The Multistate Essay Examination (MEE) is the essay portion of the bar exam in UBE jurisdictions and one of the UBE's three component exams: six 30-minute questions, given on the Tuesday before the last Wednesday in February and July.
NCBE coordinates it; each jurisdiction that uses the MEE grades the answers and sets how much the MEE counts.
This page covers the format, the subjects question, grading, essay-writing approach and the NextGen switch.
What is the MEE?
The Multistate Essay Examination (MEE) is the essay portion of the bar exam in UBE jurisdictions and one of the UBE's three component exams.
It consists of six 30-minute essay questions, given on the Tuesday before the last Wednesday in February and July.
Where the UBE formula applies, the essays count for 30% of the total score.
The UBE bundles three components: the MEE, two Multistate Performance Test (MPT) tasks and the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE).
The two days split cleanly — the essays and the MPT tasks run on the Tuesday, the multiple-choice MBE on the last Wednesday of February and July.
The three pieces test different things.
The MBE is multiple choice, the MPT asks you to complete a task a beginning lawyer should be able to do, and the MEE is where you write full essay answers against a 30-minute clock.
NCBE coordinates all three, but it admits no one — the jurisdiction you sit in runs the admission process around them.
Grading and admission are local, not NCBE's
What subjects can appear?
This is the one place this page deliberately declines to hand you a list.
The NCBE materials our research reviewed give a verified picture of the MEE's format, schedule, weighting and grading; they did not give us a verified list of the subjects the six essay questions can draw from.
Rather than guess at a scope we cannot verify, take your subject list from NCBE's current MEE materials and the bar admission authority where you plan to sit before you build a study plan.
One list we can document is the MBE's, because it is a different component with its own published structure: 175 scored questions split evenly — 25 each — across Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property and Torts.
Do not carry that list across to the essays.
It describes the multiple-choice MBE, not the MEE's essay coverage.
The study implication holds whichever subjects your exam draws from: get the official scope first, then practice writing full essays against the 30-minute clock.
Knowing a subject and producing a complete essay answer on it in half an hour are different skills, and the second one is what exam day asks for.
How is it graded?
Your essays are graded by the jurisdiction where you sit, not by NCBE — and each jurisdiction determines its own policy for the weight the MEE gets relative to other scores.
The MEE's share of your total is therefore set locally, not nationally.
Where the jurisdiction uses the UBE formula, the weights are fixed: the MBE counts 50%, the MEE 30% and the MPT 20%, with the total reported on a 400-point scale.
The assembly is specific — NCBE scores the MBE, your jurisdiction grades the MEE and MPT answers, those written scores are scaled to the MBE, and NCBE calculates the UBE total score.
Passing is local too.
Legacy UBE minimum passing scores range from 260 to 270 on that 400-point scale, each jurisdiction sets its own cut, and jurisdictions independently decide who may sit, how many retakes are allowed and whether a separate state-law component stands between a passing score and admission.
What no national fact gives you is a translation from a cut between 260 and 270 into the essay points you personally need — for that, your jurisdiction's published score information is the source.
How to write a passing essay
Everything about the writing bends around one number: 30 minutes per essay, six essays in a row.
What follows is craft rather than rule — grading belongs to your jurisdiction — and it starts from the clock.
Read the call of the question first
Find what the question actually asks before you read the fact pattern, then read the pattern with it in mind. You will spot the relevant issues faster and spend less of your half hour on material the question never wanted.Outline before you write
List the issues you see and the rule for each, in the order you plan to cover them. An answer organized around issues is easier to follow than one that narrates the facts chronologically.State the rule, apply it, conclude
For each issue, give the rule you are relying on, apply it to the facts in the pattern and land on a conclusion. If your rule memory is shaky, work through both plausible readings rather than skipping the issue.Tie everything to the facts you were given
The exercise is connecting law to this fact pattern, not reciting a subject. Every stretch of analysis should point back to something in the pattern.Watch the clock, and finish
Thirty minutes goes quickly at essay pace. If time runs short, note the remaining issues in brief rather than leaving them unaddressed.
Practice on NCBE's own materials
What happens to the MEE under NextGen?
The MEE, as this page describes it, has a scheduled end.
NCBE now calls the current exam the legacy UBE and says it will be administered through February 2028, and NCBE's implementation timeline schedules the final administration of the MBE, MEE and MPT for the February 2028 exam.
In NCBE's own framing, between July 2026 and July 2028 most jurisdictions will move from the MBE, MEE and MPT to the NextGen UBE.
NCBE's remaining legacy UBE test dates are February 23–24, 2027; July 27–28, 2027; and February 22–23, 2028 — the essays fall on the first day of each pair.
Those are the windows left on NCBE's list for the current-format essays.
Adoption is uneven inside that window.
NCBE lists 42 jurisdictions that have adopted the UBE since 2011; as of October 2026, 35 still administer the legacy exam, while Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, Washington and the Virgin Islands switched to the NextGen UBE in July 2026.
The switch also shrinks the exam: NCBE's comparison puts the legacy UBE at twelve hours over two days and the NextGen UBE at nine hours over 1.5 days.
What the NextGen asks instead of six essays is a topic of its own — see what the NextGen bar exam changes — and the exam, format and dates that apply to you are worth confirming with the bar admission authority where you plan to sit.
Career information, not legal advice. Exam format, scoring and admission rules are set jurisdiction by jurisdiction and are changing through 2028 — confirm anything that matters to your plans with NCBE and the bar admission authority where you intend to practice.