Kaplan

The State Bar hired a vendor, Meazure Learning, to administer the exam and announced an additional $8.25-million five-year deal authorizing test prep company Kaplan Exam Services to create multiple-choice, essays and performance test questions.

Last year, the Court approved the State Bar’s plan to forge an $8.25 million, five-year deal with Kaplan to create 200 test questions for a new exam.

It was not until this week — nearly two months after the exam — that the State Bar revealed in a news release that it had deviated from its plan to use Kaplan Exam Services to write all the multiple-choice questions.

In a presentation, the State Bar revealed that 100 of the 171 scored multiple-choice questions were made by Kaplan and 48 were drawn from a first-year law students exam.

“Kaplan is a bar prep company, so of course, has knowledge about the legal concepts being tested, the bar exam itself, how the questions should be structured. So the thinking was that it wouldn’t be a big change.”