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Admission on motion by state: forty-four jurisdictions permit it generally, five permit it narrowly, and exactly seven permit none, being California, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island. The two dominant requirements are three of the past five years and five of the past seven.
Forty-four jurisdictions permit it generally, five permit it only in narrow cases, and exactly seven permit none at all (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-14/, https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-15/).
The seven are California, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island.
The five limited ones are Hawaii for law teaching and military, South Carolina for law school faculty, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands for government attorneys, and Palau for government employees.
California states plainly that it does not offer reciprocity or accept bar exam scores from another jurisdiction (https://www.calbar.ca.gov/admissions/applicant-resources/attorney-applicants). It does run a shortened Attorneys' Examination for lawyers active and in good standing at least four years, covering only the written portion, which is still an exam rather than motion admission.
Two patterns dominate and each is used by seventeen jurisdictions: three of the past five years, and five of the past seven (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-14/).
But the outliers are where the real variation lives, and assuming the pattern will cost you.
Washington requires only one of the past three years, the lowest in the country. The District of Columbia requires three years with no recency window at all. Connecticut, Missouri and Vermont allow five of the past ten, the most generous lookback.
What counts as practice also differs and is a frequent trap. Ohio defines primarily engaged as at least 1,000 hours per year (https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/docs/LegalResources/Rules/govbar/govbar.pdf).
JurisdictionRequirementAlaska3 of the past 5 yearsArizona3 of the past 5 yearsArkansas3 of the past 5 yearsColorado3 of the past 5 yearsIdaho3 of the past 5 yearsIllinois3 of the past 5 yearsIndiana3 of the past 5 yearsMaine3 of the past 5 yearsMaryland3 of the past 5 yearsMichigan3 of the past 5 yearsMinnesota3 of the past 5 yearsNebraska3 of the past 5 yearsOklahoma3 of the past 5 yearsSouth Dakota3 of the past 5 yearsUtah3 of the past 5 yearsVirginia3 of the past 5 yearsWisconsin3 of the past 5 yearsGeorgia5 of the past 7 yearsIowa5 of the past 7 yearsKansas5 of the past 7 yearsKentucky5 of the past 7 yearsMassachusetts5 of the past 7 yearsMontana5 of the past 7 yearsNew Hampshire5 of the past 7 yearsNew Jersey5 of the past 7 yearsNew Mexico5 of the past 7 yearsNew York5 of the past 7 yearsOhio5 of the past 7 yearsPennsylvania5 of the past 7 yearsTennessee5 of the past 7 yearsTexas5 of the past 7 yearsVirgin Islands5 of the past 7 yearsWest Virginia5 of the past 7 yearsWyoming5 of the past 7 yearsWashington1 of the past 3 years, the lowest in the countryOregon2 of the past 4 yearsDistrict of Columbia3 years, with no recency windowNorth Dakota4 of the past 5 yearsNorth Carolina4 of the past 6 yearsAlabama5 of the past 6 yearsMississippi5 yearsConnecticut, Missouri and Vermont5 of the past 10 years, the most generous lookbackMaryland3 of the most recent 5 years, or more than 10 years overallCaliforniaNot permitted at allDelawareNot permitted at allFloridaNot permitted at allLouisianaNot permitted at allNevadaNot permitted at allPuerto RicoNot permitted at allRhode IslandNot permitted at allHawaiiLimited: Law teaching and militarySouth CarolinaLimited: Law school facultyGuamLimited: Government attorneysNorthern Mariana IslandsLimited: Government attorneysPalauLimited: Government employees
From NCBE Chart 14 on years and definition of practice (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-14/) and Chart 15 on legal education and reciprocity (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-15/). Verified July 27, 2026. Nevada's, Florida's and Louisiana's non-permitting status rests on NCBE charts because their own sites were blocked or JavaScript-only, so treat those three as not independently confirmed.
Twenty do and twenty-three do not (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-15/).
Reciprocity means the receiving state admits on motion only lawyers from states that would return the favour to its own lawyers.
The District of Columbia is the most commonly used destination precisely because it stacks three permissive conditions: only three years of practice, no reciprocity condition, and no requirement of an ABA-approved JD.
Reciprocity is asymmetric and must be checked in both directions. New York's official reciprocal list names 40 jurisdictions but omits Alabama and Maryland even though both have admission on motion, so a New York lawyer cannot use motion admission into those two (https://www.nybarexam.org/AOM/AdmissiononMotion.htm).
Admission on motion is never just a practice record, and this is where applicants get caught short.
The MPRE is nearly universal but the score and time limits vary. Texas, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland and Colorado require 85. Illinois requires 80 and only of applicants licensed fewer than fifteen years.
DC requires 75. Wisconsin does not require it at all (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-6/).
A state-specific law component is commonly required of motion applicants too. Massachusetts requires its Law Component of applicants admitted by examination, UBE transfer or motion (https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-massachusetts-law-component-mlc), and Ohio, Texas, Maryland, Colorado and DC all have equivalents.
