How long is the bar exam?
In jurisdictions that use the Uniform Bar Examination, two days: twelve hours of testing, with six 30-minute essays and two 90-minute tasks on Tuesday and the six-hour, 200-question MBE on Wednesday.
The NextGen UBE that is replacing it runs nine hours over a day and a half.
Below is the schedule session by session, the question counts, and how long the process takes from exam to admission.
How many days is the bar exam?
Wherever the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) is given, the exam runs two days.
NCBE, which writes the exam, schedules the written portion — six MEE essays and two MPT tasks — for the Tuesday, and the 200-question MBE for the last Wednesday of February and July.
In total, the two days hold twelve hours of testing, on a calendar that repeats every February and July.
The two-day format is being retired.
NCBE lists 42 jurisdictions that have adopted the UBE since 2011, but its map shows only 35 still administering the legacy exam as of October 2026 — Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, Washington and the Virgin Islands had already switched to the NextGen UBE that July.
The UBE is also not the only bar exam format.
NCBE marks California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, South Dakota and Virginia — plus Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau and Puerto Rico — as never having adopted the UBE, so the UBE schedule above does not cover their exams.
The MBE itself remains in wide use: NCBE's map shows it given in 44 of 56 jurisdictions as of October 2026.
How many days a non-UBE exam runs is a question for the jurisdiction that gives it, so ask the bar admission authority where you plan to sit.
This page is the clock.
For what the exam tests and how it leads to a license, pair it with the bar exam overview.
NCBE writes the exams; the jurisdiction admits you
How long is each session?
The two UBE days break into four timed sessions.
Day one is the written day: the MEE consists of six 30-minute essay questions, and the MPT adds two 90-minute tasks.
In UBE jurisdictions the MEE counts for 30% of the total score and the MPT for 20%.
Day two belongs entirely to the MBE: six hours, split into two 3-hour sessions of 100 questions each.
| Session | Day | Length |
|---|---|---|
| MEE — six essay questions | Tuesday | 30 minutes each |
| MPT — two tasks | Tuesday | 90 minutes each |
| MBE, first session | Last Wednesday | 3 hours, 100 questions |
| MBE, second session | Last Wednesday | 3 hours, 100 questions |
One thing the NCBE exam pages we read do not give is the minute-by-minute timetable — what time the day starts and when each session opens.
Work from the instructions your bar admission authority sends for your administration.
How many questions are there?
The multiple-choice day carries the big number.
The MBE is 200 questions: 175 scored and 25 unscored pretest questions.
The 175 scored questions split evenly — 25 per subject — across seven subjects, and every question offers four answer choices with no penalty for a wrong answer.
The written day is far smaller: six MEE essays and two MPT tasks.
The essays are graded by the jurisdiction you test in, not by NCBE.
Counts are only half the picture.
Our guide to what is on the bar exam covers the subjects and question types behind these numbers.
How long is NextGen?
The NextGen UBE is the shorter exam.
NCBE's own comparison puts the legacy UBE at twelve hours over two days and the NextGen at nine hours over 1.5 days: two 3-hour sessions on day one and one 3-hour session on day two.
The days stay on the Tuesday-and-last-Wednesday calendar of February and July, and a jurisdiction's local components can extend day two.
The question mix changes with the format:
- 120 standalone multiple-choice questions, 40 per section — each either select-one from four choices or select-two from six
- six integrated question sets, two per section
- three performance tasks, one per section
- 20 of the 120 multiple-choice questions and one of the six integrated sets are unscored pretest items
NCBE's expected pacing is about 1.8 minutes per standalone multiple-choice question, 24 minutes per integrated question set, and 60 minutes per performance task.
The switch is happening in waves.
The first NextGen administration was July 2026, in Connecticut, Guam, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, the Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Palau, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington.
More jurisdictions follow in July 2027; Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois and Montana start in February 2028; and California, Florida, New York and Texas are among those scheduled for July 2028.
NCBE says it will administer the legacy UBE through February 2028, and as of October 2026 its map shows only Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada and Puerto Rico with no NextGen adoption.
How long does the whole process take, from exam to swearing in?
The exam itself is two days, or a day and a half; the process around it runs on each jurisdiction's clock.
Every UBE jurisdiction independently decides who may sit and be admitted, the educational requirements, character and fitness, retake limits, local-law components, passing scores and how long incoming scores are accepted.
Before the exam, the timeline is administrative: your application, your jurisdiction's deadlines and, in some UBE jurisdictions, a separate jurisdiction-specific law component — a test, a course, or both — required before admission.
The testing calendar itself is fixed twice a year.
NCBE's published remaining dates are the same for the legacy UBE and the NextGen: February 23–24, 2027, July 27–28, 2027, and February 22–23, 2028.
After the exam, scoring is split: NCBE scores the MBE, each jurisdiction grades the MEE and MPT, and NCBE calculates the UBE total score.
How long results take is therefore a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction question — the sources we read do not set a uniform results schedule, so check with the bar admission authority where you tested.
After a passing result, character and fitness and any final admission requirements remain, all run by the jurisdiction that will admit you.
Our research found no national timeline for either wait — the bar admission authority where you applied is the one that can give you its current timeline.
The years before the exam are a separate timeline entirely; see how long it takes to become a lawyer.
Career information, not legal advice — confirm exam formats, dates and requirements with NCBE and the bar admission authority where you plan to sit.