The Multistate Performance Test is a 90-minute practical skills exercise on the bar exam that drops you into a simulated law office and asks you to produce the kind of document a first-year attorney would write, using only the materials the examiners hand you.1National Conference of Bar Examiners. About the Multistate Performance Test It is written by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, has been administered since 1997, and on the Uniform Bar Examination you complete two MPT items that together count for 20 percent of your total score.
What You Are Handed
Every MPT item comes in two bundles: a File and a Library.2The Bar Examiner. The Multistate Performance Test (MPT) Everything you need sits inside those pages. Outside legal knowledge is not just unnecessary; it works against you.
The File is the fact packet. It opens with a memo from a supervising attorney telling you what to produce, for whom, and why. Behind that memo you may find interview transcripts, depositions, correspondence, contracts, police reports, medical records, newspaper clippings, or a lawyer’s notes.1National Conference of Bar Examiners. About the Multistate Performance Test Some of what the File contains is noise planted to see whether you can separate what matters from what doesn’t. Dates, dollar amounts, and conflicting witness accounts buried in the middle of a transcript are exactly the details that distinguish a passing answer from a failing one.
The Library gives you the legal authorities: cases, statutes, regulations, or rules. Some of what sits there is not relevant to your task.3National Conference of Bar Examiners. MPT Preparation Identifying the right authorities, setting aside the rest, and applying what remains to specific facts is the skill the test is measuring.
How to Spend the 90 Minutes
NCBE’s own directions suggest splitting the time roughly in half: about 45 minutes reading and organizing, then 45 minutes drafting. Within the first half, bar prep advisors generally recommend a few minutes on the task memo, around 20 minutes in the Library outlining the relevant legal standards, about 15 minutes in the File mapping facts to those standards, and a final few minutes re-reading the assignment and firming up your outline before you write.
Candidates who skip the planning phase and start drafting immediately almost always produce disorganized answers that miss issues buried in the materials. The time pressure is real. Practice full items under a clock before test day; most candidates who have never done a timed MPT are shocked by how fast 90 minutes disappears.
The Task Memo Controls Everything
The supervising attorney’s memo at the front of the File is the single most important page in the test. Every decision you make about what to include, how to organize, and what tone to strike flows from those instructions. Some items also include a separate format memo that tells you how to structure the document, sometimes down to specific headings. When a format memo appears, follow it closely. Graders notice immediately when candidates ignore formatting instructions, and it reads as a failure to follow directions no matter how strong the legal analysis.
Re-read the task memo before you start drafting, and again midway through writing. Candidates who produce a polished objective memo when the assignment called for a persuasive brief have essentially answered a different question.
Documents You May Be Asked to Draft
The task memo tells you what to write, and the range of possibilities is broad. The common formats are:
- An objective memorandum, which analyzes both the strengths and weaknesses of the client’s position in a balanced, non-advocative tone. You are advising a supervising attorney, not arguing before a judge.
- A persuasive brief, which argues for a specific outcome before a court. Tone shifts entirely toward advocacy, framing facts and law in the light most favorable to your client.
- A client letter or opinion letter, written in plain language a non-lawyer can understand, laying out options, risks, and recommendations.
- A letter to opposing counsel, such as a demand letter or settlement proposal.
Less common assignments have included closing arguments, complaints, bench memos for a judge, dispute resolution statements, and proposals for legislative language. The format may feel unfamiliar, but the underlying work is identical: read the instructions carefully, extract the relevant law, apply it to the facts, and write for the specified audience.
The Fictional Jurisdiction and Why Court Hierarchy Matters
Most MPT problems are set in Franklin, a fictional jurisdiction in a fictitious 15th Circuit of the United States. Franklin has a three-level court system: a District Court for trials, a Court of Appeal, and a Supreme Court at the top. Two neighboring fictional states, Columbia and Olympia, sometimes appear in the Library.
Opinions from the Franklin Supreme Court bind the lower Franklin courts. Decisions from Columbia or Olympia may be persuasive but carry less weight. Treating every case as equally authoritative, or forgetting to note which court issued a decision when you cite it, visibly weakens your analysis.
Because these jurisdictions are invented, the rules in the Library follow general American legal principles but may include modifications the examiners wrote for the problem. Apply the law exactly as it appears, even if it differs from what you learned in law school. If the Franklin statute sets a negligence standard that contradicts your Torts outline, the Library controls. Overriding provided rules with memorized doctrine is one of the clearest ways to lose points.
How the MPT Is Scored
Each jurisdiction grades its own candidates, but NCBE supplies detailed point sheets identifying the key issues, suggested analyses, and the relative weight of each sub-issue. Grading is relative. Your answer is ranked against other candidates’ papers rather than measured against a perfect model. The strongest papers in a grader’s stack earn the top score even if none of them addresses every possible issue.4The Bar Examiner. Its All Relative MEE and MPT Grading That Is
Graders look at several things at once: whether you followed the task memo, whether you identified the controlling issues, whether you applied law to specific facts rather than reciting abstract principles, and whether the document reads like the work product requested. An objective memo that sounds like a closing argument, or a persuasive brief that reads like neutral analysis, loses points on tone regardless of substance. Clear organization and logical headings also help, because graders working through hundreds of papers need to find your analysis quickly.
Mistakes That Cost Candidates Points
The MPT has a reputation as the most “learnable” part of the bar exam because the substantive law is provided. That reputation leads many candidates to under-prepare, which is the biggest mistake. The second is skimming the task memo and drifting from what was actually asked.
A third is importing outside legal knowledge in place of what the Library says. Graders are trained to look for use of the provided authorities, and substituting memorized rules signals that you did not engage with the materials. A related error is skipping unfavorable cases or inconvenient facts. In an objective memo, ignoring a case that weakens the client’s position is a missed issue. In a persuasive brief, the stronger move is to acknowledge it and distinguish it.
The NextGen Bar Exam Is Replacing the Current Format
The MPT in its current form is sunsetting. NCBE’s NextGen Bar Exam launches in July 2026, with ten jurisdictions administering it in that first cycle.5National Conference of Bar Examiners. NextGen Bar Exam Additional jurisdictions join in 2027 and 2028, and the current UBE remains available through February 2028 for jurisdictions that have not yet transitioned.
NextGen still includes performance tasks, but they are no longer isolated in a standalone three-hour session. Each of the NextGen’s three testing sessions weaves a performance task together with multiple-choice and integrated question sets. The core skill is unchanged: read a file, extract the relevant law, produce a written work product. Whether you sit for the current UBE with its traditional MPT or an early NextGen administration depends on your jurisdiction, but the preparation that matters most, reading legal authorities quickly, outlining before writing, and drafting professional documents under strict time limits, carries across both.