Tennessee Announces UBE Information
The Tennessee Supreme Court on Friday, September 7, 2018, approved Policies and Procedures and a new Fee Schedule proposed by the Board of Law Examiners.
With Tennessee’s adoption of the UBE last April, significant updates to the Tennessee Supreme Court Rules were expected. The first administration of the UBE in Tennessee will be the February 2019 bar exam.
The new Policies and Procedures, Fee Schedule, and the Order for Comment (due 9/28/18) and Proposed Amendments to Rule 7 can be found on the TBLE website at: http://www.tnble.org/tn-supreme-court-rule-7
I have summarized some significant points:
The minimum or “cut” score remains unchanged. As before, 270 scaled points out of 400 scaled points are required to pass the bar examination and applies that score to transferred UBE admissions, as well.
As with all UBE jurisdictions, the weight assigned to the Multistate Bar Examination is 50%; the two Multistate Performance Tests, 20%; and the six Multistate Essay Examination questions, 30%. (Previously, in TN, the MBE was 50%; the one MPT was 12.5%; and the nine state essay questions were 37.5%.)
Applications for Admission by Transferred UBE Score will be accepted beginning January 2, 2019.
The cost of the Tennessee application for first-time applicants is $575. (Please keep in mind that this fee is separate from the character and fitness application fee ($355 in the past) and the ExamSoft fee ($100 in the past). This also does not include credit card service fees that will be billed directly to the user as a separate transaction when paying the fee online.)
The new policy includes an “Initial Deadline” of May 1 for the July examination and December 1 for the February examination that is an optional, but highly recommended, deadline to meet. Applicants who submit the Tennessee Online (Synergy) Application and pay the filing fee on or before the Initial Deadline will receive notice of deficiencies in the application file, including missing or non-conforming documents. Applicants who do not submit the Synergy Application and pay the filing fee until after the Initial Deadline will not be provided notice of deficiencies. The Board does not have discretion to waive or extend deadlines so notice of deficiencies in the application file is helpful to applicants in meeting the Final Deadline.
The Court is in favor of adopting Tennessee Law Course as a preadmission requirement. From what I can tell, this would be a day-long course (similar to a CLE) rather than a state-specific exam. Public comment period for this ends Friday, September 28, 2018.
