The MBE, Decoded — SI Law School

The MBE, decoded.

The Multistate Bar Examination is developed and scored by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE). It's the one component nearly every jurisdiction shares: a 200-question multiple-choice exam given over two 3-hour sessions (100 questions each) on a single day. Of the 200 questions, 175 are scored and 25 are unscored pretest questions you can't identify — so you answer all 200. The 175 scored questions split evenly: 25 per subject, 7 subjects.

Seven subjects, equal weight

Subject	Scored Qs	What it really tests
Civil Procedure	25	Jurisdiction and venue first, then the litigation sequence — pleadings, discovery, pretrial, trial, appeal. Added to the MBE in February 2015; heavily rule-driven.
Constitutional Law	25	Two halves: government powers (federalism, separation of powers) and individual rights (due process, equal protection, First Amendment). Scrutiny tiers are the skeleton key.
Contracts	25	Formation, performance, breach, discharge — plus the UCC Article 2 differences for goods. Remedies and defenses round it out.
Criminal Law & Procedure	25	Substantive crimes (the homicide ladder, accomplice liability) and constitutional criminal procedure (Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Amendments).
Evidence	25	Relevance and hearsay above all — the hearsay exceptions are the highest-yield single topic cluster on the exam.
Real Property	25	Ownership interests, concurrent estates, mortgages and recording, landlord-tenant, easements and servitudes.
Torts	25	Negligence dominates — duty, breach, causation, damages, defenses — with intentional torts and strict/products liability behind it.

Subject

Scored Qs

What it really tests

Civil Procedure

Jurisdiction and venue first, then the litigation sequence — pleadings, discovery, pretrial, trial, appeal. Added to the MBE in February 2015; heavily rule-driven.

Constitutional Law

Two halves: government powers (federalism, separation of powers) and individual rights (due process, equal protection, First Amendment). Scrutiny tiers are the skeleton key.

Contracts

Formation, performance, breach, discharge — plus the UCC Article 2 differences for goods. Remedies and defenses round it out.

Criminal Law & Procedure

Substantive crimes (the homicide ladder, accomplice liability) and constitutional criminal procedure (Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Amendments).

Evidence

Relevance and hearsay above all — the hearsay exceptions are the highest-yield single topic cluster on the exam.

Real Property

Ownership interests, concurrent estates, mortgages and recording, landlord-tenant, easements and servitudes.

Torts

Negligence dominates — duty, breach, causation, damages, defenses — with intentional torts and strict/products liability behind it.

MBE structure (200 questions, 175 scored + 25 pretest, 25 per subject, two 3-hour sessions) per the NCBE. Administered on the last Wednesday of February and July; nearly every jurisdiction administers it (Louisiana does not).

Pacing and scoring

1.8 minutes per question. One hundred questions in three hours is 1 minute 48 seconds each. Practice at that pace or slower and you'll leave questions blank.
Every subject counts equally. A neglected subject costs exactly as much as a strong subject earns — budget review time evenly, then tilt toward your weakest.
Scoring is scaled. Raw scores are converted to scaled scores; each jurisdiction sets its own passing standard. The MBE is 50% of a UBE total score (reported on a 400-point scale), with the MEE at 30% and the MPT at 20%.
No penalty for wrong answers. Answer everything — a guess has expected value; a blank has none.

Our read: the MBE rewards recognition speed, not deep thought. The students who finish comfortably aren't smarter — they've seen each rule tested enough times that the fact pattern triggers the rule instantly. That's what volume buys: not knowledge, but retrieval speed. Drill in timed sets, log misses by subject and subtopic, and repair the pattern, not just the question.

How to use the blueprint

Weight study toward weight

All seven subjects are equal — so study them equally. Within subjects, lean into the heavy clusters: negligence in Torts, hearsay in Evidence, formation/breach in Contracts. See the subject checklists.

Practice at exam pace

Untimed sets build knowledge; timed sets build the exam skill. Start timing early — 1.8 minutes per question is the number to internalize.

Drill with Eli

Ask Eli for MBE drills by subject — one original question at a time, Socratic follow-ups on your reasoning, and honest tracking of whether misses are content gaps or test-taking errors.

Drills in the exam app