Illinois adopts the Uniform Bar Examination – What’s this all about?

Our Illinois Supreme Court recently adopted the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) to be the main component for bar admission. Thirty jurisdictions have, as of this writing, determined to use the UBE as a part of their bar admissions process.

The UBE is a nationwide test that allows test takers to transfer scores between states, which improves the mobility of Illinois attorneys. The July 2019 examination will be the first time the UBE will be administered in Illinois.

The Illinois Board of Admission to the Bar held public hearings around the state in 2016 to provide information on the UBE and to seek comments regarding its potential adoption. The comments received were overwhelmingly supportive of the change. That same year, the Illinois State Bar Association, through its Assembly, its supreme governing legislative body, recommended the adoption of the UBE.

The Structure and Format of the Uniform Bar Exam

The UBE is made up of three parts: (1) two Multistate Performance Test (MPT) tasks, (2) the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), and (3) the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE).

(1) Multistate Performance Test (MPT)

The MPT on the UBE has two parts, both of which are tasks designed so that new lawyers should be able to complete them, and “designed to evaluate certain fundamental skills lawyers are expected to demonstrate regardless of the area of law in which the skills are applied.”
For the MPT tasks, the applicant is given the laws that apply to a fact scenario and asked to analyze those laws and write a brief, a memo, or other written product, providing 90 minutes for each MPT task.

(2) Multistate Essay Exam (MEE)

The MEE is made up of six essay questions, and provides 30 minutes to answer each one.

(3) Multistate Bar Exam (MBE)

The MBE portion of the UBE is an extensive multiple-choice test, allowing six hours to answer 200 multiple choice questions that span all of the first year law subjects, from Constitutional law to real property.
In her extensively researched and very considered article on the adoption of the UBE, author Kellie R. Early states:

The UBE is more than just a shared set of test components. At its essence, it is an agreement to give full faith and credit to examination scores generated in participating jurisdictions based upon the fact that all UBE jurisdictions uniformly administer, grade, and score the same examination.

Certain policies are followed by UBE jurisdictions in order to produce comparable scores, enhance score portability, and ensure reliable transfer of scores. Jurisdictions agree to adhere to these policies in order to be recognized as UBE jurisdictions and generate scores that qualify to be certified by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) as UBE scores. These policies define what the UBE is and, by extension, what it is not. (The Bar Examiner, September 2011)

The acceptance of the UBE by the National Conference of Bar Examiners essentially recognizes that an individual who performs to an acceptable level on a high-quality licensing test has attained clear recognition that should be accepted in other jurisdictions. Of course, other aspects of the licensing process—character and fitness screening, decisions about how to ensure that admittees are aware of the important variations in state law, and setting the pass/fail line below which a UBE score will not be accepted—will remain the province of each state board of bar examiners.

Driven in no small part by the current crisis of law schools in America, the considerable debt burden with which law students graduate today, and the diminishing job market, anything that   increases mobility in the profession is an idea whose time has come.

Another example of reviewing and improving the historical law school paradigm is the trend of law schools to permit applicants to take the Graduate Records Examination (GRE) in lieu of the Law School Aptitude Test (LSAT). The GRE is given more often during the year and emphasizes math and science.  For example, as of this writing, The John Marshall Law School and Northwestern Law School accept the GRE.

Of course, in Illinois, our high court has continued to retain jurisdiction of the examination process, maintaining its authority to decide who may sit for the bar exam and who will be admitted to practice, determine underlying educational requirements, make all character and fitness decisions, set their own policies regarding the number of times applicants may retake the bar examination, make ADA decisions, and grade the MEE and MPT.

Our Illinois Supreme Court remains on the cutting edge of licensing lawyers as evidenced by its adoption of the Uniform Bar Examination.