The MPRE — the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) — is a separate examination from the bar examination: a two-hour, 60-question multiple-choice test on the standards governing lawyers’ and judges’ professional conduct, of which 50 questions are scored and 10 are unscored pretest questions. Scores are reported on a scale of 50 to 150, each jurisdiction sets its own passing score, and the examination is required for bar admission in all United States jurisdictions except Wisconsin and Puerto Rico.
This program is part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog — join the notify list and we’ll email you when enrollment opens.
What this examination certifies
The MPRE occupies a singular place in American legal licensing: it is the examination that tests whether a future lawyer knows the rules of being a lawyer. Developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) and required for bar admission in every United States jurisdiction except Wisconsin and Puerto Rico, the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination measures knowledge and understanding of the established standards for the professional conduct of lawyers — the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct, and the controlling decisional and procedural law that surrounds them. Its questions are short ethical dramas: a client confides, a conflict surfaces, a fee is disputed, a tribunal is misled or nearly misled, and the candidate must identify what the governing standards require of the lawyer in the next move.
It must be said plainly, because candidates and catalogues alike blur it: the MPRE is a separate examination from the bar examination. It is not a subject inside the bar exam, not a section of it, and not satisfied by passing it. A candidate passes the bar examination on substantive law and still owes the MPRE; a candidate passes the MPRE — as many law candidates do while still in school — and still owes the entire bar examination. The PassProfessor catalog carries material for the bar examination family; this program is not that material. It is built to NCBE’s MPRE Subject Matter Outline alone: twelve areas of professional conduct, sixty questions, two hours, and a scaled score whose passing line is set not by NCBE but by the jurisdiction whose bar the candidate seeks to join.
The examination at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Examination | Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE), developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) |
| Position | A separate examination from the bar examination. The MPRE does not test substantive law for bar admission; it measures knowledge and understanding of the established standards for the professional conduct of lawyers. Passing the bar examination does not satisfy the MPRE requirement, and passing the MPRE does not satisfy any part of the bar examination |
| Format | 60 multiple-choice questions, each with four answer choices: 50 scored questions and 10 unscored pretest questions, which are indistinguishable from scored questions |
| Length | Two hours; computer-based, administered at Pearson VUE testing centers |
| Schedule | Administered three times per year — in March, August, and November |
| Content | Twelve subject areas under NCBE’s MPRE Subject Matter Outline, drawn from the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct, and controlling constitutional decisions and generally accepted principles in leading cases and procedural and evidentiary rules. Largest areas: Conflicts of Interest (12–18%), Litigation and Other Forms of Advocacy (10–16%), and the Client-Lawyer Relationship (10–16%) |
| Scoring | Scores reported on a scale ranging from 50 (low) to 150 (high). There is no national passing score: each jurisdiction establishes its own passing score |
| Requirement | Required for admission to the bars of all United States jurisdictions except Wisconsin and Puerto Rico |
| Examination fee | NCBE fee: $185 per administration for 2026 and 2027 test dates (a third-party fee charged by NCBE) |
| Administrator | NCBE; administered on NCBE’s behalf by Pearson VUE. PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with NCBE |
What the examination covers
Regulation of the Legal Profession — 6–12%
The profession’s gate and its discipline: the inherent authority of courts to regulate lawyers, admission to the bar and the candour it demands of applicants, the forms of lawyer discipline and their grounds, multijurisdictional practice and its limits, and the lawyer’s obligations on reporting misconduct.
The Client-Lawyer Relationship — 10–16%
One of the examination’s three heaviest areas: formation of the relationship and who the client is, the lawyer’s duties of competence-adjacent loyalty expressed through scope, allocation of authority between lawyer and client, communications, fees and their agreements, the decision rights each side holds, and termination of the relationship. Items turn on allocation: which decisions belong to the client (objectives, settlement, plea, testimony), which to the lawyer (means, within consultation), and what the rules require when the two disagree or the client disappears, discharges, or endangers the representation.
Client Confidentiality — 6–12%
Three doctrines candidates persistently merge, examined as three: the attorney-client privilege (an evidentiary rule belonging to the client), the work-product doctrine, and the ethical duty of confidentiality (broader than privilege, covering all information relating to the representation, from any source). The outline then tests the duty’s machinery: client-authorised disclosure, implied authorisation, and the exceptions — among them preventing reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm, preventing or mitigating client crime or fraud using the lawyer’s services, securing legal advice about compliance, and complying with court orders or other law.
Conflicts of Interest — 12–18%
The examination’s largest area, and its most mechanical: concurrent conflicts between current clients, conflicts from the lawyer’s personal interests and duties, former-client conflicts and the substantial-relationship test, prospective-client conflicts, conflicts from a lawyer’s prior government or judicial service, imputed conflicts across a firm, and the screening and consent mechanisms that cure what can be cured. Items present a cast of clients past, present, and prospective and a lawyer whose loyalties intersect them; the candidate must run the analysis the rules prescribe — is there a conflict, is it consentable, was consent informed and confirmed in writing where required, is it imputed, can it be screened?
