text: bar required courses? secured transactions and basic criminal procedures. are they must-takes for the bar? if so, how important are they? here is some information about what courses to take for the bar exam - i highly recommend all courses though because you will be tested on them. also every state has different set of laws that you will be studying and you may be tested on those areas so it is good to have those courses out of the way as well.   the first component, the multistate bar exam, is the same in every state. it consists of 200 multiple-choice questions prepared by the national conference of bar examiners (ncbe) covering a range of legal topics, including contracts, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, evidence, property and torts. you will have six hours to answer these questions, in two periods of three hours each. this gives you a little less than two minutes per question. the mbe questions are not short. a question might be several sentences long and each answer will probably also be a sentence or two. in other words, you'll probably need the whole six hours to complete the exam. the district of columbia and all states except louisiana and washington require lawyers to have passed the mbe.   virtually every state bar exam includes a second, and sometimes even a third, day of essays. some exams tailor questions to their state's laws (for example, california, new york, maryland, north carolina), while other states use the multistate essay exam as their essay section. the multistate essay exam consists of six essay questions spread over the course of three hours. other states have their own format. some topics might be familiar to you from your law school classes (like contracts, real property and torts), but others will only ring a bell if you took the course as an elective (such as wills, family law, conflict of laws or corporations). there will be as many as 20 different areas of law that you need to study.   another component common to most bar exams is known as the multistate performance test. this section is designed to test your lawyering abilities and responses to ethical dilemmas and clients. not all states use this in their bar exams, and some only use part of it (new york, for example, has only one multistate performance question, while other states include more). this section is generally only allotted an hour or two.   finally, before you graduate from law school, you will probably be required to take an ethics test, known as the multistate professional responsibility test. the mpre is a little over two hours long and consists of 50 multiple-choice questions designed to measure your knowledge of ethical standards of the legal profession. the exam is offered by the ncbe three times a year, in march, august and november. if you are not required by your state to take the mpre, you might be subject to a separate ethics section when you take your bar exam.   i hope this helps!