MBE (Multistate Bar Examination)
Models answer the 200 multiple choice questions of an official Multistate Bar Examination practice exam. Scored by accuracy.
Anthropic used the official NCBE 2021 MBE practice exam. The uniform-bar-exam record covers the full bar exam.
- Level
- Expert Specialists with years of training, often over hours of work
- Scored
- Checked automatically A program checks the result against an answer key, unit tests or the expected final state.
- Answers
- Multiple choice
Claude 3 Opus leads with 85% among models released by Mar 2024
Best score per model as labs report them in their own cards. Labs pick their own settings, so these compare less cleanly than independent runs.
The newest model with a score here came out in Mar 2024, and nobody has reported a newer one. Among the 20 highest-ranked models on the capability index, these have no score yet:
- GPT-6 Astra
- Claude Opus 5.5
- GPT-6.1 Terra
- GPT-6.1 Sol
- and 16 more
- 1 Claude 3 Opus 85%
- 2 Claude 2 76.5%
- 3 Claude 3 Sonnet 71%
- 4 Claude 3 Haiku 64%
| # | Model | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Claude 3 Opus | 85% | Mar 2024 | Model card | |
| 2 | Claude 2 | 76.5% | Jul 2023 | Model card | |
| 3 | Claude 3 Sonnet | 71% | Mar 2024 | Model card | |
| 4 | Claude 3 Haiku | 64% | Mar 2024 | Model card |
2 models have held number one since 2023
Lab claims count from the day the card came out, independent runs from the model’s release.
The best score passed 85% in Mar 2024
All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.
Labs report it only in system cards
We read the headline results of 479 launch posts from 51 labs, and none of them list this benchmark. Some system cards do, below.
4 system cards report it, from 1 lab
Besides launch posts, we read the system cards, model cards and technical reports labs publish with a release. They report far more, including safety and frontier-risk tests.
| Date | Document | Score | As the document writes it | Section |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Mar 2024 | Claude 3 Sonnet model card | 71 | MBE (multistate bar exam), 0-shot CoT, NCBE 2021 practice exam (Table 2) | Capabilities |
| 4 Mar 2024 | Claude 3 Opus model card | 85 | MBE (multistate bar exam), 0-shot CoT, NCBE 2021 practice exam (Table 2) | Capabilities |
| 4 Mar 2024 | Claude 3 Haiku model card | 64 | MBE (multistate bar exam), 0-shot CoT, NCBE 2021 practice exam (Table 2) | Capabilities |
| 11 Jul 2023 | Claude 2 model card | 76.5 | MBE (5-shot, no CoT), 76.5% (153/200), NCBE 2021 practice exam (4.3.2) | Capabilities |
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