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What is the uniform bar exam: twelve hours over two days, built from the MBE at 50 percent, the MEE at 30 and the MPT at 20, reported on a 400-point scale. It remains the operative exam for roughly four in five jurisdictions until each switches or February 2028 arrives.
A twelve-hour examination over two full days, built from three NCBE components and producing a score that transfers between UBE jurisdictions (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube).
The MEE and MPT run Tuesday and the MBE runs Wednesday.
It is still the operative exam for roughly four in five jurisdictions, and remains so until each one switches or until the February 2028 sunset, whichever comes first (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/update-nextgen-exam-content-extends-availability).
The MBE is 200 multiple-choice questions, 175 scored and 25 unscored pretest, split into morning and afternoon sessions of three hours and 100 questions each with no scheduled breaks inside either session (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mbe).
The 175 scored questions are distributed evenly, 25 from each of seven subjects: civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law and procedure, evidence, real property and torts (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mbe/preparing-mbe).
The MEE is six 30-minute essay questions totaling three hours (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mee).
The MPT is two 90-minute items totaling three hours, and UBE jurisdictions use both. Each item gives you a File of source documents and a Library, with the assignment in a memorandum from a supervising attorney (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt).
ComponentTimeItemsWeightMBE6 hours, two 3-hour sessions200 questions, 175 scored50 percentMEE3 hoursSix 30-minute essays30 percentMPT3 hoursTwo 90-minute items20 percentTotal12 hours over two days400-point scale
Structure and weighting from NCBE's component pages (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube, https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mbe, https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mee, https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt). Verified July 27, 2026.
On a 400-point scale, weighted MBE 50 percent, MEE 30 percent and MPT 20 percent (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube).
The division of labour matters. NCBE scores the MBE, your jurisdiction grades the MEE and MPT, the written scores are then scaled to the MBE, and NCBE calculates the total.
The precise algorithm for scaling written scores to the MBE is not published on NCBE's public exam pages, so treat any explanation of it you find elsewhere as unsourced.
NCBE's own MEE page still lists all twelve historical MEE subjects, and that list is out of date for anyone sitting now.
Effective July 2026, conflict of laws, family law, trusts and estates and secured transactions will not appear on the MEE, though they may still appear on the MPT (https://www.ncbex.org/news-resources/update-nextgen-exam-content-extends-availability).
So the operative MEE pool for July 2026 through February 2028 is eight subjects, not twelve. If a prep outline is still drilling you on all twelve for the MEE specifically, it is a cycle behind.
There is one hard mechanical requirement and applicants lose portability by missing it.
You must take all portions, meaning the MEE, MPT and MBE, in the same UBE jurisdiction and in the same administration (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ube-score-portability).
A useful consequence: a UBE jurisdiction will accept a transferred score that meets its own passing standard whether or not that score passed where it was earned. A 262 that failed in a 270 state still passes in a 260 state.
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 nextgen vs ube and bar exam passing score by state.
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.
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.
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 the UBE structure 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.
The legacy UBE is the stable half of this cluster, but its sunset date and its shrinking MEE subject pool both moved inside the last two years.
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.
A twelve-hour exam over two days built from the MBE, MEE and MPT, weighted 50/30/20 on a 400-point scale, producing a score transferable between UBE jurisdictions.
NCBE scores the MBE, your jurisdiction grades the MEE and MPT, the written scores are scaled to the MBE, and NCBE calculates a total on 400 points. The scaling algorithm itself is not published.
The MBE is 200 multiple-choice questions across seven subjects, 175 scored. The MEE is six 30-minute essays. The MPT is two 90-minute items, each with a File and a Library.
No. From July 2026 conflict of laws, family law, trusts and estates and secured transactions do not appear on the MEE, leaving eight subjects, though NCBE's own MEE page still lists twelve.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026