Bar Exam Prep and the UBE: What New Lawyers Must Pass

What the bar exam requires

Every state requires you to pass a bar exam before you can practice law there, on top of earning your JD from an accredited law school. Most states also require character and fitness review, and many require you to pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE) separately from the bar exam itself.

The exam tests legal knowledge and reasoning built to confirm you can practice competently and ethically, not just recall law school coursework. Passing typically requires months of dedicated study after graduation, usually through a commercial bar prep course, before your state's summer or winter exam date.

What the UBE is

The Uniform Bar Exam is a standardized bar exam developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) and adopted by individual jurisdictions rather than administered nationally. It combines the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE), the Multistate Essay Exam (MEE), and the Multistate Performance Test (MPT) into one score.

The key advantage of the UBE is portability. Once you earn a qualifying UBE score in one participating jurisdiction, you can transfer that score to apply for admission in another UBE jurisdiction without sitting for a full new exam, subject to that jurisdiction's own transfer deadlines and additional requirements like a jurisdiction-specific law course. This matters most if you expect to move states early in your career or are unsure where you will practice long term.

Which jurisdictions use it

As of 2026, 41 jurisdictions use the UBE: 39 states, the District of Columbia, and the US Virgin Islands, according to NCBE .

Passing scores set by each jurisdiction range from a low of 260, used in states including Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah, up to a high of 280 in Alaska.

Check your target jurisdiction's exact required score directly with its state bar, since scores and transfer rules can change.

Several major states do not use the UBE, most notably California and Louisiana. California administers its own bar exam with its own scoring and content, and Louisiana's exam reflects its civil law tradition rather than the common law framework the UBE and most other states use. If you plan to practice in a non-UBE state, confirm that state's specific exam format and prep requirements early, since UBE prep materials will not fully cover them.

The NextGen UBE transition

NCBE is rolling out a redesigned NextGen UBE starting in July 2026, with participating jurisdictions in that first group including Connecticut, Guam, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, the Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Palau, the US Virgin Islands, and Washington, according to NCBE . Most remaining UBE jurisdictions are expected to transition between July 2026 and July 2028.

If you plan to sit for the bar during this transition window, check which version of the exam your jurisdiction is administering on your test date, since NextGen changes exam content and format compared to the legacy UBE, and your bar prep course needs to match the version you will actually take.

Planning your prep

Start by confirming which exam your target jurisdiction requires, whether that is the legacy UBE, NextGen UBE, or a state-specific exam, well before you register for a bar prep course. Your law school's career services or academic success office typically has current guidance on which states its graduates most often sit for and what each jurisdiction's specific admission requirements look like beyond the exam itself, including character and fitness applications and any state-specific coursework.