Louisiana Bar Exam: Requirements, Subjects, and 2026 Deadlines

The Louisiana bar exam is a three-day, nine-subject essay test unique to Louisiana, built around the state’s civil law tradition rather than the Uniform Bar Exam or the Multistate Bar Examination used everywhere else. To pass, you need a weighted total of at least 650 out of 900 points across the nine essays, administered by the Committee on Bar Admissions in February and July.¹

Who Can Sit for the Exam

You need a Juris Doctor from an ABA-accredited law school.² Foreign-educated applicants can qualify, but the Committee on Bar Admissions has to approve an equivalency determination of your legal education, and some applicants are required to complete additional coursework at an ABA-accredited school before sitting.³

Every applicant also has to clear the Committee’s character and fitness review. The Committee is looking at whether your record supports the trust clients, courts, and colleagues will place in you, and a history of dishonesty, unreliability, or unresolved legal problems can block admission.⁴ Disclosure matters more than a spotless record. Omissions are often treated more seriously than the underlying issue, because the Committee reads them as evidence of the very dishonesty the review exists to catch.

Format and Scoring

The exam runs on the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of a single week. Each day carries two or three essay exams, nine in total. Every essay is graded on a 100-point raw scale, but the five code subjects count twice as much as the four non-code subjects, so the code exams supply up to 600 of the 900 possible weighted points and the non-code exams supply the other 300.⁵

Scoring is compensatory. A strong result on one subject can offset a weaker one, and there is no minimum you have to hit on any individual essay. The combined weighted score simply needs to reach 650. Rule XVII does require you to sit for every subject and make a good-faith effort on each; skipping a section or turning in a blank booklet disqualifies you.⁵

Subjects Tested

Code Subjects (Double Weight)

Civil Code I: family law, domicile, marriage, divorce, child support, community property, property classifications, ownership, servitudes, and possession.
Civil Code II: successions, intestate distribution, forced heirship, wills, donations, and trusts.
Civil Code III: obligations, contracts, sales, leases, security rights, mortgages, liberative prescription, UCC secured transactions, and conflict of laws.
Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure: the procedural rules governing Louisiana state courts.
Torts: Louisiana tort law, including delictual liability and related doctrines.

Applicants who studied outside Louisiana are sometimes caught off guard by torts sitting in the code group. In Louisiana, tort principles come out of the Civil Code, so the exam treats them as code material and gives them double weight.⁶

Non-Code Subjects (Standard Weight)

Business Entities: corporations, partnerships, LLCs, and negotiable instruments under Louisiana law.
Constitutional Law: federal constitutional principles including the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Criminal Law, Procedure, and Evidence: substantive criminal law, constitutional criminal procedure, and rules of evidence, combined into one exam.
Federal Jurisdiction and Procedure: federal civil procedure, subject-matter jurisdiction, and the federal court system.

Evidence is not a standalone essay; it is bundled into the Criminal Law and Procedure exam. Federal Jurisdiction and Procedure covers what other states might label “Civil Procedure,” but focused on the federal system, since Louisiana state procedure already appears as its own code subject.⁶

Application Steps and Documents

Louisiana starts earlier than most states. If you attend an ABA-accredited law school in Louisiana, you should register with the Committee during your second year through the Law Student Registration Program. The registration fee is $150. Skipping it does not make you ineligible, but it triggers a $350 penalty when you eventually apply for the exam.⁷

When you apply for the exam itself, you will need:

A Dean’s Certificate. The Committee sends the certification request directly to your law school, which confirms your graduation and fitness. It is due 45 days before the exam begins.⁷
An NCBE character report. You separately request that the National Conference of Bar Examiners prepare it, which involves a background investigation of your financial history, criminal record, and civil litigation involvement.⁴
Certified transcripts. Foreign-educated applicants must submit certified transcripts of both their foreign and U.S. legal education.⁷
A personal history detailing your residences, employment, and any past disciplinary actions or legal issues.

Accuracy on every form matters. Incomplete or misleading information can produce a finding of lack of candor, which is one of the fastest ways to derail an otherwise qualified application.

MPRE

Before you can be admitted, though not before you can sit for the bar, you must pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination with a scaled score of 80 or higher. You can take the MPRE any time after finishing your law school ethics coursework, and many applicants sit for it during law school to keep it off their plate during bar prep.⁵

Fees and 2026 Deadlines

Your fee depends on whether you went through the Law Student Registration Program. Applicants who registered as second-year students pay $850 for the supplemental application. First-time applicants who did not register pay $975, and re-applicants also pay $975.⁷

Late filing carries an $850 penalty on top of the base application cost, which can nearly double your total.

