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Unemployed? No job prospects? How to pick a state bar exam.

By Joni Wiredu, BARBRI Senior Director of Legal Education

It’s a question many students have when stopping by the BARBRI table to enroll: how to choose a state bar exam if currently unemployed? The good news is that BARBRI is the only bar review course offered in all 50 states, including Washington D.C., so you have options. You can take our course in the state you’re considering and there may even be a lecture location you can attend right in your area. Be sure to check with your BARBRI representative for more information.

KNOW WHAT YOU REALLY WANT AND REMAIN COMMITTED

Choosing a state bar exam is a deeply personal decision and may involve input from family, friends, your law professors and/or law school career counselors.

Start with this: Where do you see yourself in five years? (Don’t you hate that question!) Interviewers tend to ask it often during the interview process. The purpose is to gauge your commitment to the company or agency you are pursuing. For the bar exam, it is a similar commitment question.

HERE’S A LIST OF CONSIDERATIONS TO HELP WITH YOUR DECISION:

Location — When considering state bar exams, target (and research) where you’d like to live most.

Bar Admission requirements — Examine the bar exam subjects tested, the bar’s format, CLE requirements and fees associated with maintaining good standing.

Legal industry — Is the market saturated with attorneys and is the legal industry of your choice in your area/region of the country?

Family obligations — Do you want to go back to your hometown? If so, why?

Professional Network — What professional contacts have you made? Does your school have an alumni network that would allow you to pursue your goals? Do you have access to mentors in that state?

Family and friends network — Do you have the support your need to pursue your goals?

Reciprocity — Most states allow admission on motion after practicing for a number of years.

Know that you have access to an array of BARBRI resources. Stop by the BARBRI table at your law school to pick up a BARBRI Bar Exam Digest that includes the format and subjects tested on the bar exams for all 50 states and Washington D.C. Our digest also includes information about reciprocity. For more details, consult the websites of the state bar exams you are considering.

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The UBE and Your Marketability

By Mary Goza, BARBRI Vice President

The trend is underway to reduce the need for new lawyers to take another bar exam in order to become licensed in another state. With the advent of the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), an applicant may sit for one bar exam and become licensed in several jurisdictions. With proper planning, you can enhance your marketability through the UBE.

UBE SCORES ARE UNIFORMALLY ACCEPTED

The UBE is a two-day exam drafted by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), consisting of the Multistate Essay Exam (30%), Multistate Performance Test (20%) and Multistate Bar Exam (50%).

The components of the UBE are not new and have long been part of the bar exam format in many states. However, the UBE rests upon an agreement, whereby a state agrees to give full faith and credit to a score achieved on the bar exam in another jurisdiction because that jurisdiction uniformly administers, grades and scores the exam. Currently 13 states have adopted the Uniform Bar Exam:

  • Alabama
  • Arizona
  • Colorado
  • Idaho
  • Minnesota (February 2014)
  • Missouri
  • Montana
  • Nebraska
  • New Hampshire (February 2014)
  • North Dakota
  • Utah
  • Washington
  • Wyoming
WHAT IS NOT UNIFORM ABOUT THE UBE

Each UBE state sets its own passing score. The score is portable to another UBE state as long as you sit for the entire exam at one time in the same location. You may transfer the score, even if you “fail” the bar exam.

For example, a student who takes the UBE in Colorado and fails to achieve the required passing score of 276 out of 400 may transfer the score to Utah, a UBE jurisdiction for which the passing score is 270 out of 400. The UBE score is not valid beyond a set period of time and each state sets its own deadline, varying between three and five years.

The essay and performance test component is graded locally and not by a set of national graders. The testing entity provides grading guidelines and training for each state in order to promote consistency.

Because the grading process and size of the applicant pool varies by state, not all states are prepared to release results on the same day. The date when bar exam results are released is determined by each state and can vary between six to 10 weeks.

You may transfer your UBE score but you may not transfer your approved status from one state to another. The decision as to who may sit for the bar, including the educational and character requirements, is up to each state. To acquire a law license in a UBE state other than the one in which you sat for the bar, you need to submit an application, pay the necessary fees and meet the other state’s character and fitness requirements. In addition, most UBE states require an additional local component to be completed before, or soon after, becoming admitted to practice law.

BARBRI KNOWS THE UBE, SINCE ITS INCEPTION

BARBRI has been preparing students for each of the components of the UBE since their inception: 1972 for the MBE, 1988 for the MEE and 1997 for the MPT. The BARBRI bar review course in each state is uniquely tailored to the needs of the bar exam, accommodating the subtle grading differences among UBE states.

Click here for more information about the UBE.

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Taking two bar exams (simultaneously)

By Dale Larrimore, BARBRI Regional Vice President

Can I take two bar exams this summer? We often hear this question at this time of year. The lawyerly answer is: “It depends.”

