About Bar Examinations
Wherever you intend to practice — in state courts, federal courts, military courts, or no courts (preparing wills, advising businesses, working for public interest groups) — you will need to have passed a bar examination. If you want to work for a firm in California, you need to pass the California bar exam; if you want to work in Rhode Island and neighboring Massachusetts, you need to pass both the Rhode Island exam and the Massachusetts exam. Learn more about bar examinations by following these “official” links:

• To obtain information about bar admission requirements – including bar examination information – use the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ site as a launching point. The bar examination is offered in each state in July and February each year. The pass rate varies considerably from state to state.
•  Check out the bar pass rates for the last 20 years in your jurisdiction at the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ site.
•  In addition to their own state-specific questions, most state bar examinations use one, two or three tests developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners: the MBE, the MPT, and/or the MEE. Click on these links to find out more about these exams. (When you arrive at these websites, look in the left-side margins for links to the correct tests, then notice that each page includes information links for test descriptions, sample questions, states using the tests and other topics.)
•  “Commercial” links to information about the bar exams abound. One of the most informative is the BAR/BRI site. This is operated by one of the nation’s leading commercial bar examination preparation companies. You can find “unofficial” information for every state’s bar exam on the BAR/BRI pages – and links to the “official” pages for each jurisdiction’s bar-related pages. Always supplement an information search on the BAR/BRI site with “official” information – note that BAR/BRI’s disclaimer includes: “BAR/BRI does not screen, edit or review material submitted by users. BAR/BRI can therefore accept no responsibility or liability for any material which may reside in or is accessed by the BAR/BRI Site other than BAR/BRI Information.” (When looking through "unofficial" pages about bar exam topics, formats, application deadlines, addresses and so forth, remember that not every site is perfect. Frankly, I suggest you double-check when you read the "official" sites as well. Caveat surfer.)