How Do You Get Admitted to the Tennessee Bar?

The Tennessee Board of Law Examiners administers admission to the Tennessee bar under Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 7, which governs the licensing process for all applicants.

The Board sets the application rules, deadlines and fees, and it — not NCBE, which coordinates the national exams Tennessee uses — decides who is admitted.

Tennessee gives the Uniform Bar Exam, which it first administered in February 2019.

The UBE is the exam NCBE coordinates: the Multistate Essay Examination, two Multistate Performance Test tasks and the Multistate Bar Examination, given over two days — the MEE and MPT on the Tuesday and the MBE on the last Wednesday of February and July.

Tennessee's minimum passing UBE score is 270.

Tennessee does not require an ABA-accredited J.D. in every case.

Graduates of Tennessee law schools the Board approves may sit for the exam, and graduates of other unaccredited in-person law schools may qualify for admission by examination after passing a bar exam in their home state.

Like each UBE jurisdiction, Tennessee independently decides who may sit and what legal education it accepts, so the Board's rules — not NCBE's — control.

Our research did not capture the Board's complete eligibility checklist, so read current Rule 7 and the Board's exam pages before you apply.

Tennessee requires a scaled MPRE score of 82, set by Board policy under Rule 7.

The MPRE is NCBE's two-hour, 60-question multiple-choice exam measuring knowledge of established standards of lawyer conduct, offered three times a year.

MPRE scaled scores run from 50 to 150, and each jurisdiction sets its own passing score.

Character and fitness investigations are part of admission in every jurisdiction, and Tennessee uses NCBE's investigation process: comity and UBE-transfer applicants complete an NCBE character and fitness application for background investigation.

NCBE runs the investigation but makes no decision and gives no recommendation — the Board decides who is fit to practice in Tennessee.

Questions about how your own history will be weighed belong with the Board of Law Examiners, not with NCBE.

Yes, through two routes.

The first is comity, Tennessee's admission without examination for lawyers already admitted by bar exam elsewhere: the Board requires recent active practice, but its comity page and the text of Rule 7 state different practice-year figures, so confirm the current requirement with the Board before you rely on either.

A comity application costs $1,400, includes an NCBE character and fitness application, and — like every applicant route in Tennessee — requires the Tennessee Law Course.

The second route is a transferred score: Tennessee accepts a legacy UBE score of 270 or higher or a NextGen UBE score of 620 or higher, valid for 3 years from the Tennessee grade-release date.

Each UBE jurisdiction's passing score applies to transferees as well as its own examinees, and a transferred score does not skip the character and fitness review.

The exam application fee is $725 for a first-time or re-examination application, effective March 1, 2025; a UBE score transfer application is $675 and a comity application is $1,400, with the $15 Tennessee Law Course on top of every route.

Final deadlines are May 1 for the July exam and December 1 for the February exam, with final completion May 20 and December 20, and the Board accepts no new applications after the deadline.

On the most recent results in our research, 710 examinees sat the July 2025 Tennessee exam and 73% passed overall, 81% of first-time test-takers; the February 2026 exam had a 44% overall pass rate and 61% first-time.

July 2026 results were not yet posted when we read NCBE's table in October 2026, so check the Board or NCBE for current results.

To complete admission, new Tennessee lawyers take the oath within 1 year of the grade release on the exam route or within 2 years of approval on the transfer and comity routes, and they register with the Board of Professional Responsibility.

Tennessee plans to first administer the NextGen UBE in July 2027, with the last legacy UBE in February 2027.

NextGen scores are reported as one number on a 500–750 scale, and NCBE says most jurisdictions have set NextGen passing scores between 610 and 620.

NCBE cautions that legacy 400-scale scores and NextGen scores should not be compared directly: Tennessee's 270 is a legacy-scale minimum, and its NextGen transfer minimum is 620.

Every Tennessee applicant — examination, UBE transfer, comity and military-spouse applicants alike — must complete the Tennessee Law Course, a $15 course covering areas of Tennessee law the UBE does not address.

Tennessee is one of the UBE jurisdictions that adds a state-specific law component on top of the national exam, so a transferred score alone never completes an application.