To kick off the start of our MBE Question of the Day, we bring you this article from Scott in which he emphasizes the importance of practice in preparing for the MBE…
Scott Pearce is an experienced bar examination tutor in Los Angeles. He provides bar examination tutorial and home study services for bar students throughout the country. Previously, Pearce lectured and tutored at Bar/Bri, BarPassers, and PMBR. For more information, visit Pearce’s Web site at http://passthebar.com.
It’s impossible to know everything they might test you on. Most of us have the same reaction when we see the pile of bar exam books with outlines and other study materials - how am I supposed to be ready to be tested on all this in just a couple months? The good news is that it’s possible to make well-educated guesses about what’s going to be on the bar exam. Remember that this test is the product of a bureaucracy, and that by its nature it is standardized.
The Multistate Bar Examination is not going to surprise you if you are prepared, and it is the heart of every bar exam in the United States. The National Conference of Bar Examiners doesn’t hide the ball, either. They tell you how many questions to expect from each subject, and they tell you roughly what the internal breakdown is with regard to which issues are important for each subject.
You’re not going to become an expert MBE competitor by studying a lot. The most common mistake is to study too much and not practice enough. Get into MBE practice action, and keep track of your mistakes. One key to the success MicroMash has had on the MBE is the fact that the software becomes aware of your strengths and weaknesses and focuses your attention on your weaknesses. That’s great, but you should keep track of your mistakes by hand, too, both for the MBE and for the essays. If you’re making mistakes about, say, breach of duty, that’s more of a concern than if you’ve missed some obscure question about a remote detail from future interests.
All of the MBE subjects are tested on the essays, too. If you’re missing an issue on both the MBE and the essays, it’s probable you don’t understand the law and you should go study it. If you’re fine on one part of the exam but not the other, it’s more likely your shortcoming has more to do with technique than law knowledge. One thing you will observe with time is that all of the major issues are tested in the same way, over and over again, on both the MBE and the essays. The more you know about the exam, the less likely you’re going to be surprised by anything you see when you’re actually sitting for the test.
Let your practice fuel your study. It’s true that many candidates study too much and don’t practice enough, but the truth is that there’s plenty you don’t know. Once you identify a substantive weakness in your law knowledge, by all means look it up and make sure you understand it.
The key is to appreciate that the bar exam is a test of your knowledge of the exam itself, not just your knowledge of the law!
Copyright 2010 Scott Pearce and passthebar.com. Reprinted by permission.