February 2026 Exam

Application window: September 1, 2025 through November 1, 2025
Late filing (with penalty): November 4, 2025 through December 15, 2025
Re-application window: September 1, 2025 through December 15, 2025
Exam dates: Monday, February 23; Wednesday, February 25; Friday, February 27, 2026
Results released: April 17, 2026
Admission ceremony: April 27, 2026 at 11:00 AM

July 2026 Exam

Application window: December 1, 2025 through February 2, 2026
Late filing (with penalty): February 3, 2026 through May 15, 2026
Re-application window: December 1, 2025 through May 15, 2026
Exam dates: Monday, July 20; Wednesday, July 22; Friday, July 24, 2026
Results released: October 2, 2026
Admission ceremony: October 19, 2026 at 11:00 AM

Any deadline that falls on a weekend or legal holiday extends to the next business day.⁸

Testing Accommodations

Applicants with disabilities can request accommodations by submitting a formal request to the Committee, which evaluates each one individually. You will need documentation from a licensed physician, psychologist, psychiatrist, or other qualified provider describing your diagnosed condition, your current level of impairment, and why the specific accommodations are necessary.⁹

Accommodation requests follow the same filing deadlines as the general exam application: November 1 for the February exam and February 1 for the July exam. Late requests carry a $750 fee. If you received accommodations on a prior attempt within the last three years and your condition hasn’t changed, you don’t need to resubmit all supporting documentation, but you do need an updated assessment of current functional limitations. The Committee doesn’t charge extra for providing the accommodations themselves.⁹

Results, Retakes, and Pass Rates

February 2026 results post in your applicant portal by 10:00 AM on April 17, 2026, and July 2026 results by October 2, 2026, with the Louisiana Supreme Court website publishing after 10:00 AM the same days.⁸

If you fail, you can reapply, with two important limits. You get no credit for subjects you passed on an earlier attempt; every retake is a full nine-subject exam scored from scratch. And after five failed attempts, you are permanently barred from reapplying.⁵

The July 2025 administration had an overall pass rate of 75% and a first-time pass rate of 82%,¹⁰ which is typical for Louisiana. Compensatory scoring lets a strong applicant survive a bad essay, but consistently weak performance across the code subjects is very difficult to overcome given their double weighting.

No Admission Without the Exam

Louisiana offers no path to admission by motion or reciprocity. If you’re already licensed in another state, you still have to take and pass the full Louisiana bar. The one narrow exception is for in-house corporate counsel working exclusively for their employer within the state.¹¹ Familiarity with federal law and another state’s bar does not prepare you for the Louisiana Civil Code, so the Committee requires every applicant to demonstrate that knowledge through the exam.

After You Pass

Passing the exam alone does not license you. You still have to have your MPRE score, the NCBE character report, and your dean’s certificate on file. Once everything is in order, you attend a formal admission ceremony and take the Lawyer’s Oath. February 2026 examinees are scheduled for April 27, 2026; July 2026 examinees for October 19, 2026.⁸

Newly admitted attorneys must complete 12.5 hours of mandatory continuing legal education before the end of the calendar year following admission, including 8 combined hours of ethics, professionalism, or law office management. At least 8.5 of those hours have to be earned in person.¹² The Louisiana State Bar Association also runs a Transition Into Practice mentorship program that pairs new lawyers with experienced mentors for a first-year set of tasks that includes attending hearings and participating in a bar function.¹³

1
Louisiana Supreme Court. Committee on Bar Admissions
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Louisiana Supreme Court Committee on Bar Admissions. Admission
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National Conference of Bar Examiners. Louisiana
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Louisiana Supreme Court Committee on Bar Admissions. Character and Fitness
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Louisiana Supreme Court. Louisiana Supreme Court Rule XVII – Admission to the Bar of the State of Louisiana
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Louisiana Supreme Court Committee on Bar Admissions. The Bar Exam
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Louisiana Supreme Court Committee on Bar Admissions. Application Requirements
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Louisiana Supreme Court Committee on Bar Admissions. Louisiana Supreme Court Committee on Bar Admissions
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Louisiana Supreme Court Committee on Bar Admissions. General Instructions for Requesting Test Accommodations
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National Conference of Bar Examiners. Bar Exam Results by Jurisdiction
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Louisiana State University Law Center. Bar Reciprocity
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Louisiana State Bar Association. MCLE Reporting Requirements
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Louisiana State Bar Association. Transition Into Practice Program – About the TIP Program