity repeatedly.' Read more: Slaying of 13-year-old boy devastates L.A. immigrant community: 'We can't trust anyone' Tucker disputes that assertion. Spitzer has characterized Tucker's investigation as being politically motivated, and has pointed out in sworn depositions that Tucker had donated to his opponent, Rackauckas, and was friends with Rackauckas' chief of staff, Susan Kang. According to county records, Tucker made a $2,000 donation to Rackauckas' campaign in August 2018, after he'd been assigned to investigate the leak. Tucker had also been critical of Spitzer during the campaign in multiple Facebook posts, before and after he took up the case. 'I think they sent him off on this fishing expedition to get something on me after the primary election in 2018,' Spitzer said in a deposition. 'He's investigating me while he's making a major campaign contribution to my opponent? That's not objective.' Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
San Francisco Chronicle
15-05-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Scammed seniors in California could get $50,000
A state appeals court says 100 or more senior citizens in California, scammed into making medical payments to a company that later went bankrupt, are entitled to payments of up to $50,000 from a state fund for victims of fraud. A company called Senior Care Advocates told elderly Californians 20 years ago that it could qualify them for the Medi-Cal program for a fee — the state actually accepts applicants without any cost — and charged them thousands of dollars for access to nonexistent health care benefits, according to Tuesday's court ruling. A filing in their case said they were also told they would have access to a skilled nursing home if they paid the fee. The company went out of business and filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Its leader, attorney James A. Walker of Roseville, was disbarred by the State Bar in 2010. Bar officials said in their disbarment filing that Walker's failure to provide refunds to his victims 'demonstrates a lack of atonement for the consequences of his misconduct.' But the seniors had no route to compensation until 2021, when a federal bankruptcy court reopened the case and determined that they had been victims of 'financial elder abuse,' with losses from a few hundred dollars up to $66,000. Hundreds have already gained compensation in separate litigation, but the state's fund for Victims of Corporate Fraud denied payment to more than 120 applicants in 2022. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who oversees the fund, said the bankruptcy court's decision 'does not appear to be a qualifying judgment for corporate fraud' under the state law. The 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles disagreed Tuesday and said the victims could seek payments of up to $50,000 from the fund, depending on their losses and other evidence of the harm they suffered. Although the bankruptcy court decision did not expressly describe the company's actions as a fraud or deceit, the victims presented their own statements to that court detailing 'the fraud and the suffering that resulted from it,' Michael Pulos, a San Diego County Superior Court judge temporarily assigned to the appeals court, wrote in the 3-0 ruling. They described how Senior Care Advocates 'propagated a campaign of fear targeting seniors … and convinced them they needed to buy SCA's services because they would need long-term care and that the cost of this care would result in them losing both their lifetime savings and their homes.' Pulos said. Under the law, he added, courts must 'liberally construe remedial statutes in favor of their protective purpose.' Although more than 120 seniors filed claims with the court, Pulos said the number of payments would be somewhat less because some claims were filed by each of two spouses, and the law allows only one payment to a married couple.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
California State Bar files lawsuit against exam vendor after botched tests
The State Bar of California is suing the vendor that administered its February bar exam, a disastrous rollout of a new testing platform that shook confidence in the organization's leadership, prompted lawmakers to call for an audit and the state Supreme Court to order the agency to revert to the traditional exam format in July. The complaint , filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, alleges Meazure Learning committed fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and breach of contract by claiming it could administer a remote and in-person exam in a two-day window. 'Over months, Meazure made representation after representation to convince the State Bar that it would offer a seamless remote and in-person exam experience worthy of the California Bar Exam,' the complaint said. 