LBExamThere is a published answer to “what score do I need to pass”, and it is that you have to ask. Page 31 of Get Licensed to Build, the Contractors State License Board’s (CSLB) own applicant guide, answers the question by pointing the reader at CSLB and saying the figure is different for each examination. CSLB publishes no question count either. The two documents that would carry these figures are CSLB’s Examinations Frequently Asked Questions and the Law and Business study guide, form 13E-LAW (03-2026); both were downloaded again and matched the committed copies byte for byte, and neither one has a count or a percentage in it. The 60 to 73 percent and the 115, 120 or 150 you will meet elsewhere are other people’s numbers.
Where the two figures would be, if CSLB published them
Each of these four CSLB documents was downloaded again and hashed against the copy this site holds, so what follows is what they say today.
| Document | What it says about the two figures |
|---|---|
| Examinations Frequently Asked Questions | Gives the time, the delivery and the format. No count and no percentage: the page carries no percent figure at all |
| Law and Business study guide, 13E-LAW (03-2026) | Three pages: the seven sections and their approximate shares, three sample questions, a reference list. No count, no percentage |
| Get Licensed to Build | Answers the pass question at page 31, by telling the applicant to ask CSLB, because it varies for each exam |
| 2023 Sunset Report | Gives candidate volumes and pass rates by fiscal year. No count, no percentage |
The study guide is the one to weigh. Three pages is everything CSLB hands a candidate about the shape of this paper, and neither figure is on any of them. How the Law and Business exam works sets out the rest of what those documents do say: the time, the closed-book rule, the four choices and how a sitting runs.
Why there is no single pass mark to publish
The pass mark is not a round number CSLB has chosen to keep quiet. It is set per examination, as part of building that examination.
CSLB told the legislature how. The account is at page 101 of the 2023 Sunset Report, in a 2018 response the board reproduced there: the examination development process runs every five to seven years, includes an occupational analysis, and determines the passing standard that candidates must meet. Page 50 describes that occupational analysis in the 2023 filing’s own voice. It runs for all 47 of the board’s examinations. CSLB collaborates with subject matter experts, compiles statistical analyses, and takes input from applicants surveyed after their examination. For the Law and Business examination the last one was August 2020, and the report gives 2025 as the target for the next.
The standard therefore belongs to the version of the paper you sit, and the only published route to the number is the one CSLB’s guide gives: ask CSLB.
The numbers that circulate
Five different pass marks and four different answers on the question count turn up on other sites and in forum threads about this exam, and no two of them agree. This site keeps a record of what circulates, as evidence of what is being said rather than as evidence of what is true.
- Pass mark. 60, 65, 67, 72 and 73 percent have all been asserted, one of them on a commercial school’s own page.
- Question count. 115 shows up most often, with 120, 150, and one thread guessing anywhere between 60 and 200.
None of those came from CSLB, and this site does not repeat any of them as the answer. A question-count figure turns up in CSLB’s published record, and it is not about this exam. A consultant report appended to the board’s 2023 Sunset Report says at page 441 that CSLB develops a bank of 800 questions for specialty contractor exams, randomly selects 100 for a test session, and renews the bank every five years. The Law and Business paper is a different examination, with no count published for it.
What a score report gives a candidate
A pass report does not show the overall score. A fail report carries three figures: the overall score, the number of items answered correctly, and how you did in each section. Get Licensed to Build says at page 32 that the sections a failing candidate is scored against are the ones the study guide’s Content of the Examination lists, which is the same seven that carry the published weights.
That makes a failing candidate the only person CSLB gives a score to, and the score is their own result, not the line they missed. Nobody can work the pass mark backwards from a pair of reports either, because the passing one does not carry a score to compare against.
The published number that does help
CSLB does publish how many people pass, and unlike the pass mark it is on the record with a year attached. Table 8 of the 2023 Sunset Report gives the Law and Business examination on its own:
| Fiscal year | Candidates | Overall pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| FY 2019/20 | 14,844 | 52% |
| FY 2020/21 | 16,724 | 58% |
| FY 2021/22 | 25,061 | 54% |
| FY 2022/23 | 17,737 | 57% |
More than four candidates in ten do not pass on a given sitting, and no other examination in Table 8 draws candidates in these numbers: the four highest counts anywhere in that table are this paper’s four years, and the largest for any other examination is B General Building’s 10,642 in FY 2021/22. The gap between first attempts and retakes is wide across the board’s examinations as a whole, 71 percent against 37 percent in FY 2022/23. At page 102 the board explains the gap by who sits a retake rather than by a harder paper: nothing caps the number of attempts, so the same candidate is counted again each time. 44 percent of that year’s failures were at least a second sitting, some of them an eighth.
What to study against instead
With no pass mark to aim at, the only published target is the blueprint. The study guide gives the seven sections and their approximate shares of the paper: Business Organization and Licensing 13 percent, Business Finances 15 percent, Employment Requirements 20 percent, Insurance and Liens 12 percent, Contract Requirements and Execution 21 percent, Public Works 5 percent, Safety 14 percent.
Practice on this site is split by those same weights, so a section that is a fifth of the exam is a fifth of a run. What is on the Law and Business exam takes the seven sections in turn and says what sits under each.
Contract Requirements and Execution and Employment Requirements are 41 percent of the paper between them, more than twice Public Works and Insurance and Liens combined. Wherever the line for a pass sits, those two move a result further than anything else on the blueprint.
Sources
- CSLB Examinations Frequently Asked Questions, committed in the corpus as a document of
cslb-applicant-pages - Get Licensed to Build, CSLB, pages 31 and 32, counted as the pages of the file, which the document prints as 25 and 26
- Law and Business study guide, form 13E-LAW (03-2026), CSLB, pages 1 to 3
- CSLB 2023 Sunset Report, cited by the page numbers the report prints in its own running foot: the examinations passage at 50, Table 8 at 56, the first-attempt and retake table at 57, the board’s 2018 response on examination passage rates at 101 and its current response at 102, and the appended consultant report at 441. Committed in the corpus as
cslb-sunset-review-report-2023 - The circulating pass marks and counts are recorded in two research files kept in this site’s repository, a search and forum demand study and a record of what other sites assert. They establish that the figures circulate and nothing else, and no claim on this page rests on either