Undergraduate Degree

You must have an undergraduate degree in order to take the bar.  Law school in the United States is a post graduate course.  Any undergraduate degree should be sufficient, but please check.

In addition, you will need some post graduate legal education. As mentioned, this takes the form of either a three year JD, or a one year LLM.

The Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam The MPRE is administered by the National Conference of Bar Examiners and can be taken several different times throughout the year.  It is a multiple choice exam in which the student answers 60 questions, 50 of which are graded.  The exam can be taken several times throughout the year.  The MPRE can be taken in any state and then transferred over to the state in which you wish to qualify.  The MPRE lasts one day

The Bar

Passing the bar allows a person to be qualified in that state only.  In order to practice in a different state, the bar exam must be taken again for that individual state.

The bar exam lasts two days.  This exam differs from state to state in length and duration.  California has the longest exam at 6 hours per day over three days.     The first and second days consist of writing six 1 hour essays and two 3 hour tests.  This involves taking one 3 hour set in the morning and one 3 hour set in the afternoon. 

The second day is taken up by the MBE, which is a standard test throughout the United States.