Courses tested on the California and New York Bar Exams
California Bar Exam
The California Bar Exam is a 3-day exam. On the first and third days, there are three
essay questions in the morning and a “performance exam” in the afternoon. The second day is
the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE), a 200-question, multiple-choice exam. There are 100 questions
in the morning, and 100 in the afternoon.
The following subjects are tested on the essay portion of the exam:
Civil Procedure
Community Property
Contracts/Sales
Constitutional Law
Corporations
Criminal Law/Procedure
Evidence
Professional Responsibility
Real Property
Remedies
Torts
Wills and Trusts
The following subjects are tested on the MBE:
Contracts/Sales
Constitutional Law
Criminal Law/Procedure
Evidence
Real Property
Torts
The Performance Test asks examinees to draft memos or discovery documents or
arguments or the like using a “closed universe" of facts, case law, statutes, etc.
New York Bar Exam
The New York Bar Exam is a two-day exam – Tuesday and Wednesday – with the New
York essays and Mulitistate Performance Test (MPT) on Tuesday and the multiple-choice
Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) on Wednesday.
On the first day, there are three 40-minute essay questions and 50 New York multiple
choice questions in the 3 hour, 15 minute morning session. That afternoon, there is a 90-minute
MPT question and two 45-minute essay questions.
The second day is the MBE, a 200-question, multiple-choice exam. There are 100
questions in the morning, and 100 in the afternoon.
If you take two bar exams at the same time (local in New York on Tuesday, local in the
other jurisdiction on Thursday, MBE in either state on Wednesday), New York will
accept the score of the MBE taken in either state. The most popular combinations are
NY-NJ, NY-CT, and NY-MA. The requirements keep changing, so check first with
BOTH states.
In addition to testing New York distinctions for the six MBE subjects