Transition Away from the MBE: Starting in 2025, California will no longer use the National Conference of Bar Examiners' (NCBE) Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) for its multiple-choice component. Instead, Kaplan will develop new multiple-choice questions specific to California.
The State Bar of California's Committee of Bar Examiners on Friday voted 8-3 to allow bar takers to sit for the exam remotely or in test centers located in other states or countries—provided they take it at the same time as those in California to reduce the risk of cheating.
Is The California Bar Exam Hard? Yes, the California bar exam is widely considered to be the most difficult of all state bar exams in the US. The California bar exam has a pass rate of 34%.
California's General Bar Exam pass rate of 53.8 percent is up from last year's July pass rate of 51.5 percent, and 2022's July pass rate of 52.4 percent. Preliminary statistical analyses show that of the 8,291 applicants who completed the GBX, 67.7 percent were first-time takers.
For California ABA-accredited law schools, the pass rate for first time test-takers was 81%, up 5 percentage points from 2023. The State Bar of California reported today that 53.8 percent of applicants passed the July 2024 General Bar Examination (GBX).
Unfortunately you cannot. California has its own bar exam and is not part of the Uniform Bar Exam which Texas and DC are part of. Now if you take the Uniform Bar (Google which states are part of it) then you can transfer to another state, but each state has its own minimum score and character and fitness requirements.
Notably, the most substantial disparity occurred in July 2022, with 36 percent of CALS graduates successfully passing the bar exam as first-time applicants, while only 13 percent of graduates from unaccredited schools achieved the same outcome.
The 79.18% pass rate was up slightly from the 78% pass rate earned by first-time bar examinees in 2022, but lower than the 80% pass rate among 2021 takers and the 84% pass rate earned by 2020 examinees.
California Bar Examination Please note that the State Bar does not offer reciprocity or accept bar exam scores from another jurisdiction.