Do you hope to practice law in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania? If so, you’ll have to pass the Pennsylvania Bar Exam. Let’s take a look.
Requirements
The Pennsylvania Bar Exam has three components: the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE), Pennsylvania essays, and the Pennsylvania Performance Test. Pennsylvania also requires the MPRE, which is administered separately from the bar exam, and applicants must pass a character and fitness inquiry. Here we’ll focus on the components of the exam.
MBE
The MBE consists of 200 multiple choice questions drawn from seven subjects: civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law and procedure, evidence, real property, and torts. Civ pro and evidence focus on the Federal Rules, while con law tests knowledge of the U.S. Constitution. The other areas test widely accepted principles of common law.
Pennsylvania also tests state law through its essays and performance test.
Essays
The six Pennsylvania essays cover an extensive mix of federal and state topics. While the seven MBE subjects are tested, the essays add Pennsylvania content to some of the subject areas. The tested subjects are: business organizations; civil procedure (state and federal); conflict of laws; contracts; criminal law (including related state and federal constitutional issues and DUI); employment discrimination (limited to three federal statutes: Title VII, ADA and ADEA); evidence (state and federal); family law; federal constitutional law; federal income tax; professional responsibility; real property; torts; UCC Article 2 (sales); and wills, trusts and estates.
How can six essays cover all this material? Each essay features a complex fact pattern that implicates more than one subject. For example, recent essays have tested estates, federal income tax, and professional responsibility in a single essay, and torts, evidence and civil procedure in another. Because Pennsylvania tests subjects beyond routine law school requirements, you may want to plan ahead and take classes such as employment discrimination or conflict of laws if you plan to sit for the Pennsylvania bar.
Performance Test
The final component of the bar exam is a performance test. The NCBE began producing the MPT in 1997. Pennsylvania adopted it for a while, but then began producing and administering its own performance test (PA PT). Current Pennsylvania Supreme Court Rules allow administration of either the MPT or the PA PT. Unless and until Pennsylvania adopts the UBE, the Pennsylvania bar examiners are likely to continue administering the PA PT, which is virtually identical to the MPT in structure and objective.
Like the MPT, the PA PT is a 90-minute exam consisting of a File, containing assorted documents relating to a client’s situation, and a Library, containing relevant legal sources, such as statutes and cases. The PA PT is set in Pennsylvania, rather than in the fictitious MPT state of Franklin, and it relies on actual Pennsylvania legal sources. Nevertheless, it is a closed universe exam that does not require prior knowledge of any particular substantive law. Accordingly, MPT strategies apply equally well to the PA PT.
Grading
The components of the Pennsylvania Bar Exam are weighted as follows: MBE 45%, Essays 44%, PT 11%.
Grading of the essays focuses on issue spotting, the quality of discussion, application of law to facts, and logical reasoning to reach a conclusion, rather than on the correctness of the conclusion. After each administration, the essay questions, proposed examiners’ analyses and tentative grading guidelines are provided to a representative at each of the nine law schools in Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia metropolitan area – schools where many, if not a majority, of graduates sit for the Pennsylvania bar. The materials are circulated to law school faculty who teach the respective subjects covered by the essays and the PT. Comments and suggestions from faculty are shared with the bar examiners and graders at their semiannual grading calibration session and considered in finalizing the examiners’ analyses and grading guidelines.
Scheduling
The Pennsylvania Bar Exam is given on the last Tuesday and Wednesday of February and July each year. Many examinees choose to take the Pennsylvania Bar Exam in conjunction with the New Jersey Bar Exam, which is given on the last Wednesday and Thursday of February and July. Students taking both exams must take the PA PT and essays on Tuesday, the MBE on Wednesday in Pennsylvania, and the New Jersey essays on Thursday.
The Pennsylvania bar does not have reciprocity with the neighboring states of Delaware, Maryland or New Jersey, but it does have reciprocity with New York and Ohio.
Pass Rate
In recent years, the July pass rate has been in the vicinity of 75%, with the February pass rate considerably lower, at approximately 57%. As in many jurisdictions, the pass rate declined in 2015. Thorough preparation is essential to passing the Pennsylvania Bar Exam.
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Did you find this post helpful? Check out some other great articles:
- When and Where I Studied for the Bar Exam
- I Can’t Believe I Failed the Pennsylvania Bar Exam
- Can Studying Early Help You Pass the Bar Exam
- What You Can Do Now to Prepare for the Bar Exam
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