CA Bar

It is a two-day, in-person examination held at designated California test sites. Written sessions are delivered on applicants' personal laptops through ExamSoft, and the 200 multiple-choice questions come from the Multistate Bar Examination and are answered on a Scantron sheet by bubbling in responses with a No. 2 pencil. The State Bar publishes a separate scope document describing covered topics.

The California Bar Examination is administered twice each year, in February and July. The February 2027 exam takes place Tuesday, February 23, and Wednesday, February 24, 2027, in person at designated test sites. The July 2027 exam is scheduled for Tuesday, July 27, and Wednesday, July 28, 2027, with further information to be published later.

Yes. Applicant registration is the initial step, and other applications in the Applicant Portal - including the bar exam application, the moral character application, and testing accommodation requests - become accessible only after registration is approved. Registering as an applicant is not the same as applying to sit for the exam, and you cannot sit if the exam application is not submitted by the deadline.

A testing accommodation request is separate from the bar exam application and must be submitted in the Applicant Portal by the filing deadline. The State Bar encourages applicants with disabilities to file well in advance, because requests filed near the final deadline generally do not leave time to exhaust administrative remedies such as seeking review of a denial.

Results from the July 2026 exam are scheduled for release on October 30, 2026, through the Applicant Portal no later than 4:00 p.m. February 2027 results are scheduled for release on April 30, 2027, through the Applicant Portal. The exact release time is announced later, and the pass list is posted on the Examination Pass List webpage several days after results.

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover are accepted, and a 2.5 percent processing fee applies to all card transactions. ACH payments carry no processing fee but take up to seven days. Failed or rejected payments incur an administrative fee equal to the State Bar's banking institution fee or $20, whichever is greater, and the application is abandoned if full payment is not received within 14 days of notification.

The State Bar's exam page does not state a passing score or a difficulty rating; it points applicants to separate resources on exam grading and score scaling, and to published exam statistics. Rather than relying on unofficial benchmark numbers, treat the released past exam questions and answers and the content instructions by question type as your calibration tools.

The exam page itself does not set out retake eligibility, limits, or waiting periods, so those rules must be confirmed through the Applicant Portal, the Admissions FAQs, and the State Bar's rules rather than assumed. If you expect to retake, check the current filing deadlines and fees before the next administration's application window opens.

The State Bar publishes no prescribed study sequence. A sensible order is: read the scope of the examination and the content instructions by question type, then work released past exam questions and answers under timed conditions, then review the MBE preparation guidance for the 200 multiple-choice questions. The voluntary California Bar Exam Strategies and Stories Program offers recent test takers' preparation accounts.

Several failure modes come straight from the payment and filing rules: submitting a card or ACH payment that is later declined or returned, then missing the 14-day window so the application is abandoned; missing published deadlines and incurring late fees; and filing a testing accommodation request so late that a denial cannot be reviewed before the exam.