If a testing accommodations application is denied in whole or in part, applicants may request review of the decision by the Committee of Bar Examiners once for each exam cycle. However, if you submit your initial application less than 60 days before the filing deadline, there may not be enough time after receiving a decision to appeal for the upcoming administration of the exam. Requests for review must be submitted through the Applicant Portal no later than the first business day of the month in which that exam is scheduled to be administered. Launch a case via the Applicant Portal by clicking the Request for Review link on the right side of the page, under the column labeled Application Action Link. You must complete the required questions, including a statement of the reason you do not agree with the initial determination, and upload any documentation you wish for the committee to consider.

You can view your testing location by accessing the corresponding examination case in your Applicant Portal. Your exam location will be listed in the Details tab, underneath the Examination Event Information. Once your Admittance Ticket is available, you can view your assigned testing accommodations site on the ticket. The ticket will list the general location of the exam. Upon arrival at the test site, you may need to check in at the staff table to receive your room assignment.

Applicants who are eligible for the PLP as first-time takers were notified by the Office of Admissions in June 2025 via email. 

You may also verify your eligibility via the status screen in the Applicant Portal. There are multiple PLP programs listed in your applicant portal. Make sure you are checking your eligibility for the PLP for first-time takers of the February bar exam, and not the expansion program also listed on the portal.

Yes. Applicants who are eligible for the PLP as first-time takers, similar to the PLLs who qualified to participate as 2020 graduates, must pass the bar exam and meet all other requirements for admission to practice law. Participation in the PLP for these cohorts is not a pathway to licensure; however, it does provide valuable real-world experience practicing law under the supervision of an experienced California attorney. In response to a prior survey, the vast majority (89%) of the PLLs agreed or strongly agreed that the program was valuable in preparing them for the practice of law.

No. The license is suspended to give the PLL the opportunity to contest the determination. If no request for review or appeal is timely filed, the provisional license is terminated. If a request for review or appeal is timely filed, the provisional license will remain suspended until the final outcome, unless the provisional license is terminated as a result of other factors (such as failing to timely meet other program requirements).

Rule 9.40 of the California Rules of Court does not set a limit on the number of appearances an out-of-state attorney may make as PHV. However, the court determines if the applicant is ineligible for PHV due to multiple appearances.

Unfortunately, you cannot. The most recent amendments to rule 9.49 provide that the recently granted program extension applies to those 2020 law graduates who were admitted to the Original PLP prior to December 31, 2022.

No. An applicant does not need to live in California so long as they are employed by or volunteering with—or have a conditional offer of employment or to volunteer with a legal employer, as defined—with an office in California and are supervised by an eligible California lawyer.

While the PLP recognizes that some PLLs may engage in unpaid volunteer work, nothing in the program purports to exempt employers from any applicable employment and wage and hour laws. Employers interested in supervising a PLL in unpaid volunteer work should determine whether such an arrangement is legally permissible given the specific factual circumstances and should follow all applicable laws as required. Also, refer to the California Lawyers Association’s webpage about employing and paying a PLL.

No. The license is suspended to give the PLL the opportunity to contest the determination. If no request for review or appeal is timely filed, the PLL is terminated. If a request for review or appeal is timely filed, the PLL will remain suspended until the final outcome, unless the PLL is terminated as a result of other factors (such as failing to timely meet other program requirements).

Applications are considered individually. Processing times for applications are affected by variables such as the relative complexity of an applicant’s history. It may take 180 days or more from the date the application is deemed complete to finish the processing of a moral character application. You may submit a moral character application after you meet the eligibility requirements by commencing the study of law and registering with the State Bar as a law student or an attorney applicant. Applicants are encouraged to file a moral character application before the start of their last year of law study.

Yes. If you have been found to have violated a college, university, or law school honor code; or have been dropped, suspended, warned, placed on disciplinary probation, expelled, or requested to resign or allowed to resign in lieu of discipline by any college, university, or law school; or otherwise have been subjected to discipline by any such institution or been requested or advised by any such institution to discontinue your studies, you must disclose the incident on the moral character application.

