State Bar of California admits it used AI to develop exam questions, triggering new furor

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.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-04-23/state-bar-of-california-used-ai-for-exam-questions

Maybe it's just me, but this seems like an incredibly stupid thing for the California Bar to do just to save money. Wouldn't surprise me if there's a lawsuit lurking somewhere there.

Whoops! Looks like there already is a lawsuit related to this!