Bar exam results do not come out on a national date: release dates are set state by state.
The two schedules this page documents put February results in spring and July results in fall — California has scheduled its July 2026 results for November 6, 2026 and its February 2027 results for April 30, 2027, while Arizona releases February results by the second Friday in May and July results by the second Friday in October.
When are bar results released?
There is no national results calendar to check.
Bar-result release dates are set state by state, not nationally — and that division of labor runs through the whole exam: the individual jurisdictions administer the exams and grade the written portions, while NCBE develops the exam components and scores the multiple-choice portions.
In both documented states, the body that releases the result is the one that admitted the applicant to the exam — not a national testing organization.
The documented examples show how differently two states schedule the same wait.
In California, bar admission is administered by the State Bar of California's Office of Admissions, which has scheduled July 2026 results for November 6, 2026 and February 2027 results for April 30, 2027.
In Arizona, the Arizona Supreme Court's Attorney Admissions Unit releases February results by the second Friday in May and July results by the second Friday in October — standing windows rather than fixed dates.
Both documented schedules point the same direction — February results in spring, July results in fall — but that is a pattern from two states' published schedules, not a rule every jurisdiction follows.
Your state's date is the one its admitting authority publishes.
If you are still mapping the exam itself, the bar exam overview covers the components and who runs them.
Release dates by state
Here are the two release schedules this page documents, read from the boards' own pages in October 2026:
| Jurisdiction | Exam | Scheduled release |
|---|---|---|
| California | July 2026 | November 6, 2026 |
| California | February 2027 | April 30, 2027 |
| Arizona | February exams | By the second Friday in May |
| Arizona | July exams | By the second Friday in October |
The table is deliberately short: it holds the two schedules this page documents, and nothing else.
New York, Texas and every other jurisdiction's dates live with their own admitting authority, and this page will not guess at them.
Check the admissions site of the board where you sat; it publishes the date that governs your application.
Dates move — confirm yours before you plan around one
How are results published?
California's documented route has two steps.
Individual results go to applicants through the Applicant Portal, and the public pass list follows several days later.
Those are separate disclosures: your individual result in the portal, then a public list of who passed.
The same State Bar results hub is also where California posts past exam questions and selected answers free on its website — worth knowing if you are waiting on a result while planning a future attempt or mentoring someone who is about to sit.
Treat California as an example, not a template: the research confirmed its publication route, and no other jurisdiction's.
How your board posts results — portal, letter, list — is on its admissions pages.
What is in a score report?
What the research documents is what the number means in each state, not a universal report format.
The common thread in the documented examples is a single scale score measured against that jurisdiction's passing threshold.
In California, the bar exam is scored on a total scale score out of 2000, and 1390 is the passing score — applicants landing between 1350 and 1389 after the first read get a second read.
Arizona, a UBE jurisdiction, uses a passing score of 270 out of 400 for exams from July 2023 through February 2027; its passing score from July 2027 onward had not been announced as of October 2026.
The finer detail your report may carry — how the written and multiple-choice components combine, whether section-level detail is shown — is described by each board's grading materials; the research documented no common report format across states.
The State Bar's grading pages cover California's methodology, and Arizona's admissions FAQ carries its threshold; your own board's admissions materials are the authority for what your report shows.
Can you work as an attorney while waiting?
Not in the licensed sense: until your state admits you, a pending result is not a law license.
Working in law before full admission, though, is not hypothetical — Arizona builds a structured route for it.
The state's Lawyer Apprentice Program lets applicants who score 260–269 on the UBE, and meet Arizona's other attorney-admission requirements, practise for two years under a supervising Arizona lawyer in rural Arizona or a public law firm.
That is a state-specific bridge with its own terms, open only once a near-miss score is in hand — not a general work permit for the wait.
Short of practicing, some roles are built around the wait: federal "law clerk trainee" appointments are for law graduates (or people with equivalent experience) pending bar admission, and may not exceed 14 months.
The law clerk career guide covers the law clerk role more broadly.
Whether a firm will hold a seat open pending your result is employer-specific; ask directly rather than assuming either answer.
If you are waiting on a result right now, the useful date is the one your board publishes — confirm it before you plan start dates or a swearing-in around it.
Career information, not legal advice. Release dates, scoring and pre-admission work rules are set jurisdiction by jurisdiction and change; confirm the ones that apply to you with the admitting authority named above — for these examples, the State Bar of California and the Arizona Supreme Court's Attorney Admissions Unit.