Passing Standards

The Pennsylvania Bar Examination will be held on the last Tuesday and Wednesday of February and July at locations in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and during July examinations, Harrisburg. The Essay and Performance Test (PT) sessions will be administered on Tuesday and the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) session will be administered on Wednesday.

ESSAY EXAMINATION: The essay examination consists of six essay questions that cover one or more of the following subjects:

Business Organizations (including corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies and professional corporations)

Employment Discrimination (limited to Title VII, ADA and ADEA)


Professional Responsibility
Civil Procedure (Pennsylvania and federal)
Evidence (Pennsylvania and federal)
Real Property
Criminal Law (including related Pennsylvania and federal constitutional issues and DUI)

Family Law

Torts
Conflict of Laws
Federal Constitutional Law
U.C.C., Art. II - Sales


Contracts
Federal Income Taxes (personal only and limited to taxable and non-taxable income, deductions, proprietorships and capital transactions)

Wills, Trusts and Decedents' Estates (including related fiduciary responsibilities)


Applicants are expected to demonstrate their knowledge of Pennsylvania law (where applicable) when answering the essay portion of the bar examination. Please note that the value of an essay answer depends not so much upon the correctness of the conclusion(s), as upon the recognition of issues and the quality of the discussion that evidences an ability to apply the law to the facts presented, and to reason in a logical manner in arriving at a conclusion. Factors such as grammar, penmanship and spelling are not considered in the grading of the essay answers.

PERFORMANCE TEST: The PT is designed to test an applicant's ability to use fundamental lawyering skills in a realistic situation. Each test evaluates an applicant's ability to complete a task, which a beginning lawyer should be able to accomplish.

MULTISTATE BAR EXAMINATION: The MBE consists of 200 multiple choice questions that cover the following subjects:

Constitutional Law
Evidence
Contracts
Real Property
Criminal Law
Torts


PASSING STANDARDS: By Order of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, a successful applicant for admission to the bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in addition to the other examination requirements approved by prior Orders of the Court that are not superseded hereby, must attain a scaled score of 272 on the combined scores of the PT, essay examination and MBE.

The six answers to the essay examination and the PT (valued at 1.5 times an essay question) will be graded, totaled and scaled to the MBE. The combined essay and PT scores will be weighted at 55%, and the MBE score will be weighted at 45% of the total scaled score. The scaled scores of the PT/essay examination and MBE will then be combined to determine whether a scaled score of 272 or higher has been attained. Please visit our web site in early April (for February) or October (for July) for the official date for release of results.

Note: Applicants are required to sit for all sessions of the bar examination (both the morning and afternoon sessions of the PT/Essay Examination and MBE), and make a good faith effort to answer each question. Failure to do so will result in disqualification.