Bar exam study schedule: ten weeks of spaced reviews around a job or a bar course
Published · Updated · by the Paced team
What the exam is (read your jurisdiction first)
- MBE. A six-hour, 200-question multiple-choice examination (175 scored, 25 unscored pretest questions) in two three-hour sessions, administered on the last Wednesday in February and in July; it is weighted 50% of the UBE (NCBE, MBE page). Next administrations: February 24, 2027, July 28, 2027, February 23, 2028.
- MEE. Six 30-minute questions, weighted 30% of the UBE. Areas that may be covered: Business Associations, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts (including UCC Article 2), Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property and Torts; the areas vary from exam to exam (NCBE, MEE page).
- NextGen UBE. Between July 2026 and July 2028, most jurisdictions transition from the MBE, MEE and MPT to the NextGen UBE; NCBE lists which jurisdictions administer it and which have adopted it, with the next test dates on February 23–24, 2027, July 27–28, 2027 and February 22–23, 2028 (NCBE, NextGen page).
- 2025 in numbers. 67,442 persons took a bar examination, 63% passed overall and 76% of first-time takers; 47,797 of them sat in July (NCBE, 2025 statistics).
Subjects, format and dates are set by NCBE and by each jurisdiction, and they are changing right now. Everything below is about when to study and recall what your jurisdiction tests, not about what it tests.
The subjects as topics
Paced ships a starter template for the US bar exam: the seven MBE subjects plus professional responsibility (MPRE), each with an editable first-study estimate, 23 h 30 in total. A “first study” here is the pass in which you build or rebuild the outline of the subject; the bar course lectures and the question bank are the material, the topic is the recall of it. Split a subject in two if its outline is long.
| Topic | First study |
|---|---|
| Constitutional law | 3 h |
| Contracts & sales (UCC Art. 2) | 4 h |
| Torts | 3 h |
| Criminal law & procedure | 3 h |
| Evidence | 3 h |
| Real property | 3 h |
| Civil procedure | 3 h |
| Professional responsibility (MPRE) | 1 h 30 |
A ten-week schedule around a job
The template suggests an exam about 75 days out: ten full weeks of work, 11 weeks on the calendar. With a date that close the gaps have to be short: in Cepeda and colleagues' 2008 study the best gap was a small share of the time to the test when the test was near, so the example uses the Intensive pace of Paced (D0, D+1, D+2, D+4, D+7, D+12, D+20, D+35, D+60, D+100), with reviews past the exam dropped. Two subjects are first-studied each week for four weeks (Monday and Thursday); each comes back on its own days. Budget: three hours on six days (18 h a week), the evenings and Saturday of a candidate who still works. Our calculation, from the template and the default review curve:
| Week | First studies | Reviews | Total | Fits? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7 h | 4 h 35 | 11 h 35 | yes |
| 2 | 6 h | 6 h 35 | 12 h 35 | yes |
| 3 | 6 h | 7 h 03 | 13 h 03 | yes |
| 4 | 4 h 30 | 6 h 27 | 10 h 57 | yes |
| 5 | 0 min | 2 h 34 | 2 h 34 | yes |
| 6 | 0 min | 1 h 31 | 1 h 31 | yes |
| 7 | 0 min | 45 min | 45 min | yes |
| 8 | 0 min | 36 min | 36 min | yes |
| 9 | 0 min | 45 min | 45 min | yes |
| 10 | 0 min | 42 min | 42 min | yes |
| 11 | 0 min | 36 min | 36 min | yes |
Over the 11 weeks the eight topics cost 23 h 30 of first study and 32 h 54 of reviews; the heaviest week is week 3 at 13 h 03. What is left of the budget goes to timed question sets and full essays, the part of bar preparation that is practice rather than recall, and to the subjects your scores say are weak. Weeks 6 to 10 are deliberately lighter on first studies: that is where the mixed sets and the full-length practice belong. Run your own dates and hours in the schedule calculator.
