A Vietnamese-American law graduate in the Bay Area, after three years of intensive studying, sat down in front of her laptop at home one morning in February 2025 to take the bar exam—a test that would define her entire career. Then the screen froze, the software reported errors, and when she was able to log back in, four hours had already elapsed during her first essay. This was not an isolated story—it was a shared experience among many test-takers, including numerous Vietnamese Americans pursuing law in California, the U.S. state with the largest community of Vietnamese-American lawyers.
The price of saving 4.4 million USD turned out to be a bill of over 9 million USD and a year of lost confidence.
Why an Exam Fell Apart
According to CalMatters, the State Bar of California switched to remote online testing primarily to save costs as the organization faced budget constraints—the cost of remote testing for both the February and July 2025 exam windows was estimated at about 4.4 million USD, only half the cost of in-person testing. But the actual price tag proved far steeper: the February 2025 exam alone exceeded 9 million USD in direct costs and lost revenue. The vendor hired to write the exam, Kaplan, omitted major areas of law including negligence; another vendor, ACS Ventures, had to write additional questions using AI tools but many contained errors and were not used for scoring.
This was not an isolated incident in the industry. According to Going Concern, a survey of 50 New York government agencies found that 30% lacked personnel for internal audit work—a sign that inadequate oversight capacity is not confined to California but has spread across U.S. government agencies as they cut budgets to save money.
Who Bears the Consequences, and for How Long
The initial pass rate for the February 2025 exam was only 36%, forcing the State Bar to adjust its scoring methodology, raising the pass rate to around 65% to compensate for systemic errors. But the consequences persisted: by the February 2026 exam, the pass rate had dropped to only about 30%, showing that confidence in the scoring system and exam quality had not fully recovered. For Vietnamese-American law students—many of them first-generation professionals in their families with no network connections to support them through licensing delays—each month of delay meant they could not practice law, could not repay student loans, and for many immigrant families, it meant direct financial pressure on the entire household.
Lessons and What to Watch
State Bar Chair José Cisneros publicly acknowledged that test-takers' experience was unacceptable and agreed with the audit's recommendations. Since the incident, the State Bar has converted all exams back to in-person testing—a tacit admission that cost-cutting had gone too far. For families with family members studying law, what needs to be monitored going forward is whether the class action lawsuit against exam vendor Meazure Learning will result in meaningful compensation, and whether upcoming exams will maintain technical stability.