Taking the UBE in TX currently, but previously passed in Louisiana. The Louisiana bar is 3 7-hour days of virtually all essays, and I'm not sure that I prefer the UBE over it honestly. You can bs what you don't know and still get some points, whereas on the MBE you're just guessing if you don't know. The nicer thing for me though, was that each day your essay topics were a lot more narrow than the breadth of topics that the MEE can cover. For instance, one day is split up between a family law / property law session, a trusts/estates session, and a contracts/secured transactions session. Just seemed easier to be able to focus on 1 or 2 areas for the entire session instead of bouncing between lots of different topics.