General Study Habits
As an undergraduate, I attended a "study habits" lecture where we learned that it is best to study under the same conditions in which you will be taking the test. This was supposedly based on studies performed in the 1960s that showed taking speed while studying improved exam performance—but only if you also took it while taking the exam. Listening to music while studying would also help, but only if you listened to the same music while taking the exam. I was never able to track down these studies, but I followed the advice in all of my degree programs and it seemed to help.
What this means is that you should study for the bar under the same conditions in which you will be taking it. While taking practice exams, you should:
- Sit at a table or desk.
- Work in a quiet location, with no music, television, etc.
- Have only the materials with you that you will be allowed at the exam site.
- Wear ear plugs, if you will wear them during the exam.
- Set aside blocks of time, up to three hours, and don't take breaks during that time.
MBE Practice Exams
- Use printed answer sheets with large circles. The circles on the BarBri answer sheets are about the same size as the ones on the official answer sheets.
- Fill in the circles with a No. 2 pencil.
- Time yourself (more on that below).
State Essay and MPT Practice Exams
- If you will write out the exam, get a bluebook or similar notebook and use the same type of pen you will use on exam day.
- If you will type the exam, use the same laptop you will use on exam day. Use a word processor or text editor that has a similar interface to the exam software. The exam software probably won't let you save your work, so you won't be able to use it for practice exams.
- Practice through the full start-up and shut-down sequence for the exam software. Do this several times before the exam.
Multistate Bar Exam
Most of the review courses recommend going through 50 MBE questions per day. I think that is a reasonable amount. Initially, do all 50 questions in a single subject area. After the practice exam, review your answers and figure out which specific topics you are consistently missing. Then review those topics, using the flash cards or outlines.
A few weeks before the exam, I started doing 100 mixed-topic questions every other day. This had some advantages:
- You get used to 3-hour sessions, the same as the exam. The sessions help you build up endurance. I also used these sessions to figure out exactly how much water I could drink without having to take a break.
- With mixed questions, you have the added challenge of having to figure out out the subject area. This makes the questions harder. I suggest reading the call of the question before the fact pattern. If that doesn't tell you the topic area, look at the answers.
Again, review your answers and figure out which specific topics you are consistently missing. You probably won't have time to read the detailed answers, but by this time the most important thing is just doing lots of questions.
Keep a spreadsheet that shows:
- The date of each practice exam.
- The topic(s) you studied.
- The number of questions within each topic.
- What "level" of questions you studied (easy, medium, hard, or mixed).
- Your score (overall and by topic).
Tracking your scores over time is important. For example, my contract scores started dropping when I got closer to the exam. This happened after I started doing the hard sets of contract questions. I finally figured out that the hard questions were forcing me to learn a lot of exceptions to the general rules. After doing the hard questions, I started looking for the exception every time. Most questions, however, are based on the "standard" rules. My scores started improving again once I stopped doing the hard questions, but it took a lot of work to "unlearn" the bad habits that the hard questions had taught me.
State Essay Exams
The essay exams can be intimidating. Remember that they are not like law school exams—although you have to spot the issues, the graders are mainly concerned about the black letter law. What they are really looking for are the keywords. The flash cards and mnemonic are very useful in that respect, because they condense everything down to short, simple statements of the law.
Spotting the issues is also different than on law school exams, because the issues are much simpler. For example, if you have a fact pattern that involves a divorce and childern, then two of the issues will be child support and child custody. That's how simple the issues are. Because it is a divorce, alimony (spousal maintenance) will also be an issue. To discuss it, just list each of the factors from the "MADDEN PA" mnemonic (see the screenshots page), and briefly say why each does or does not apply.
Do one or two practice essay exams after you cover each topic in your review course. As you get close to the exam date, start doing several exams from different topics in one session. Make sure you do at least two or three sessions just like the exam—same number of essays, same length of time.
I recommend primarily using the sample questions offered by your state bar association, if any (see the Links page). This will give you the best idea of how difficult the questions will be and what topics will be covered. Some states also provide sample answers. These are usually the best answers from that exam and not model answers. You will probably be surprised at how much you can miss—and even get wrong—yet still get a high score.
Multistate Performance Test
Don't blow off the MPT, but don't sweat it either. I suggest doing three or four practice exams, with at least one session just like the exam. Then read through sample answers for each type of question. When you take the exam, remember to use only the material in the library. For example, if you get a Commercial Sales (UCC Article 2) question and the library says nothing about warranties, then don't discuss warranties.
The main thing to work on during practice is how to approach the problems. Some people suggest reading the library before the file, but I found that I often missed important facts following that approach. I also found that I needed to outline on paper even though I typed out my answer on a laptop. If I outlined on my laptop, then filled in the details, I ended up confusing myself. Outlining on paper also forced me to really use the first 45 minutes for planning, rather than mixing planning and writing (see the discussion of "Timing" below).
Timing
Timing is very important in the bar exam. Every time you take a practice exam, whether a single essay or 100 MBE questions, time yourself. Buy a stopwatch, disable the beep (if it has one), and use it both during every practice and during the exam. (I will post instructions on how to disable the beep mechanism in the future.)
Multistate Bar Exam
The commercial review courses will tell you to finish 17 questions every 30 minutes and to check your stopwatch only at 17-question intervals. Under this approach, your timing would be:
| Question | Time |
|---|---|
| 17 | 0:30 |
| 34 | 1:00 |
| 51 | 1:30 |
| 68 | 2:00 |
| 85 | 2:30 |
| 100 | 3:00 |
I had two problems with this approach. First, it gives you no margin for error. If you follow it exactly, you will end with no time left over. Second, I like to check my progress more often than every 30 minutes.
I chose instead to set a pace of 1 question every 1.5 minutes. At any time, just multiply the question you are on by 1.5 to see if you are on pace. On question 10, for example, you should be at 15 minutes. On question 50, you should be at 75 minutes (1:15).
If you follow this pace, you will finish 30 minutes early, which is a bit fast. Use the extra time on tough questions. Knowing I would have extra time at the end, I didn't have to worry much about taking longer on some questions. This really helped reduce my stress during the exam. When I started falling behind the pace, I just made sure I was within the 17 question/30 minute pace.
One thing to remember is that the fact patterns on the actual exam are much shorter than the practice questions you will get from the commercial review courses. Following the 1 question/1.5 minute pace will thus be much easier during the exam than when practicing. I suggest running through the MBE Annotated Preview, available from NCBE, to get an idea of what actual MBE questions will be like.
State Essay Exam
Each essay is probably worth an equal number of points. Some may be harder than others, but you won't know which until you start writing. Give equal time to each essay, and go on to the next one when that time is up, even if you don't think you're finished. If you finish one early because it's easy, then use the extra time to go back to the harder ones. Remember, you don't have to spot every issue or write down every black letter rule. If you've spent 30 minutes on a question and haven't finished it, you'll probably get more points by starting on a fresh question rather than trying to wring the last few points out of the old question.
Multistate Performance Test
You will have 90 minutes to complete each MPT. I found the suggestion, from the commercial review courses, to use the first 45 minutes for reading and the second 45 minutes for writing to work well.