Assembly Judiciary Committee chair seeks retroactive lower bar exam score

The head of the Assembly Judiciary Committee asked the California Supreme Court to make the newly reduced passing bar score retroactive to at least the last five years.

In a letter sent Monday, Committee Chair Mark Stone, D-Santa Cruz, praised the court for providing an online bar exam in October; offering graduates a provisional licensure to practice law temporarily; and permanently lowering the passing score of the bar exam to 1,390.

However, Stone had one more request: "If a 1,390 passing score supports minimum competency to practice law today, it certainly did so in the past," Stone wrote. "Moreover, scores in the last five years are recent enough to ensure that applicants will still retain much of the knowledge they demonstrated on the exam."

Stone's letter follows one sent last week by 19 law school deans, asking the court to allow admission to the bar for graduates who failed to get a passing score of 1,440 in the February exam.

Stone argued that by retroactively recognizing older bar exam scores, law graduates and the state would benefit.

"It will provide more fair and humane treatment of the law graduates who have demonstrated sufficient proficiency to practice law by reducing artificial barriers to entry which have disproportionately harmed law graduates of color," Stone wrote. "Additionally, since the pandemic has only increased the legal needs of Californians, providing more competent and diverse attorneys to represent them should help increase their access to justice."

According to the court's public information officer, Cathal Conneely, the state high court has not explicitly ruled out the possibility of applying the cut score retroactively, and is "drafting the administrative order to implement the action on the cut score."

-- Blaise Scemama