Recall, not rereading
An outline you reread feels learned and is not. Repeated testing had a large effect on delayed recall where repeated studying had none (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008); in a review of ten techniques, practice testing and distributed practice were the two of high utility (Dunlosky et al., 2013); and with flashcards, spacing beat cramming for 90% of participants even though most believed the opposite (Kornell, 2009). For the bar: a review day is a block of questions on that subject with the explanations, or an essay written from memory and then checked against the outline.
Law school finals, same method
Before the bar there are six semesters of finals, and the same arithmetic applies: one topic per week of the course or per section of the outline, a first study when the class covers it, recalls on growing gaps, and the load counted against the hours left by classes, clinics and a journal. Students who first-study each week's material and recall it twice before reading period arrive at finals with an outline they can reproduce, not one they have to rebuild. See how to plan revision for the general method.
Paced plans the recalls of every subject on their days, inside the hours left by your job or your bar course, moves what does not fit, and warns you before the week it will not fit at all. Start from the bar exam template or from your own outline.
The MBE®, MEE®, MPT® and UBE® are registered trademarks of the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE). Paced is not affiliated with or endorsed by NCBE or any board of bar examiners. Exam structure, dates and 2025 figures are quoted from ncbex.org as read on 7 October 2026; the schedule is Paced's own planning advice.
Questions
How many weeks should I study for the bar exam?
There is no official number. The schedule on this page covers about ten weeks because the exam is a finite body of subjects that each need a first study and several spaced recalls, and because many candidates sit in late July after a May graduation. Working candidates with fewer hours a week need more weeks, not longer days.
What is on the bar exam in 2026 and 2027?
It depends on the jurisdiction. The MBE is a six-hour, 200-question multiple-choice exam given in February and July; the MEE adds six 30-minute essays; the MPT adds performance tasks. Between July 2026 and July 2028 most jurisdictions move to the NextGen UBE. Check your own jurisdiction on ncbex.org before building a plan.
What was the 2025 pass rate?
According to NCBE, 67,442 persons took a bar examination in 2025 and 63% passed; 76% of first-time takers passed, and 47,797 sat in July. These are national figures; each jurisdiction publishes its own.
Should I study one subject a week or mix them?
Mix them. Spacing the recalls of each subject across weeks is what the memory research supports, and interleaving keeps every subject alive until the exam. The schedule here starts two subjects a week and brings each back on its own days, so by week four all eight are in rotation.
Does Paced include outlines, lectures or practice questions?
No. Paced is a planner: bring your bar course, outlines and question bank, and it schedules when to first-study and recall each subject inside the hours you have. It does not teach and it does not promise a result.
Sources
- National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) (2026). Multistate Bar Examination (MBE). ncbex.org. Six hours, 200 multiple-choice questions (175 scored), two three-hour sessions; weighted 50% of the UBE; dates of the 2027 and 2028 administrations.
- National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) (2026). Multistate Essay Examination (MEE). ncbex.org. Six 30-minute questions; the areas of law that may be covered; weighted 30% of the UBE.
- National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) (2026). NextGen Bar Exam. ncbex.org. Which jurisdictions administer or have adopted the NextGen UBE, and the 2027–2028 test dates; most jurisdictions transition between July 2026 and July 2028.
- National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) (2026). 2025 Statistics Snapshot. The Bar Examiner, ncbex.org. 67,442 persons took a bar examination in 2025; 63% passed overall, 76% of first-timers; 47,797 sat in July.
- Cepeda, N. J., Vul, E., Rohrer, D., Wixted, J. T., & Pashler, H. (2008). Spacing effects in learning: A temporal ridgeline of optimal retention. Psychological Science, 19(11), 1095–1102. More than 1,350 learners, review gaps up to 3.5 months, final tests up to a year later.
- Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319(5865), 966–968. Repeated testing had a large effect on delayed recall; repeated studying after learning had none.
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. Review of 10 techniques: practice testing and distributed practice rated high utility; rereading and highlighting low.
- Kornell, N. (2009). Optimising learning using flashcards: Spacing is more effective than cramming. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(9), 1297–1317. Three experiments with flashcards: spacing beat massing for 90% of participants, yet 72% believed massing had worked better.