Graduation day in law school will be a great moment in your life, but you may also experience an anti-climatic feeling on this day. The reason for the feeling is the big hurdle that still looms before you to become a practicing attorney. That big hurdle is the bar exam.

Each state gives the bar exam twice a year; the last week of February and the last week of July. July is when the greater number of exam takers sit for the exam because of the recent law school graduations. The bar exam is a two-day exam that in most states consists of the Multi-State Bar Exam (MBE) on one day and the state portion of the exam on the other day.

The MBE consists of 200 multiple choice questions given in one day. Exam takers are provided 100 questions in the morning and 100 questions in the afternoon, and are given three hours for each session. The MBE subjects are Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, Evidence, Real Property, and Torts.

The state portion of the bar exam usually consists of essays. Some states, such as Washington, have two days of essays because they do not use the MBE. The topics of the state portion vary from state to state. Some states like New Jersey test only the MBE subjects for the essay questions, while other states like New York test over twenty subjects including the MBE subjects.

While the bar exams of certain states, for instance New York and California , are generally accepted as being difficult to pass, no state's bar exam is easy to pass. Despite that, the majority of first time takers pass the exam.

The websites below discuss the bar exam.

http://www.ncbex.org/tests.htm

http://barexamstudyaids.com/advice3.html

http://civpro.blogs.com/civil_procedure/2004/06/studying_for_th.html

Other related articles on this website include Bar Review Courses and Bar Exam-The Physical Preparation.

Good luck on the bar exam!

If you have any questions or comments about this article, or want to write your own article about the pre-law or law school process, feel free to contact me.