The California State Bar has asked the California Supreme Court to expand its provisional supervised practice program in response to the ongoing turmoil surrounding the February 2025 bar exam. In a petition filed Friday, the Bar proposed extending the existing provisional licensure program through at least the end of 2027 and opening eligibility to the 3,340 applicants who either failed or withdrew from the February exam.

The supervised practice program, originally launched in 2020 to address pandemic-era disruptions, currently supports just over 70 participants. Under the Bar’s proposal, applicants would still need to pass the bar exam to receive full licensure, but they would be permitted to practice law under supervision in the interim. A new fee for participants is the only proposed program change, according to Bloomberg Law.

“Provisionally licensed participants have had lower complaint, investigation, and charge rates than the active-attorney population as a whole,” the Bar noted in its filing, highlighting the program’s successful track record to date.

The petition comes as the Bar continues to manage the fallout from February’s exam, which suffered widespread platform failures and exposed major operational vulnerabilities. The Bar has admitted that its contractor used ChatGPT to generate 29 multiple choice questions and has acknowledged repeated scoring errors. In recent days, the Bar raised nine additional applicants from “fail” to “pass,” bringing the total number of corrected false failures to 13.

In addition to expanding the provisional licensing program, the Bar is requesting that the Supreme Court:

• Grant limited admission to February test takers who are already licensed and in good standing in other U.S. jurisdictions;
• Consider future admission-on-motion for out-of-state attorneys, if enabling legislation is passed;
• Allow roughly 1,350 applicants who earned score boosts from the November 2024 experimental exam to carry those credits into the 2026 bar exam cycle.

The California legislature has shown little recent momentum on reform efforts to grant full admission to out-of-state attorneys without requiring passage of the bar exam, but the Bar’s petition signals interest in developing alternative pathways should the legal framework shift.

The Supreme Court had previously approved a lower passing score for the February exam to compensate for the test-day chaos. That change contributed to a record 56% pass rate, but litigation, audits, and public scrutiny continue to mount. Lawmakers have called for a formal audit of the Bar’s exam practices, and multiple lawsuits have been filed against the testing vendor responsible for the technical meltdown.

As the Bar seeks to repair trust and restore order to the licensing process, Friday’s petition is the latest in a series of proposals aimed at providing short-term relief for candidates and long-term flexibility for attorney admissions in the state.