If you’re staring down the barrel of a legal career, you’ve probably had that 3:00 AM panic moment. You know the one. You’re wondering if you actually have to write twenty-page essays for two days straight or if you can just bubble your way to a license. So, is the bar multiple choice?
The short answer is yes. Sorta.
It’s actually a mix of things that will make your brain feel like overcooked pasta by the time you're done. Most people are thinking of the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), which is the big, bad multiple-choice monster that almost every state uses. But it’s never just a Scantron test. You can't just guess your way into the ABA. Every jurisdiction, from California to New York, pairs those bubbles with grueling essays and performance tests that require you to actually, you know, write like a lawyer.
The MBE: 200 Questions of Pure Joy
Let’s talk about the MBE because that’s the heart of the "is it multiple choice" question. This thing is a six-hour marathon. It’s 200 questions. You do 100 in the morning and 100 in the afternoon. Honestly, it’s a test of endurance as much as it is a test of law.
The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) designs these questions to be tricky. They aren't testing if you know the law; they're testing if you can find the best answer among four options that all look pretty decent. They cover seven main areas: Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property, and Torts.
Wait, only 175 of those questions actually count toward your score. The other 25? They’re "pretest" questions. The NCBE is basically using you as a guinea pig to see if those questions are fair for future tests. You won’t know which ones they are. It's frustrating. You might spend ten minutes sweating over a weirdly specific Rule Against Perpetuities question only for it to be one of the ones that doesn't even matter.
Why the MBE is harder than it looks
People hear "multiple choice" and think it's easy. It isn't.
In law school, you're taught to say "it depends." You argue both sides. You get points for the "maybe." On the MBE, there is no maybe. There is only one bubble. This creates a massive psychological hurdle for students who have spent three years being rewarded for nuance. Now, you have to be a machine.
💡 You might also like: Different Kinds of Dreads: What Your Stylist Probably Won't Tell You
The pressure is real. In many states, the MBE accounts for 50% of your total score. If you bomb the multiple choice, your beautifully written essays might not be enough to save you.
The Other Half: Essays and Performance Tests
So, if someone asks you "is the bar multiple choice?" and you want to be a pedant (which, let's face it, you're a law student, so you do), you tell them it's a hybrid.
Most states use the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE). This includes the MBE, but it also includes the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE) and the Multistate Performance Test (MPT).
The essays are exactly what they sound like. You get a fact pattern—usually something ridiculous like a guy named Basil who accidentally sells a cursed Ming vase—and you have to spot the legal issues. No bubbles here. Just you, a keyboard, and your dwindling sanity.
The MPT is different. It’s actually many people's favorite part, or at least the part they hate the least. They give you a "file" and a "library." You don't need to know any law beforehand. You just use the fake cases and statutes they give you to write a memo or a letter. It’s the most "real world" part of the whole ordeal.
The Strange Case of Louisiana and Nevada
Not every state follows the rules.
Louisiana is the outlier. Because their legal system is based on civil law (thanks, Napoleon) rather than the English common law used in the other 49 states, they don't even use the MBE. If you’re taking the bar in New Orleans, the answer to "is the bar multiple choice" is a resounding "mostly no." Their exam is famously long and almost entirely essay-based, spread out over three days.
📖 Related: Desi Bazar Desi Kitchen: Why Your Local Grocer is Actually the Best Place to Eat
Nevada and California are also known for being brutal, though they do use the MBE. California recently shortened its exam from three days to two, which was a huge relief to everyone involved, but it remains one of the hardest tests in the country to pass.
Does the "Multiple Choice" format make it more fair?
There’s a lot of debate about this. Some legal scholars, like those who contribute to the Journal of Legal Education, argue that multiple-choice tests are more objective. They remove the "grader bias" that can happen when an exhausted attorney is reading your tenth essay about torts at 11:00 PM.
