California Bar Sues Exam Vendor ProctorU Over February Crash (1)

The California State Bar sued ProctorU Inc., whose platform crashed during the February Bar Exam, seeking damages and a court-ordered audit into the vendor it says is dodging its requests for info on what went wrong.

The complaint against ProctorU, which does business as Meazure Learning, comes the day before California lawmakers are scheduled to consider launching an investigation into the State Bar over the exam disaster. It appears to be the first lawsuit filed by the State Bar over the February exam; applicants sued Meazure in February.

“Over months, Meazure made representation after representation to convince the State Bar that it would offer a seamless remote and in-person exam experience worthy of the California Bar Exam,” the Monday complaint filed in California Superior Court, Los Angeles County said. “But it is now clear that Meazure could not deliver.”

Meazure represented its platform would have 99.982% uptime during the exam’s administration, and that its phone and chat support staff would be easy to reach, according to the complaint. It also spoke to successfully administering exams for 25,000 applicants, the suit said.

However, by test day, Meazure had to pause its spell-check feature because it froze the platform, and its copy-paste, highlighting, and annotation functions didn’t work.

“Even basic typing exhibited significant lags,” the complaint said. “Proctors were incapable of helping test takers and appeared insufficiently trained to administer the Bar Exam.”

Signs of malfunction were present during the November exam experiment, but Meazure didn’t fix them by February despite representing it would, the complaint said.

The suit also targets Meazure’s failure to deliver enough remote exams, causing the State Bar to have to pay for in-person spots, and weeks of confusing communication with applicants over where and when they’d take the test.

Meazure stalled in sending the Bar reports and data on problems applicants encountered with the exam, and the info the Bar received late is incomplete, the complaint said.

“Meazure disputes that the State Bar is entitled to an audit and stated its refusal to submit to one,” the complaint said.

The State Bar’s executive director Leah Wilson announced on Friday she would retire when her term concludes in July. The Bar is considering remedies for applicants who said their careers were derailed and their physical and mental health suffered after the botched exam.

A Meazure Learning spokesperson said in an emailed statement the “lawsuit is an attempt by the State Bar to shift the blame for its flawed development process for the February exam.”

“We proudly stand behind our track record of reliably administering over 4 million exams annually and supporting more than 1,000 organizations across industries over the course of our more than 20 years in the testing industry,” the spokesperson said. “We recognize the importance of a smooth exam experience, and we regret that some test takers had issues during the February 2025 California Bar Exam.”

Hueston Hennigan LLP and in-house counsel represent the State Bar.

The case is State Bar of California v. ProctorU, Inc., Cal. Super. Ct., 5/5/25.