The moral character application requires that at least one of your personal references be an attorney; the attorney may be retired or inactive. If you do not know an attorney who knows you well enough to comment on your character, you may submit the name and contact information of a nonattorney who knows you well enough to complete a questionnaire concerning your character. Neither the attorney nor other personal references may be related to you by blood or marriage, nor can they be reported as a supervisor under the employment section of the moral character application or as a verifying reference under the self-employment section of the moral character application.

No. You are only required to disclose the addresses of the places you have lived within the past eight years, including college and law school residences. If a residence gap is identified due to your extended periods of travel abroad, please report this information in the “Accounting for Gaps in Residence History” section of the moral character application.

Yes. A copy of your moral character application can be requested by submitting a Service Request Form with the applicable fee as a General Request in the Applicant Portal. Please allow approximately 30−45 days to process the request.

All funds received by a lawyer in connection with legal representation in which a client or a third party has an interest are funds that must be deposited in a trust account. Examples include advances for fees received from clients (until they are earned by the lawyer), funds of others that are being held for disbursement at a later time, personal injury awards, and litigation settlements. 

Client and third-party funds must be held in either an IOLTA or non-IOLTA type client trust account. The definitions of each are as follows: 

IOLTA—An attorney or firm that holds funds for a client or third party that are nominal in amount or are held for too short a time to earn interest income for the benefit of the client or third party in excess of the cost to hold the funds in a separate account is required to place those funds in an IOLTA account. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6211, subd. (a)). A California IOLTA account must be established and maintained with an eligible institution that offers IOLTA accounts that meet certain requirements. The State Bar website has a list of IOLTA-eligible institutions. 

Non-IOLTA—An attorney or firm that holds funds for a client or the benefit of a single party in a matter that is large enough to generate more than nominal interest, or an attorney who holds funds for a single party for an extended period must hold such funds in a non-IOLTA trust account. An example would be funds held by the administrator of a family trust. The attorney must use a non-IOLTA account because these entrusted funds will earn interest in excess of the costs to maintain the account. The interest earned goes to the client or third party. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6211, subd. (b)).

When registering a client trust account as part of CTAPP, you must identify the trust account type. The account will either be IOLTA or non-IOLTA; an account will never be both. The account type was established at the time the account was opened and does not change. A California IOLTA must bear the State Bar of California’s Taxpayer Identification Number to ensure that interest or dividends generated by this account will be paid to the State Bar’s IOLTA program. A non-IOLTA will bear the Social Security Number or Tax ID number of the client or third party.

If you have already completed your CTAPP reporting for the current period and you want to change an answer before the reporting deadline, you can access the CTAPP reporting page by logging in to My State Bar Profile. On your Client Trust Reporting page (third blue tab at the top), click the CTAPP Annual Reporting tile. You can click through the pop-up warning that says you have already submitted your CTAPP Annual Reporting declaration and that you will have to resubmit your declaration, or you will be out of compliance. NOTE: Even if you make no changes, be sure to click all the way through and resubmit your declaration.

A lawyer must report any changes to their client trust account to the State Bar within 30 days. A lawyer may add or close an account using the 30-day reporting window in My State Bar Profile, and a firm administrator may add or close an account or add or remove an attorney from an account through the 30-day reporting window in the Agency Billing platform. When a firm administrator adds a new attorney or removes an attorney from a trust account, they provide the effective date and reason for the disassociation as part of the reporting.

The trust account reporting system does not allow changes to routing numbers or account numbers of previously registered trust accounts. To report this change, please close the registration of the existing account by clicking the “Update Account Information” link and then entering, in the “Edit Close Date” tab, the date the account was changed to the new routing and account number. You will also need to enter the balance on that date. 

You can then register the account with the new routing number and account number. In the open date field, please enter the date the account was changed to the new routing and account number. Please be sure to enter the bank balance of the new account as of December 31.

Unless exempt (see FAQ 2.3, above), California licensees, regardless of where they practice, must still comply with the CTAPP reporting requirements. A licensee who was responsible for client funds and funds entrusted by others under the provisions of rule 1.15 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct must, annually, register each and every trust account in which the licensee held such funds at any time during the reportable time period by identifying account numbers and financial institutions in a manner prescribed by the State Bar for such reporting. There is no exception for out-of-state accounts.