On the flip side, critics argue that the MBE doesn't actually measure if you'll be a good lawyer. Being a lawyer is about research, empathy, and strategy. Nobody in the real world is going to walk into your office and ask you to pick the best of four options regarding a "fee simple subject to condition subsequent."
How to Handle the Multiple Choice Stress
If you're prepping right now, you're probably doing 30 to 50 practice questions a day. You're probably seeing your scores fluctuate wildly. One day you're at 75%, the next you're at 52%.
It’s normal.
The trick to the multiple-choice section isn't just knowing the law. It's learning the language of the test. The examiners love "distractor" answers. These are options that are legally true statements but don't actually answer the specific question asked. You have to train your brain to ignore the shiny, true-sounding facts and stick to the narrow issue at hand.
Common MBE Pitfalls
- Reading into the facts: Students love to imagine "what if." Stop it. If the prompt doesn't say the light was red, the light wasn't red.
- Overthinking the easy ones: Sometimes, the answer really is just "The contract is void because he was twelve." Don't look for a hidden conspiracy.
- Timing: You have about 1.8 minutes per question. If you spend four minutes on a Constitutional Law question, you've effectively stolen time from two other questions.
The Future: The "NextGen" Bar Exam
Things are changing. The NCBE is currently rolling out the NextGen Bar Exam, which is set to debut in 2026.
👉 See also: Deg f to deg c: Why We’re Still Doing Mental Math in 2026
This new version is supposed to shift away from the "is the bar multiple choice" binary. It's going to be more integrated. Instead of having a "multiple-choice day" and an "essay day," the sections will be blended. You might have a few multiple-choice questions followed by a short-answer task based on the same scenario.
The goal is to make it more reflective of modern legal practice. Whether it will actually be "easier" is a topic of heated discussion in faculty lounges across the country. Most people expect it to be just as stressful, just in a different format.
Real Talk: The Multiple Choice "Floor"
There is a concept in bar prep called the "MBE Floor." Basically, because the multiple-choice section is graded by a computer, it’s the most "stable" part of your score. You can't have a bad handwriting day on the MBE. You can't have a grader who hates your writing style.
Because of this, many bar prep experts—like the folks at Barbri or Themis—suggest that you should aim to "over-perform" on the multiple choice. If you can bank a high enough score on the MBE, it takes a massive amount of pressure off your essays. It gives you a cushion.
Think of the multiple choice as your foundation. It’s boring, it’s tedious, and bubbling those little circles will make your hand cramp. But it’s the most predictable path to passing.
Actionable Steps for the Multiple Choice Section
If you are worried about the multiple-choice aspect of the bar, you need a tactical approach. You can't just read the outlines and hope for the best.
- Prioritize the "Big Seven": Don't spend days memorizing niche state laws until you have the core MBE subjects down cold.
- Practice in blocks: Don't just do five questions here and there. Sit down and do 50. Get used to the mental fatigue. The "wall" usually hits around question 70. You need to know how to push through it.
- Analyze your wrongs: This is the most important part. When you get a question wrong, don't just say "oh, okay" and move on. Write down why you got it wrong. Did you misread the call of the question? Did you forget the "mailbox rule"? Keep a "wrong answer journal."
- Learn the "Call": Always read the last sentence of the prompt first. This tells you what to look for. If you know it's a criminal law question about "intent," you won't get distracted by the property law issues hidden in the paragraph.
- Trust your first instinct: Statistical studies on the bar exam show that when students change their answers on the MBE, they change a correct answer to an incorrect one more often than the other way around. Unless you suddenly realize you missed a "NOT" in the question, stick with your gut.
The bar exam is a beast, and the multiple-choice section is its teeth. It’s intimidating, sure, but it’s also a known quantity. Unlike an essay where the prompt could be literally anything, the MBE has a finite number of ways it can test a concept. You can solve it. You just have to be more methodical than the people who designed it.
Focus on the patterns. The law stays the same, even if the names in the stories change. Once you see the patterns, the bubbles stop being scary and start being your ticket to a law license.