By Aron Solomon
The recent failure of the California Bar exam is more than just a logistical nightmare — it is a cautionary tale and a long-overdue orange flag reminding us about the risks of an overreliance on legal technology without sufficient oversight.
Thousands of applicants — who had spent years preparing for the test that would determine their ability to practice law — were met with a series of devastating technical failures. Software glitches, login issues and system crashes prevented them from completing the exam, leaving their professional futures in limbo. The fallout has been truly massive, triggering a class-action lawsuit, legislative inquiries, and widespread outrage among legal educators and bar candidates alike.
While legal technology has the power to transform the profession, this incident underscores a fundamental truth: Technology must be implemented thoughtfully, with rigorous checks and safeguards in place.
Otherwise, the legal industry risks making itself more vulnerable, not more efficient.
Legal tech’s path
Over a decade ago, I founded the first legal technology startup accelerator in the world. These were very early days and entirely full of hope. Legal technology was seen as the future of the legal profession, the answer to inefficiencies, high costs and barriers to access. The belief was that if we could just build the right platforms and tools, we could revolutionize the way law was practiced.
But there were two foundational problems in those early days: Many of the ideas simply weren’t very good, and the people running them were inexperienced. Even the promising ideas often failed because there wasn’t enough venture capital willing to back these unproven concepts.
Fast-forward to 2025, and the landscape looks very different. The people building legal technology today are smarter, more experienced and often come from the legal industry itself. The money is also there — venture capitalists now recognize the potential of legal tech and are willing to invest in it at serious levels. The problem is, despite these advances, some of the technology itself still isn’t good enough.
It fails at critical moments, as we just saw with the California Bar exam. That’s not just an inconvenience — it’s a crisis that affects real lives.
The introduction of new technology into high-stakes legal environments should never come at the expense of reliability. The State Bar of California’s decision to implement a new exam platform without sufficient testing or contingency plans is a textbook example of how legal tech can go wrong when it is not deployed responsibly.
The exam, which was developed in partnership with Meazure Learning, was meant to modernize the licensing process, making it more streamlined and accessible. Instead, it created chaos.
The repercussions have been enormous. The California Bar has now offered a retake in mid-March, acknowledging the gravity of the situation. But a retake does little to undo the stress, lost time and financial hardship suffered by those affected. Many examinees had already taken time off work, paid for expensive bar prep courses, and made personal sacrifices to be ready for the test. Now, they are being asked to do it all over again — not because they failed, but because the technology did.
Finding a solution
The silver lining of this dark cloud is that this failed whale of a Bar exam has finally ignited a desperately needed conversation about how legal technology should be integrated into professional systems.
The failure of the California Bar exam is not an isolated event, nor an unexpected and unforeseen one. We have seen similar issues before, including the disastrous rollout of remote proctoring software during the pandemic. AI-powered proctoring systems have repeatedly been shown to have biases, often flagging neurodivergent test-takers or those from certain racial backgrounds at disproportionately high rates. When technology is not properly vetted, it does not simply inconvenience people — it can derail careers and create systemic inequities.
The legal industry just can’t afford to adopt technology blindly because of how serious an industry the law is. While legal tech can absolutely be a powerful tool, it must be used with intelligence, caution and a broad and deep understanding of its limitations.
Every system that is implemented must be thoroughly tested under real-world conditions, with redundancy plans in place to account for potential failures. It is not enough to assume that technology will work just because it is new or highly funded. What we keep forgetting in the law is that the potential cost of technology failure is simply too high.
We also need to keep front of mind that legal technology absolutely has to be developed with human oversight at its core. The best legal outcomes still rely on human reasoning, discretion and ethical judgment — qualities that technology, no matter how advanced, cannot replicate.
The role of technology should be to enhance the capabilities of lawyers, judges and legal professionals, not to replace them or introduce unnecessary risks into the process.
This incident should serve not as an argument against legal technology, but rather a call for greater accountability in its implementation. The legal profession has to be a lot more proactive and careful to ensure that new technological systems are reliable, equitable and subject to rigorous scrutiny before being deployed.
This means not only better testing but also ongoing monitoring and the willingness to pull failing systems before they cause harm. And, yes, I know that many in the legal profession who are reading this remember those very early days when lawyers and law firms were extremely shy about using technology, even to the point where startups getting a pilot project at a law firm was so much work. That was, in retrospect, not entirely a bad thing, maybe it was a failsafe we need to find intelligent ways to revisit.
The California Bar exam disaster is an embarrassment for the institutions that allowed it to happen. But more importantly, it is a warning sign for the entire legal industry. If we do not learn from this, we will see more failures — failures that could impact not just test-takers, but clients, courts and the fundamental functioning of the legal system.
Technology can be a tremendous asset, but only when used intelligently. If we let our reliance on technology outpace our ability to control it, we will not be making the legal industry better — we will be making it weaker.
Aron Solomon is the chief strategy officer for Amplify. He holds a law degree and has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world. His writing has been featured in Newsweek, The Hill, Fast Company, Fortune, , CBS News, CNBC, USA Today and many other publications. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his op-ed in The Independent exposing the NFL’s “race-norming” policies.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the
Crunchbase Daily.
