The software company behind California’s troubled February 2025 bar exam has agreed to pay $1.35 million to resolve a proposed class action brought by applicants who endured crashes, login problems, and other technical failures during the high-stakes licensing test. Under the proposed settlement, approximately 4,100 examinees would receive a full refund of the $153 laptop fee they were required to pay to use software provided by Meazure Learning, also known as ProctorU.
The agreement was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and still requires court approval. If approved, it would allow applicants to recover directly from the company that provided the testing platform, more than a year and a half after an exam that drew widespread complaints from aspiring lawyers across California.
For many of those applicants, the problems unfolded during an exam that can determine when, or whether, someone begins practicing law. Some candidates reported being unable to log in when their testing sessions were scheduled to begin, while others encountered frozen screens, crashes, error messages, or failures involving basic functions during essays, multiple-choice questions, and the performance test. The State Bar later acknowledged widespread technical and proctoring problems affecting both remote and in-person test takers.
The class action was one of several lawsuits filed after the February 25 and 26, 2025 exam. Three related federal cases were eventually consolidated as In re: ProctorU California Bar Exam Litigation before U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar.
The applicants argued that they had paid for testing software that failed to perform as promised. Their complaint alleged that Meazure represented that its platform would allow candidates to complete the exam and use functions including highlighting, note-taking, timers, spellcheck, and copy-and-paste tools, but that crashes and other problems prevented many examinees from consistently accessing those features.
The lawsuit asserted claims including breach of express and implied warranties, violations of California’s Consumers Legal Remedies Act and claims under the state’s Unfair Competition Law. The plaintiffs also accused Meazure of failing to disclose known platform problems and argued that examinees would not have paid the same technology fee if they had known how the system would perform.
Meazure disputed the claims and moved to dismiss. The company argued in part that its one-time-use testing software was an intangible item that did not qualify as a “good” or “service” under the California consumer-protection laws relied on by the plaintiffs. The parties ultimately moved toward settlement rather than obtaining a final ruling on that defense.
The proposed $1.35 million agreement would provide straightforward relief to most class members: repayment of the required $153 laptop charge. The settlement fund would also cover other court-approved payments, including up to $450,000 in attorneys’ fees, nearly $28,000 in litigation costs, and proposed $10,000 service awards for each of the seven named plaintiffs.
Any money remaining after distributions would go to the California Lawyers Foundation, a nonprofit focused on access to justice and diversity in the legal profession. Those payments are not yet final because Tigar must first determine whether the settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate.
A hearing on preliminary approval is scheduled for January 27, 2027. If the agreement clears that stage, class members would ordinarily receive notice and an opportunity to review the terms, object, or take other action permitted under the settlement before the court considers final approval.
The new settlement is separate from the much larger agreement Meazure reached with the State Bar of California in July. The State Bar sued the company in May 2025 for fraud, negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract, alleging that Meazure overstated its ability to administer the newly designed exam.
The agency said the vendor had promised 99.982% platform availability, capacity to handle as many as 25,000 simultaneous test takers, and rapid technical support when problems occurred. The litigation became more contentious after discovery, when the State Bar amended its complaint and said internal Meazure documents showed the company had questioned its own readiness even as it assured California officials it could successfully administer the exam.
Meazure disputed those allegations. The two sides later settled the case for $5.25 million, and the company also agreed to waive an outstanding $1.36 million invoice that the State Bar otherwise would have owed.
That earlier money went to the State Bar rather than directly to February 2025 examinees. The proposed $1.35 million class settlement differs because it resolves litigation brought on behalf of people who used Meazure’s platform to take the exam and would return the laptop fee directly to eligible applicants.
The distinction has caused understandable confusion because both cases grew out of the same exam and involved the same vendor. One resolved the State Bar’s claims against Meazure, while the other addresses the financial loss claimed by individual examinees.
California’s February 2025 test represented a major change in how the state administered its bar exam. For the first time, candidates could take the exam remotely or at test centers using a new hybrid model, and approximately 4,100 applicants used Meazure’s platform.
The State Bar hoped the new system would make the exam more accessible while reducing administration costs. Instead, applicants reported technical problems severe enough that the State Bar’s Board of Trustees ordered an independent investigation within days, while the California Supreme Court separately requested an expedited report on what candidates experienced.
A subsequent California State Auditor report found substantial problems in the State Bar’s exam preparation. The audit said the agency contracted with Meazure without first establishing complete business requirements or criteria for measuring the vendor’s performance.
The report also found that the State Bar knew of computer freezes, crashes, and error messages during a November 2024 pretest but did not ensure the underlying problems were corrected before the February exam. Post-exam survey results reflected how widespread the difficulties had become, with 57% of respondents reporting computer freezes, 53% reporting crashes, and 44% reporting error messages.
The State Bar ultimately made significant scoring adjustments after the exam. According to the auditor, those changes increased the pass rate from roughly 36% to about 65%, and the agency also provided remedies for affected applicants, including fee waivers for certain future exams.
The proposed class settlement does not attempt to compensate each applicant individually for every consequence they may have experienced. Study time, stress, delayed employment, disrupted concentration, and potential effects on exam performance can vary dramatically from one person to another, while the $153 technology fee was a common and easily identifiable charge paid by applicants using the platform.
Refunding that amount therefore provides the same measurable form of relief across the proposed class. It also gives the case a cleaner path to resolution than trying to place a dollar value on every disruption experienced during the exam.
The litigation illustrates how technology companies can face consumer claims when software becomes an essential part of a professional licensing process. For the February 2025 applicants, the Meazure platform was more than an optional online service; it was the system through which thousands of aspiring lawyers were expected to complete one of the most consequential examinations of their careers.
If approved, the proposed settlement would bring the applicants’ federal class action closer to an end while adding to the financial consequences already stemming from the failed rollout. Meazure has agreed to pay $5.25 million to the State Bar, give up another $1.36 million in unpaid invoices, and now contribute $1.35 million to resolve the applicant class action.
For the roughly 4,100 examinees covered by the latest agreement, the proposed resolution is more personal: a return of the $153 they paid for technology that many say made an already difficult exam considerably harder.
A federal judge in San Francisco has granted final approval to Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with authors and publishers whose copyrighted books were downloaded from pirate libraries as the artificial intelligence company built the systems behind its Claude chatbot.U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved the agreement Monday, resolving class claims... Read More »
23andMe has reached an $18 million settlement with 41 states and the District of Columbia over claims that cybersecurity failures allowed hackers to access information tied to 6.9 million customers in a 2023 data breach.The agreement resolves government claims against the former parent company of 23andMe, now known as Chrome... Read More »
18 Kentucky bar applicants are recovering from whiplash after 15 of them were told they had passed the October Kentucky bar exam when they, in fact, had not. Conversely, three others were told they had failed the bar exam when they had actually passed. The erroneous results are being blamed... Read More »
In a time when seeking a college degree equates to willfully taking on long-term debt, the merits of formal education had already come into question before the pandemic. Recently, in the light of COVID-19 shutdowns, the U.S. university system has evoked more than the usual begrudging frustration from paying student... Read More »
The U.S. Supreme Court has been petitioned to examine whether the $667 million awarded in legal fees to plaintiffs' attorneys in a $2.7 billion class-action settlement with Blue Cross Blue Shield is excessively high. The settlement addressed accusations against the insurance giant for overcharging millions of subscribers nationwide due to... Read More »
