Over the last year California's bar exam has been scrutinized and vilified. But that hasn't stopped a crush of would-be Golden State lawyers from registering for the latest crucible, which starts Tuesday.

Applications to take the July bar exam topped 10,000 this year—an increase of more than 1,000 above July 2016's numbers, according to figures released by the state bar. Requests to take the general bar exam are up by 499 to 7,981. The number of out-of-state lawyers who applied to take next week's test surged to 2,051, up from 1,549 this time last year.

The application rush may be due to the fact that this year's exam is the first to be held over two days instead of the traditional three.