The bar exam is the examination behind a U.S. law license: lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license, and the license usually requires passing the bar exam.
Each jurisdiction — a state, the District of Columbia or a territory — administers its own exam, while the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) develops the exams and scores their multiple-choice portions.
Passing, plus each jurisdiction's other admission requirements, is the usual path from law degree to law license.
What is the bar exam?
The bar exam is the examination between law school and licensed practice: BLS puts it plainly — lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license, which usually requires passing a bar examination.
There is no single national exam: bar exams are administered by the individual U.S. jurisdictions, which grade the written portions, while the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) develops the exam components and scores the multiple-choice portions.
The version NCBE coordinates is the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE), adopted by 42 jurisdictions since 2011.
Its official name is the Uniform Bar Examination — the universal bar exam is not what NCBE calls it — and it combines the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), two Multistate Performance Test (MPT) tasks and the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE).
The exam is in transition.
NCBE now calls the current version the legacy UBE and will administer it through February 2028, and between July 2026 and July 2028 most jurisdictions move from the MBE, MEE and MPT to the NextGen UBE.
This page is the overview of the exam itself: what is on it, who runs it, who can take it and what happens after you pass.
For the career on the other side of the license — settings, titles and pay — the attorney career guide maps the profession.
Who administers it — the state, NCBE or the ABA?
The work is split between two bodies.
The individual jurisdictions administer the exams and grade the written portions; NCBE develops the exams and scores the multiple-choice portions.
On the UBE specifically, NCBE scores the MBE, each jurisdiction grades its own MEE and MPT answers — scaled to the MBE — and NCBE calculates the total UBE score.
In UBE jurisdictions, the decisions that matter for a license sit with the jurisdiction: who may sit for the exam and who is admitted, educational requirements, character and fitness, retake limits, ADA accommodations, jurisdiction-specific law components, passing scores and how long incoming scores are accepted.
NCBE makes no determinations or recommendations about who is eligible or ineligible to practice law — jurisdictions do.
The ABA is none of them.
The American Bar Association does not develop the bar exam, score it or admit anyone: developing the exams is NCBE's job, administering them and grading the written portions is the jurisdictions', and the decision on who is admitted is each jurisdiction's.
Identify the bar admission authority where you plan to practice and work from its pages.
What is on the bar exam?
The MBE is the multiple-choice component: a six-hour, 200-question exam split into two 3-hour sessions of 100 questions each.
Of those 200 questions, 175 are scored and 25 are unscored pretest questions; each question has four answer choices and there is no penalty for a wrong answer.
The MBE's 175 scored questions divide evenly — 25 each — across seven subjects: Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property and Torts.
The written components sit on the Tuesday.
The MEE adds six 30-minute essay questions, and the MPT adds two 90-minute tasks.
The MPT is a skills test rather than a test of substantive knowledge — each task asks the examinee to complete an assignment a beginning lawyer should be able to do.
In a UBE jurisdiction, the pieces combine into one score on the 400-point scale: the MBE counts 50%, the MEE 30% and the MPT 20%.
NCBE scores the MBE, the jurisdictions grade the written portions, and NCBE calculates the UBE total.
Passing is set jurisdiction by jurisdiction: minimum scores on the legacy UBE run from 260 to 270 on the 400-point scale.
The UBE is not the only format in use.
As of October 2026, NCBE's map shows 35 jurisdictions still administering the legacy UBE, while seven — Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, Washington and the U.S. Virgin Islands — have already switched to the NextGen UBE, first given in July 2026.
Fourteen jurisdictions never adopted the UBE at all: California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, South Dakota, Virginia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau and Puerto Rico.
Those jurisdictions administer their own exams instead, and the MBE itself is not confined to UBE states — NCBE's map shows it administered in 44 of 56 jurisdictions as of October 2026.
Who is allowed to take it?
Eligibility is a per-jurisdiction question.
Each UBE jurisdiction independently decides who may sit for the exam and who is admitted, along with its educational requirements, character and fitness process, retake limits, ADA accommodations, local-law components and passing score.
The rules you have to satisfy are the ones set by the jurisdiction where you sit.
Character and fitness is part of the admission process in every jurisdiction.
NCBE conducts investigations and hosts applications for many jurisdictions, but it makes no determinations or recommendations about who is eligible or ineligible to practice — jurisdictions make that determination.
For some application types, 26 jurisdictions use NCBE investigations, while 27 — including California, New York, Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania — do not use NCBE's character and fitness services.
Confirm eligibility before you apply
When is it offered and how long is it?
The legacy UBE runs over two days: the MEE and MPT on the Tuesday, and the MBE on the last Wednesday of February and July.
In total, NCBE's own comparison puts the legacy UBE at 12 hours of testing over two days; the NextGen UBE is 9 hours over a day and a half.
The remaining legacy UBE administrations NCBE lists are February 23–24, 2027, July 27–28, 2027 and February 22–23, 2028.
After that, the legacy exam ends — NCBE administers it through February 2028, and most jurisdictions move to the NextGen UBE between July 2026 and July 2028.
Jurisdictions that never adopted the UBE administer their own exams instead, so their formats and dates come from each jurisdiction's bar admission authority.
Application deadlines are set by the authority too — check the current ones before you plan around any date.
What happens after you pass?
A passing score is one part of admission, not all of it.
Some UBE jurisdictions require a separate jurisdiction-specific law component — a test, a course, or both — before admission, and the character and fitness investigation that is part of the process in every jurisdiction has to conclude.
Admission is the jurisdiction's decision.
On the UBE, the score is portable.
A UBE score earned in one jurisdiction can be transferred to another UBE jurisdiction, and the receiving jurisdiction applies its own passing score to transferees the same way it does to its own test-takers.
A score that fell short in the testing jurisdiction can still be transferred if it meets the receiving jurisdiction's passing score.
Portability has edges.
To earn a portable UBE score you must take the MEE, the MPT and the MBE in the same UBE jurisdiction in the same administration — transferring a separate MBE score does not produce a portable UBE score.
And transferring does not skip character and fitness: each receiving jurisdiction runs its own review.
Separate from the bar exam itself, the MPRE is required for bar admission in every U.S. jurisdiction except Wisconsin and Puerto Rico; Connecticut and New Jersey accept successful completion of a law school course on professional responsibility in place of a passing MPRE score.
NCBE describes the MPRE as a measure of knowledge of the established standards of lawyer conduct — not a test of personal ethical values.
How does bar status affect attorney and law clerk job offers?
A bar license belongs to the jurisdiction that issued it, and hiring surfaces that fact quickly.
An attorney licensed in one state who considers a role in another runs into admission on motion — and the routes are uneven.
Of the jurisdictions NCBE tracks, 43 allow admission on motion, while 8 states have no rules providing for it — California, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, Rhode Island and South Carolina — and Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau and Puerto Rico also have none.
Where a route exists, the practice requirements on NCBE's pages are typically 3 of the past 5 years or 5 of the past 7; Washington's is 1 of the past 3.
When you compare attorney job offers, the bar questions are concrete: which jurisdiction's license does the role require, do you hold it, and if you are licensed elsewhere, does that state's admission route fit the offer's timeline?
Because admission is decided per jurisdiction, the rule that applies changes at each state line — so confirm the route with the admitting authority before you count on it.
Roles also differ in where they sit relative to the license.
If you are weighing options while your own admission is pending, start with the law clerk career guide, and browse current attorney jobs to see what firms are hiring for right now.
Career information, not legal advice. Bar admission is governed jurisdiction by jurisdiction; confirm exam and admission questions with the bar admission authority in the jurisdiction where you plan to practice.