Competence, Legal Malpractice, and Other Civil Liability — 6–12%
The duty to practise competently and diligently, the civil consequences when practice fails — malpractice liability and its elements, liability to third persons in defined circumstances — and the lawyer’s duties around client property claims and disputes that shade into liability. This area connects the ethical floor to the courtroom consequence: the same failure can be a rule violation, a disciplinary matter, and a damages claim, and items test whether the candidate knows which system is asking.
Litigation and Other Forms of Advocacy — 10–16%
The advocate’s duties inside proceedings: candour to the tribunal, fairness to opposing party and counsel, the rules of evidence-adjacent conduct — meritorious claims, expediting litigation, the prohibition on falsifying evidence or disobeying tribunal obligations, conduct toward witnesses, trial publicity, and the special duties of prosecutors. At 10–16% this is the third of the examination’s heavy areas, and its items are the most theatrical: a deposition answer shading into falsehood, a document that must or must not be produced, a witness who must not be coached into a story.
Transactions and Communications with Persons Other Than Clients
The lawyer outside the client relationship facing outward: truthfulness in statements to others, the duties owed when dealing with unrepresented persons (no implied representation, clarification of the lawyer’s role, no legal advice beyond the advice to secure counsel), communications with persons represented by counsel and the no-contact rule, and the rules for organisational constituents. The outline states this area without the percentage range this guide quotes for others, and the guide follows the outline’s presentation rather than inventing a weight.
Different Roles of the Lawyer — 4–10%
The lawyer wearing other hats: advisor, evaluator, negotiator, intermediary traditions, advocate in nonadjudicative proceedings, and the third-party neutral — mediator, arbitrator, and the lawyer serving in law-related capacities where clients may believe the protections of a client-lawyer relationship apply. The area examines what changes when the role changes: the duties that follow the lawyer, the account owed to non-clients about what the lawyer is and is not doing for them, and the conflicts consequences of moving between roles.
Safekeeping Funds and Other Property — 2–8%
The trust account area: holding client and third-person funds and property separate from the lawyer’s own, the records that must be kept, prompt notification and delivery of funds and property a client or third person is entitled to receive, and the handling of disputed claims to funds in the lawyer’s possession. Small in weight, absolute in character: the rules admit no de minimis and no good intentions, and the items test the standard failures — commingling, premature withdrawal, disputed funds distributed to the louder claimant.
Communications About Legal Services — 4–10%
Advertising and solicitation: the rules governing lawyer communications about services — the prohibition on false or misleading communications, the conditions on advertising, the strict limits on direct solicitation of prospective clients, and communications about fields of practice and specialisation. Items test the constitutional-era balance the Model Rules strike: commercial speech protected, deception and coercive in-person solicitation regulable. The classic constructions recur — the advertisement that omits what makes it misleading, the solicitation that arrives too soon after an accident, the specialisation claim that outruns certification.
Lawyers’ Duties to the Public and the Legal System — 2–4%
The profession’s public account: voluntary pro bono service as an aspirational duty, accepting court appointments, the obligations around improving the law and the profession’s institutions, and political-activity constraints where they attach to legal office. The smallest weighted area on the outline is also its most distinctive in kind — it examines what lawyers owe beyond clients and tribunals, and its items test the precise status of those duties: aspirational where the rules make them aspirational, mandatory where they do not.
Judicial Conduct
The outline’s closing area turns from advocates to the bench: the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct as the MPRE examines it — judicial independence and impartiality, the conduct of judicial duties, disqualification, extrajudicial activities, and political conduct of judges and judicial candidates. The current outline presentation read for this guide does not attach a percentage range to this area, and none is invented here.
The route, in order
Step 1 — Register with NCBE and schedule
Create an NCBE account, register for one of the year’s three administrations (March, August, or November), and schedule the computer-based sitting at a Pearson VUE testing center, which administers the examination on NCBE’s behalf. NCBE’s fee is $185 per administration for 2026 and 2027 test dates. Many candidates sit the MPRE during law school, when their jurisdiction’s timing rules allow, rather than in the bar examination season.
Step 2 — Confirm your jurisdiction’s passing score and timing rules
There is no national pass mark. Your jurisdiction sets its scaled passing score — published scores across jurisdictions range from 75 to 86 — and may also set how long an MPRE score remains valid and when it must be earned relative to admission. Get both numbers from your jurisdiction’s bar admissions authority, not from national summaries.
Step 3 — Sit the MPRE
Sixty multiple-choice questions in two hours, each with four answer choices. Fifty are scored; ten are unscored pretest questions, indistinguishable from the rest. Two minutes per question is the average the format allows, and the examination’s short scenarios are built to that pace.
