[grepthisab]

Not totally true, it's legitimately harder. First time taker pass rate for even people going to tier 1 law schools is significantly lower than many other jurisdictions. The addition of allowing an expanded group to sit for it does bring down the overall passage rate though. Schools like Stanford aside, overall pass rate by school is in the mid-high 80s for any Tier 1 school for CA bar exam, whereas for a jurisdiction like NY, those same schools will pass 95%+.

It's well-known to be a harder bar exam (I have taken both it and NY, for an anecdotal data point).