I. General Information
The bar examination is a two-day examination that is administered in February and July of each year. The February bar examination is administered on the last Wednesday of February and the preceding Tuesday. The July bar examination is administered on the last Wednesday of July and the preceding Tuesday.
The July 2012 New Hampshire Bar Examination will be administered on July 24 and 25, 2012. Applicants will be advised of the location of the bar examination at a later date. The examination will be composed of three parts: the Multistate Performance Test (MPT), the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), and the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE). The MPT and MEE must be taken in New Hampshire. An applicant may take the MBE portion of the bar examination in another jurisdiction and request that the MBE score be certified to New Hampshire, but only MBE scores from the same test administration will be accepted. The New Hampshire Board of Bar Examiners will not accept certification of MBE scores from prior test administrations in New Hampshire or another jurisdiction, for use in computing overall grades. Applicants who are taking the MBE portion of the bar examination in another jurisdiction or applicants who are taking the MBE portion of the examination in New Hampshire and who wish to have their MBE score transferred to another jurisdiction for a concurrent bar examination must make arrangement with NCBE for an MBE score transfer prior to the bar examination. The address to arrange for a score transfer is of the NCBE’s web site is http://www.ncbex.org.
The three-hour morning session on Tuesday will consist of two 90-minute MPT questions. The MPT, which is developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), is designed to evaluate an applicant’s ability to use fundamental lawyering skills in a realistic situation. Each MPT question is designed to be answered in one and onehalf hours. Answers to the MPT questions will be graded by the members of the New Hampshire Board of Bar Examiners.
The three-hour afternoon session on Tuesday will consist of six MEE essay questions, which are also prepared by the NCBE. Each question is designed to be answered in one-half hour. Areas of law that may be covered on the MEE include the following: Business Associations (Agency and Partnership; Corporations and Limited Liability Companies), Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Family Law, Federal Civil Procedure, Real Property, Torts, Trusts and Estates (Decedents’ Estates; Trusts and Future Interests), and Uniform Commercial Code (Commercial Paper (Negotiable Instruments); Secured Transactions). For a list of areas of law covered on past bar examinations see MEE Subject Matter. Some questions may include issues in more than one area of law. MEE questions will be graded by members of the New Hampshire Board of Bar Examiners on the basis of law of general application rather than specific New Hampshire law.
Applicants may either handwrite or use their laptop computers for the MPT and MEE portions of the examination on Tuesday. Applicants will be provided with information about registering their laptop computers after their applications are submitted. Laptop registration takes place during the month prior to the examination.
The MBE will be administered during two three-hour sessions on Wednesday. The MBE is a multiple-choice examination consisting of 200 questions, developed by the NCBE.
Additional information regarding the MPT, the MEE and the MBE is available on the NCBE’s web site at www.ncbex.org.
Applicants will not be permitted to bring any materials into any portion of the examination.
II. Procedural Aspects of the Examination
Each applicant will be assigned an examination number by the Clerk of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Only the number will appear on examination papers to identify the applicant, and no applicant will be asked or permitted to identify his or her examination papers in any other way. The scoring process is conducted under conditions of absolute anonymity. Until the scoring process is complete, no one involved in scoring the examinations has access to information about the applicants’ identities.
The MBE component will be graded by American College Testing and the results will be returned to the Bar Examiners.
The MPT Examination will be graded by members of the New Hampshire Board of Bar Examiners. Each MPT answer will be given a raw score on a scale of 12.
The MEE will also be graded by members of the New Hampshire Board of Bar Examiners. Each of the six essay questions will be weighted equally and will be given a raw score on a scale of 1 to 6.
A curve will not be used in grading an MPT or MEE answer; each answer will be judged individually. It is not necessary to obtain a passing grade on each MPT or MEE question, but overall performance must be adequate to contribute to an overall passing score when these scores are correlated with the applicant's MBE score.
The raw MPT and MEE scores will be combined, producing a raw score with a maximum of 60. The combined raw MPT and MEE score will be scaled to the MBE score to produce a scaled score on a scale of 200. The Bar Examiners will correlate the MPT-MEE score and MBE using the Mean and Standard Deviation method, which is the statistical method recommended by the National Conference of Bar Examiners as the most statistically accurate method. The scaled MBE and MPT-MEE scores will be reported to the nearest tenth of a point. An applicant's converted MPT-MEE score will be added to the applicant's MBE scaled score. The total will be rounded to the nearest whole number, which will constitute the applicant's overall grade. A total score of 270 or more on a scale of 400 will constitute a passing score. There is no limit on the number of applicants who will be given passing scores and recommended for admission. The Board of Bar Examiners will recommend for admission any applicant who receives a passing score on the New Hampshire bar examination.
After scoring is completed, the Clerk of the Supreme Court will supply the Chair of the Board of Bar Examiners with the names of the applicants and their assigned examination numbers. To be consistent with the Board's requirement of absolute applicant anonymity during the scoring process, the Examiners will conduct no further review of MPT or MEE answers after the Clerk has supplied the Chair with the identity of the applicants.
The Chair of the Board of Bar Examiners will notify applicants whether they received a passing score on the bar examination. Successful applicants will be advised only that they received a passing score; they will not be advised of their exact score and no ranking will be provided. Approximately a month after the results are announced, unsuccessful applicants will be provided with a breakdown of scores by mail.
Applicant examination papers will be turned over to the Clerk of the Supreme Court and will be retained by the Clerk for one year after the Examination. Unsuccessful applicants may examine their MPT and MEE answers at the Supreme Court Building under procedures established by the Clerk.
III. Certification of Multistate Bar Examination Scores
After the bar examination results have been announced, the Chair of the Board of Bar Examiners will, on request, certify an applicant's MBE score attained in New Hampshire to bar examining authorities in other jurisdictions. After score results have been announced, applicants who wish their scores to be certified should write to Gordon J. MacDonald, Esq., Chair, New Hampshire Board of Bar Examiners, Nixon Peabody LLP, 900 Elm Street, 14th Floor, Manchester, NH 03101, and provide the exact name and address of the bar examining authority to which the score is to be certified.
Until results have been announced, applicants should NOT include any reference to their applicant numbers in making requests for certification. Premature revelation of an applicant number may breach an applicant's anonymity and result in disqualification.
IV. Schedule for Bar Examinations
Registration will begin at 8:00 a.m. on both days. Applicants should arrive no later than 8:15 a.m. in order to complete registration formalities and get settled in their assigned exam room in time to receive instructions prior to the beginning of the examination. The following schedules are approximations of what you may experience on the actual test days. Although the elapsed time for each test session is precise, the start and end times may vary.
First Day (MPT and MEE)
8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Registration and seating
9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Instructions
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 PM MPT
One-hour minimum lunch break
1:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Instructions
2:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. MEE
Second Day (MBE)
8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Registration and seating
9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Instructions
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 PM MBE morning session
One-hour minimum lunch break
1:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Instructions
2:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. MBE afternoon session
Rev. 2/12