'But it is now clear that Meazure could not deliver." For many aspiring attorneys, the rollout of the new exam in February was a debacle. Test takers seeking to practice law in California complained of a litany of technical glitches and irregularities. Online testing platforms repeatedly crashed before some even started the exam. Others experienced screen lags and error messages, struggled to finish and save essays, and could not copy and paste text from test questions into the exam's response field. But Meazure Learning pushed back Tuesday on the idea that it was responsible for the fiasco. In a statement responding to the suit, Meazure said it was proud of its "track record of reliably administering over 4 million exams annually" and supporting more than 1,000 organizations over two decades. It suggested the State Bar was trying to pass the buck for its own failures. "We recognize the importance of a smooth exam experience, and we regret that some test takers had issues during the February 2025 California Bar Exam," a spokesman for Meazure Learning said. "This lawsuit is an attempt by the State Bar to shift the blame for its flawed development process for the February exam. We will defend ourselves vigorously in court.' Read more: 'Utterly Botched': Glitchy rollout of new California bar exam prompts lawsuit and legislative review When Meazure was being tapped to administer February's exam, the lawsuit claims, the company reassured the State Bar that it had experience in administering 25,000 exams over a two-day period and had 'no concerns' about meeting the State Bar's remote testing needs. It also promoted its experience with 2,200 customers over two decades, described itself as the 'most secure and accessible' in the 'techenabled assessment solutions' industry and touted its short chat and phone support wait times of a minute or less. 'Meazure promised that it had no remote exam capacity limits concerning administration of the Bar Exam, knowing full well that it did,' the lawsuit states. 'The State Bar, reasonably and in good faith, relied on Meazure's continuing statements and conduct indicating that it could scale up as needed to handle the volume for remote exams.' But since the exam, the lawsuit said, Meazure has impeded the State Bar's attempts to investigate its failures and "employed delay and deny tactics to prevent the State Bar from obtaining full and critical information." 'In light of the significant hardships endured by the February 2025 applicants and breach of specific contractual obligations outlined in our agreement, the State Bar has taken decisive action to hold Meazure Learning accountable for its failures," Brandon Stallings, the chair of the State Bar Board of Trustees, said in a statement. The State Bar, represented by attorneys from Hueston Hennigan, seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the "unacceptable February Bar Exam experience," and is also seeking an independent audit of the company. Read more: California Supreme Court orders state bar to revert to national exams after testing debacle Prior to February's test, the State Bar promoted the new exam as a cost-cutting initiative that would offer test takers the choice of remote testing. After deciding to break away from the national tests it had used for more than 50 years, the agency signed a $4.1-million deal last year with Meazure Learning to administer a new exam. It also announced an additional $8.25-million five-year deal authorizing test prep company Kaplan Exam Services to create multiple-choice, essays and performance test questions. In the months leading up to the exams, the deans of many of California's top law schools flagged concerns to the State Bar. During a November exam study, some test takers had problems logging in to Meazure's exam platform, the complaint said, and in a January mock exam, technical glitches prevented test takers from entering the exam, submitting responses and using basic word processing functions. "Meazure again assured the State Bar and prospective test takers that it would [and did] fix these issues before the February exam," the complaint said. "But it did not." News of the lawsuit came just hours after the State Bar released exam results for the February exam. The agency reported that 55.9% of test takers passed — the highest spring pass rate since 1965. The California Supreme Court, which oversees the State Bar, delivered a ruling Friday that allowed the agency to lower scoring for the February exam because of the debacle. The State Bar's IT and admission staff then worked through the weekend to adjust scoring so they could inform test takers if they passed or failed. The state's highest court also ordered the State Bar to abandon its new system of multiple-choice questions and revert to the traditional Multistate Bar Examination for multiple-choice questions for its July bar exam. Leah T. Wilson, the embattled executive director of the State Bar who announced she plans to step down in July, congratulated test takers. 'Given the technical and other issues this cohort faced, the perseverance applicants showed is commendable and impressive," Wilson said in a statement. Test takers who did not pass the exam will receive letters later this week detailing their results. They can retake the exam in July. Some February test takers have urged the State Bar to provide equitable remediation after the debacle, such as immediately adopting a provisional licensing program and granting full law licenses in California without requiring additional examination. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