Step 4 — Receive and report the scaled score
NCBE scores the examination and reports scores to examinees and jurisdictions, typically within five weeks of the test date. Your score is reported on the 50-to-150 scale; whether it passes is decided by the jurisdiction whose standard you must meet — a score can pass in one jurisdiction and fall short in another with a higher established standard.
What makes this examination demanding
The MPRE’s difficulty is not scale but seduction. Sixty short scenarios in two hours invites speed, and every scenario is engineered with an answer that feels professionally decent and is wrong under the rules — the kind gesture that breaches confidentiality, the pragmatic silence that breaches candour, the conflict waived by a consent the rules do not accept. The governing texts are the Model Rules and the Model Code, not the candidate’s state rules and not the candidate’s conscience, and items are lost precisely where those diverge. The conflicts area alone can supply nearly a fifth of the paper, in analyses with five moving parts each; the examination rewards candidates who run a procedure over candidates who recognise a vibe.
The credential at work
There is no career signal in the MPRE in the ordinary sense — no employer hires for it — and that is the point: it is a threshold of the licensing system itself, the ethics gate through which every admitted lawyer in all but two jurisdictions has passed. Its professional significance is real nonetheless. The standards it examines are the standards the holder will be disciplined under for an entire career, and the examination is most candidates’ first structured encounter with them as operative law rather than as a law school course. Jurisdictions set their passing scores deliberately within the published range, treating the examination as a calibrated minimum-competence screen for professional conduct — the one subject in which the public’s interest in a floor is at its most direct.
What the PassProfessor program will cover
Practice in the examination’s own shape. The MPRE is 60 multiple-choice questions in two hours, and the program in the works practises in that shape: timed sets at the two-minute pace, short scenario items in NCBE’s style of construction, and area sets weighted to the Subject Matter Outline — conflicts, advocacy, and the client-lawyer relationship carrying the volume their ranges assign them.
Written from the primary sources. The program is written from NCBE’s MPRE Subject Matter Outline and the texts it examines — the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct — teaching the Model Rules as the governing standard and flagging where a candidate’s own jurisdiction may differ, since the examination tests the model framework, not any one state’s variations.
The whole candidate, not only the test-taker. Around the item practice, the program carries the route as NCBE and the jurisdictions publish it — the three annual administrations, registration and scheduling, the 50-to-150 scaled score, and the jurisdiction-set passing standard with its validity rules — because the MPRE’s administrative mistakes (wrong window, wrong jurisdiction standard, expired score) are unforced and common.
Preparation only. This is preparation for an examination developed by NCBE. PassProfessor is not affiliated with NCBE, no completion of this program is reported to NCBE or to any jurisdiction, and nothing in the program substitutes for any jurisdiction’s admission requirements — including the bar examination, which this program does not cover.
Tell me when enrollment opens. The MPRE — Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (NCBE) program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program. No date is promised, because the program will open when it meets the standard described above, not before.
Frequently asked questions
Is the MPRE part of the bar examination?
No. The MPRE is a separate, standalone examination developed by NCBE, with its own registration, sittings, and score. Passing the bar examination does not satisfy it, and passing the MPRE satisfies no part of the bar examination. Most jurisdictions require both, independently.
How many questions are on the MPRE, and how long is it?
Sixty multiple-choice questions in two hours. Fifty questions are scored; ten are unscored pretest questions, indistinguishable from scored ones, so all sixty are answered at full effort.
What is the passing score?
There is no national passing score. Scores are reported on a scale of 50 to 150, and each jurisdiction establishes its own passing score — published jurisdictional standards range from 75 to 86. Confirm your jurisdiction’s standard with its bar admissions authority.
When is the MPRE offered?
Three times per year — in March, August, and November — as a computer-based examination at Pearson VUE testing centers, administered on NCBE’s behalf.
Who must take the MPRE?
Applicants for bar admission in all United States jurisdictions except Wisconsin and Puerto Rico, per NCBE. Your jurisdiction’s admissions authority confirms its own requirement and timing rules.
What does the MPRE test?
The established standards for lawyers’ and judges’ professional conduct: principally the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct, with controlling constitutional decisions and generally accepted principles from leading cases and procedural and evidentiary rules — organised by NCBE into twelve subject areas.
What does NCBE charge?
NCBE’s fee is $185 per administration for 2026 and 2027 test dates — a third-party fee charged by NCBE, separate from any preparation program.
When can I take it — before or after the bar examination?
Many candidates take the MPRE during law school; jurisdictions set their own rules on timing and on how long a score remains valid. Check your jurisdiction’s rules before choosing a window, especially if you are sequencing it around the bar examination.
Which subject area is largest?
Conflicts of Interest, at 12–18% of the examination under NCBE’s Subject Matter Outline, followed by Litigation and Other Forms of Advocacy and the Client-Lawyer Relationship, each at 10–16%.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with NCBE?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider, not affiliated with NCBE. The program confers no score or credential and reports nothing to NCBE or to any jurisdiction.