Two structural facts worth catching: fourteen jurisdictions do not require an ABA-approved JD for motion admission, including DC, Massachusetts, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, while fourteen bar diploma-privilege admittees from motion admission elsewhere (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-15/).
Six of the seven no-motion jurisdictions still offer a route short of full admission (https://reports.ncbex.org/charts/chart-16/).
Registered in-house or corporate counsel status is available in California, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada and Rhode Island, alongside military-spouse licensure.
Puerto Rico is the only one of the 56 jurisdictions with no alternative registration category of any kind.
If your target is a no-motion jurisdiction and your work is in-house, that category is often the real answer rather than the exam.
Start at NCBE's jurisdiction index (https://www.ncbex.org/jurisdictions) to find the name of your admitting authority, which is often not the state bar association and is sometimes a board sitting under the supreme court.
Then go to that authority's own site and look for a dated page. A page with no cycle label is the warning sign, not the exception; several boards serve prior-cycle information with no year on it anywhere.
Cross-check the deadlines page against the program page, because they disagree more often than they should. We found boards contradicting themselves on dates in the same week.
If the two disagree and you cannot tell which is current, email the board and keep the reply. A dated email from the board is better evidence than any table, including this one.
This page is one spoke of a cluster. The hub is our NextGen bar exam pillar, which carries the whole transition in one place and links every spoke including this one.
The two most closely related pages here are admission on motion vs score transfer and ube score transfer.
Everything across the cluster is drawn from the same verified fact set and carries the same verified-as-of date, so the numbers agree with each other by construction rather than by coincidence.
Every fact here was read on NCBE's own pages or the jurisdiction's own board or supreme court pages on July 27, 2026. No prep company, no aggregator, no forum and no news summary was used as a source for anything.
Where a jurisdiction's own site was unreachable, robots-blocked or JavaScript-gated, we say the fact rests on NCBE alone rather than presenting it as confirmed. That happened more often than you would expect and it is named on the page each time.
Where two official sources disagree, we publish the conflict and name which one we treat as operational. We do not pick quietly and we do not average them.
Where nothing is published, the page says not yet published by the board. It never says a number we worked out ourselves, because an estimate that looks like a disclosure is worse than a gap.
It cannot tell you what your own board will do. Jurisdictions set their own dates, fees, cut scores, deadlines and admission rules, and NCBE compiles those decisions rather than making them.
It cannot substitute for reading your jurisdiction's rule text. Compilation charts are an index into the rules, not the rules, and every material decision should be checked against the authority itself.
The first is adoption. Supreme courts issue orders on their own schedule and NCBE's compilation pages lag them, which is exactly what happened with California in July 2026.
The second is the calendar. Most jurisdictions had not posted 2027 dates or 2027 fees at verification, and several were serving prior-cycle pages without saying so.
The third is cut scores. NCBE states on its own page that jurisdictions are currently evaluating its recommended NextGen range (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores), so that list grows month by month.
None of those three settles before autumn. Treat September as the re-check point for anything on this page that carries a date or a number.
One framing point that governs this whole page. The first NextGen administration was July 28 and 29, 2026 (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen), so at the time of writing no NextGen exam had been sat anywhere in the world and no results existed. There is no NextGen pass rate, no score distribution, no repeater data and no retrospective on how it went, and anyone offering you one is inventing it.
That matters on this page specifically, because the transition is the reason any of it is moving. Structure, dates and published policy are reportable now; outcomes are not.
NCBE has not published a NextGen mean or standard deviation either. The figures are absent from the Guidance Brief, the Examinees' Guide, the Blueprint and every scoring page (https://www.ncbex.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/FOR%20RELEASE%20NCBE%20NextGen%20Guidance%20Brief-Recommended%20Passing%20Score%20Range-2.pdf), which is worth knowing before you read anyone's confident claim about difficulty.
Open your own jurisdiction's board page and confirm every date and number on this page against it.
Where this page says not yet published, check again in September, which is when most boards refresh.
If your plan turns on a figure here, get it from the board in writing rather than from any table.
Everything on this page about admission on motion was read on the source pages listed inline on July 27, 2026, and the date is on the page rather than buried in a footer because this material moves faster than anything else we publish.
Three separate clocks are running against it. Supreme courts issue adoption orders and NCBE's own pages lag them.
Most jurisdictions had not posted 2027 dates or fees. NextGen passing scores are being set jurisdiction by jurisdiction right now, and NCBE says so on its own page (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/nextgen/minimum-passing-scores).
Re-check your own jurisdiction's board before you rely on any date or number here, including ours. A figure quoted anywhere without a cycle label and a date attached is unverified by definition.
Forty-four permit it generally and five permit it narrowly. Seven permit none: California, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island.
Most commonly three of the past five or five of the past seven, each used by seventeen jurisdictions. Washington requires only one of the past three; DC requires three with no recency window.
Twenty require it and twenty-three do not. It is asymmetric: New York's own list omits Alabama and Maryland even though both have admission on motion.
Almost always the MPRE, at scores from 75 to 85, plus a full character and fitness investigation, and in many jurisdictions a state-specific law component and post-admission CLE.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026