How Do You Get Admitted to the Nebraska Bar?

Nebraska bar admission is handled by the Nebraska State Bar Commission through the Nebraska Supreme Court's Attorney Services Division in Lincoln.

NCBE develops the bar exams and scores the multiple-choice portions, while each jurisdiction administers its own exam and grades the written portions.

Nebraska gives the Uniform Bar Examination, the UBE that NCBE coordinates: the Multistate Essay Examination, two Multistate Performance Test tasks and the Multistate Bar Examination.

On the legacy UBE, the MBE is weighted 50%, the MEE 30% and the MPT 20%, and total scores are reported on a 400-point scale.

Nebraska's minimum UBE score is 270, and Nebraska has no Nebraska-specific law component.

Each UBE jurisdiction, Nebraska included, sets its own rules for who may sit for the exam and be admitted, including educational requirements, retake limits and how long incoming scores are accepted.

Our research for this page did not confirm the specifics of Nebraska's eligibility rules, so the Nebraska State Bar Commission's application materials are the place to check before you rely on anything here.

Nebraska requires an MPRE scaled score of 85 or higher.

The MPRE is a two-hour, 60-question multiple-choice exam offered three times a year; it measures knowledge of established standards of lawyer conduct, not personal ethical values, and scaled scores run from 50 to 150, with each jurisdiction setting its own passing score.

Nebraska's fee schedule makes the requirement concrete: applicants who file without a passing MPRE score pay a $615 application fee rather than $515.

NCBE typically releases MPRE scores within five weeks of the exam.

Character and fitness investigations are part of the admission process in every jurisdiction, and NCBE runs investigations for many but not all of them.

NCBE makes no character and fitness decisions — each jurisdiction decides who is fit to practise.

Our research for this page did not establish how Nebraska's review works: who conducts it, what it asks about or how long it takes.

Nebraska bar admission is handled by the Nebraska State Bar Commission, so its published rules are where questions about your own history belong.

Yes, in two ways.

Nebraska offers admission on motion for lawyers with 3 of the past 5 years of practice, per NCBE's chart of Nebraska's rules.

Nebraska also accepts transferred UBE scores up to 5 years old — 270 on the legacy scale, 620 on the NextGen scale — and each UBE jurisdiction's passing score applies both to its own examinees and to people transferring a score in.

A transferred score does not skip character and fitness: the receiving jurisdiction runs its own review.

The fee schedule we read lists a $950 on-motion application covering UBE-motion, non-UBE-motion and practice-time-motion applicants, but the table's layout made it ambiguous which fee belongs to which row, so confirm the current amount with the Attorney Services Division.

Nebraska's first-time bar exam application fee is $515, including a $25 payment-processing fee.

Filing without a passing MPRE score costs $615 rather than $515, retaking the immediate next exam costs $250, and there is a $100 laptop fee.

Applications are due March 1 for the July exam and October 15 for the February exam, and late applications are not accepted.

After admission, lawyers pay a mandatory annual assessment directly to the Nebraska Supreme Court: $98 for active and $49 for inactive lawyers.

Our research did not establish a current Nebraska pass rate or how long results take; for both, the Nebraska State Bar Commission's Attorney Services Division is the place to check.

Nebraska's last legacy UBE administration is February 2027, and its first NextGen UBE is July 2027, with a passing score of 620 — NCBE's adoption table, last updated September 25, 2026, lists Nebraska in the July 2027 wave.

The NextGen UBE runs over 1.5 days, two 3-hour sessions and then one more, taken on the examinee's own laptop at an in-person, proctored site.

Scores are reported as one number on a 500–750 scale, and NCBE says legacy and NextGen scores should not be compared directly and that most jurisdictions have set NextGen passing scores between 610 and 620, with Nebraska's 620 at the top of that range.

NextGen examinees also pay a $149 exam software and technology fee to NCBE, on top of Nebraska's application fee.