California’s State Bar has cut a $5.25 million deal with Meazure Learning to settle the fallout from the glitch-filled February 2025 bar exam. On top of the cash payment, the vendor will walk away from a $1.36 million invoice, and the Bar will drop its lawsuit once the money clears, closing the books on more than a year of legal wrangling and a bruising public audit.
According to the State Bar of California, Meazure, which was operating as ProctorU for the exam, agreed to the payout and the invoice waiver, and the Bar will dismiss its complaint with prejudice within two business days of receiving payment. In the Bar’s announcement, Board Chair José Cisneros and General Counsel Ellin Davtyan called the settlement a reasonable, appropriate, and acceptable resolution that helps recoup costs the agency racked up responding to the debacle. The statement also credits outside counsel at Hueston Hennigan and the Office of General Counsel with helping secure the agreement.
Measure, for its part, is not conceding any fault. The company denies any liability or wrongdoing and says it settled to avoid the mounting expense and distraction of a drawn out court fight, according to the Daily Journal. The firm pointed to its long history of administering millions of exams each year and cast the deal as a practical way to move on.
Problems That Led Here
The February 2025 bar exam was plagued by technical and administrative failures, from platform crashes to shaky proctoring, that the California State Auditor found cost the State Bar at least $5.1 million. The auditor also estimated roughly $4 million in lost revenue from refunds and fee waivers tied to the chaos.
Bar records show its board approved a contract with Meazure in September 2024 not to exceed $4.1 million, according to a staff report posted on DocumentCloud. The auditor later concluded that the agency went forward without fully defining its business requirements before signing that deal, a misstep that loomed large once the test imploded.
Settlement Terms and Data Transfer
Under the settlement, Meazure must turn over exam-related data to the State Bar within 30 days. That includes test-taker records, exam responses, proctor notes and video, all to be delivered on encrypted media, Bloomberg Law reported. Once the Bar confirms it can access the material, Meazure is required to delete the data from its own systems.
The parties also granted each other broad mutual releases that cover claims connected to the contract and the disputed exams, according to the Bloomberg Law reporting, effectively ending their direct fight even as other litigation continues around them.
Legal Fallout
While the State Bar’s settlement closes its civil suit against Meazure, it does not touch private lawsuits filed by examinees who say they were harmed by the exam fiasco. Federal class actions have been consolidated in the Northern District of California under the master docket “In re: ProctorU California Bar Exam Litigation,” and those combined cases are still moving forward before Judge Jon S. Tigar, according to federal court records accessible through Midpage.
What’s Next
The State Bar says it has now pulled off two smooth in-person exams since February 2025 and is following through on auditor recommendations as it works on longer-term reforms, according to a State Bar of California response to the state auditor.
Looking further ahead, the Bar’s board has recommended adopting the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ NextGen Uniform Bar Exam starting in July 2028, a shift officials say will bring more standardization and lower the risk that a single vendor problem tanks an entire administration. A new California-specific component is expected to follow soon after.
For now, the Meazure settlement closes one high-profile chapter but leaves bigger questions hanging over how to run a reliable, fair bar exam in the nation’s largest legal market. Examinees, lawmakers and Bar officials will be watching both the consolidated private cases and the NextGen rollout plans to see how they reshape the future of law licensure in California.