There are two factors that control whether you sit for two different bar exams in the same week. First, you have to determine on which day each state administers its essay exam. Second, you have to find out if one of the states will accept a transferred Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) score from a concurrent exam.

KNOW THE EXACT DATES FOR BOTH STATES

The MBE is always given on the last Wednesday in February and July. Most states administer essay exams on the Tuesday before the MBE. Three states administer essays on the Thursday after the MBE – Massachusetts, New Jersey and Wyoming. So if you want to take two bar exams at the same time, you have to combine a Tuesday/Wednesday exam with the exam in one of these three states.

For example, many students take the New York bar exam on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then travel to New Jersey for Thursday. Other popular combinations include Pennsylvania/New Jersey or Pennsylvania/Massachusetts.

CONSIDER GEOGRAPHY TO AVOID FATIGUE

There are many other combinations that you could consider like Alabama/Massachusetts, yet keep in mind that geography and fatigue can work against you.

Using this example – to sit for Alabama and Massachusetts – here’s what your schedule would look like on bar exam week:

Monday: Three hours of Alabama Civil Procedure exams

Tuesday: Six hours of MBE and Multistate Performance Test

Wednesday: Six hours of MBE, then travel to Massachusetts

Thursday: Six hours of Massachusetts Essay Exam

As you can imagine, it’s much easier to travel from New York to New Jersey than from Alabama to Massachusetts, especially after three days of the bar exam.

MAKE SURE YOUR MBE SCORE WILL BE ACCEPTED

Once you figure out whether the dates will work for the two states you choose, you next have to determine whether one of the states will accept an MBE score from an exam administered in another state. This list includes:

  • Arizona
  • Connecticut
  • Indiana
  • Kansas
  • Maryland
  • Massachusetts
  • New Hampshire
  • New Jersey
  • New Mexico
  • New York
  • Oklahoma
  • Rhode Island
  • South Carolina
  • Utah
FINALLY, HOW HARD IS IT TO PASS TWO STATE BARS

In some states, like New Jersey, little knowledge of state law is required. In others, like Massachusetts, a significant amount of state law is required to be successful on the essay exam.

There are obviously many factors to consider when deciding whether or not to take two bar exams at once. The good news is that BARBRI has helped thousands of students pass two bar exams simultaneously. We have specifically tailored study programs that highlight key differences between the two states and make learning law in two states not significantly harder than learning one.

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Character and fitness: Not just virtues, requirements

By Mike Sims, BARBRI President

If you are a graduating 3L student, you can probably relate to these tweets:

You never realize how many addresses you’ve had for the past 10 years until you fill out the bar’s character and fitness. #lawschoolproblems

It’s fun listing employers like Show-Me’s and Tequila Wyld on my bar application #lawschoolproblems

If not, let me welcome you to Character and Fitness season.

In all 50 states and the District of Columbia, third year law students are making preparations for graduation and beginning to think about the bar exam. Finally, after almost three years of law school, the end is in sight … almost. But before these soon-to-be-lawyers can take the bar exam, they must complete the dreaded character and fitness application.

THE QUESTIONS ARE MEANT TO CHALLENGE YOU

Most people outside the legal profession would probably be surprised to learn that lawyers have to pass a character and fitness test prior to becoming licensed as an attorney.  Or they might joke that lawyers have to prove we have bad character. Or we’re out of shape from sitting and reading all the time. Well, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Depending on what state you’re being licensed in, you will be asked some challenging questions. When I applied for the Georgia bar exam, I had to list every credit card I had ever had and the current balance on each of those cards.

Here’s another example: Pennsylvania applicants are asked to provide pages of information that include:

  • Everywhere you have lived, worked or attended school for a period of more than six months since age 16 (not just cities, but exact addresses)
  • Everywhere you have ever held a driver’s license or had a DUI or been a part of a serious traffic violation
  • Financial history – bankruptcy, delinquent on taxes or child support, past due accounts
  • Academic records – any discipline
  • Criminal history – everything except minor offenses
  • Civil proceedings – everything except divorce or minor motor vehicle accidents
THEY WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU

And they want to know it in the next few weeks. As you begin completing your application, give yourself plenty of time. The last thing you want to do is miss the deadline because you could not come up with all of the information by the deadline.

AND REMEMBER THAT CANDOR IS KEY

Nothing upsets a character and fitness committee more than discovering something about you that you failed to disclose in your application. It is far better to disclose and explain something from your past than to try to hide it. If you have a question about whether or not to include something in your character and fitness application, you can contact the bar examiners in your state.  Your law school’s Dean of Students can also be an invaluable resource during this process.

There are definitely #lawschoolproblems out there.  With a little time and a lot of thought, your character and fitness application does not have to be one of them.

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