271: Quick Tips -- Optimizing Studying for the MBE

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Today, we will be discussing tips to optimize your studying for the Multistate Bar Exam, or MBE. If you are in a Uniform Bar Exam jurisdiction, you will complete 200 MBE questions, spanning Torts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, Property, Contracts, and Evidence. This test is also given in California. In total, the MBE is worth 50% of your score.

Because it is worth half of the total points you can receive on the UBE, it is important that you take studying for the MBE seriously. Today, we will talk through how to diagnose your MBE problems, how to fix that problem using tried and true methods, and how platforms like AdaptiBar and UWorld can help. If you are struggling with the MBE section of the exam or just want to improve your score, be sure to try out these tips.

First, it is important to discuss common issues that bar exam takers tend to have. In order to raise your MBE score, you need to diagnose your issue. Without diagnosing your issue, it is difficult to figure out a cure that will work.

Takers struggling with the MBE content of the bar exam typically fall into one of two camps - either they are getting questions wrong because they do not understand the law, or they are getting questions wrong because they are falling for a trick in the question itself. You can figure out which camp you fall into by evaluating why you are getting each MBE question wrong.

If you find that the majority of MBE questions you got wrong were because you did not understand the law, did not remember the law, or cited the incorrect law - then you fall into the first camp. If you knew the law but still answered the question incorrectly, you likely fall into the second camp. Once you realize which camp you fall into, you can find a strategy that targets exactly your issue.

Most people, especially those at the start of their prep or those struggling particularly with the MBE component, will fall into both camps. Our first tip is if you are getting MBE questions wrong primarily because you are falling for the tricks within the question itself. This might seem counter-intuitive, but slow yourself down. One of the major struggles takers face on the MBE is timing. Without any accommodations, you have one minute and 48 seconds to answer each question.

This can pose a real problem for most bar exam takers. So you might be thinking, "Why are you suggesting I need to slow down when I should be focusing on speeding up?" It is a great question, but I promise there's a method to this madness. The reason for this is, you need to fix the other issues you are having before introducing the time clock. If you add the timer into your practice when you have other foundational issues going on, those issues will never get fixed.

Without fixing those issues, you will never improve your score. It is too difficult to fix foundational issues and work on timing simultaneously. You need to do this one at a time. Then once you fix the foundational issues, speeding yourself up will be much easier. As an example, let's say you are struggling with the MBE because you consistently pick the answer choice that assumes facts. On the MBE, you should never assume facts and should always accept the facts as presented in the question.

If you are struggling with this issue while giving yourself a minute and 48 seconds to answer the question, you will never remedy the problem; you will be completely focused on the timer. By focusing on the timer, you are not giving yourself the time and opportunity you need to recognize your issue and come up with systems to fix that issue.

By slowing yourself down and taking away the timer, you will build a good recognition system for when you assume facts and be able to put a check-in place to stop yourself from doing this in the future. This way, when you eventually speed yourself up, you will already have a good and reliable system in place for recognizing these incorrect answers.

Platforms like AdaptiBar and UWorld can be extremely helpful when it comes to building up this recognition system and identifying patterns in the MBE. AdaptiBar and UWorld use technology that conforms the program to you. What this means is if you and your friend both complete a 20-questions set at the same time on the same day, your 20-question set will look very different from your friend's. The questions you will see are tailored towards you, and the questions you get correct and incorrect.

This will help you recognize patterns, tricks, and how certain issues are tested. For example, let's say you are struggling with constitutional law and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Every time you see it as an answer choice, you choose it because it sounds right, but it ends up being incorrect. By being exposed to tailored questions, you will be able to see multiple of these questions close in time to one another. This will help you recognize a common MBE pitfall bar examiners love to test.

The Necessary and Proper Clause is never a correct answer choice when stated by itself. It must be tied to some other enumerated power. This is a trick you might not realize if you only see this type of question once every few weeks. Another benefit to slowing yourself down is it will allow you to form a consistent routine when approaching MBE questions.

Staying consistent with how you approach and answer each MBE question will allow you to stay focused and ultimately answer more questions correctly. Similar to most of bar prep, you need to cater your approaches to you and what works best for you. However, a popular routine for approaching MBE questions looks like this: First, read the facts and the call of the question. While you do this, mark up the question. Underline, annotate, circle, draw arrows.

If you are having trouble identifying the issue at hand or the rule that should be applied, read the facts and call of the question a second time. Then before you go through the answer choices, decide your answer. At the very least, determine whether the answer is "yes" or "no". Think of each individual MBE as a mini essay that you need to IRAC an answer for. Thinking of what the answer could be before you read the answer choices helps you avoid being swayed by incorrect choices.

Finally, go through the answer choices. Using your annotations, issue and rule spotting, and prediction of the answer, you should be able to narrow it down to one answer choice. If you are struggling with knowing the law itself, you should answer MBE questions open- book. This too might sound counter-intuitive, because why would you practice open-book when the exam is closed-book? The answer is the same as with untimed prep.

If you jump right into closed-book prep, you will never truly understand the law. You need to start with open-book prep to understand the law and how the bar examiners typically test that law. For example, if you do not understand what a fee simple determinable is, you will get every question wrong that features one. Not only is this wasting your time, but it can destroy your confidence to see low MBE scores in your prep.

You will be much better off focusing on learning the law and going through the motions to understand the law alongside MBE questions, rather than trying to answer questions without knowing how the law works. Use your outlines to identify which rule is at issue in a particular MBE, and use that rule to determine why each answer choice is or is not correct. If you are struggling with understanding the law, you can use AdaptiBar and UWorld to your advantage.

These platforms track how many questions you have completed in a given topic and subtopic, as well as what your percentage correct is. This is extremely helpful for anyone studying for the MBE, because this allows you to see exactly which rules you do not understand yet. Like we said earlier, many people struggling with the MBE struggle because they do not understand the law.

This is a great way to recognize which rules you need to spend time learning before you jump into closed- book practice sets. Rather than focusing on everything or having to spend time figuring out what you are struggling with, AdaptiBar and UWorld will tell you exactly what you need to spend time working on. For example, you might think you are struggling with property as a whole, because your property practice scores are much lower than any other topic.

This could cause you to spend time reviewing all of property in order to learn the law. You could spend days applying the rule against perpetuities, recording statutes, mortgages, and deeds. What AdaptiBar and UWorld can show you is that you are not actually struggling with all of property. Maybe you are averaging 70% for every property subtopic except for mortgages, which is 30%. You could use this to optimize your MBE studying, because you can just focus your time and energy on mortgages.

As you can imagine, you can not complete all of your prep untimed and open-book. As you know, the bar exam is a timed exam that is completely closed-book. Because of this, you do need to slowly transition throughout your prep to timed and closed-book practice sets. Once you feel confident with a particular subject, you should try a closed-book practice set. For example, if you spent the day reviewing intentional torts, try an intentional torts MBE set completely closed-book.

This will test your knowledge of the law and allow you to practice under test-like conditions, but it will be in a less overwhelming environment because you are only focusing on intentional torts. Once you feel comfortable with that, expand your reach a little further to all of torts and try a torts MBE practice set. Slowly expand your reach as you feel confident and comfortable until you are completing mixed practice sets.

Another way you can use AdaptiBar and UWorld to optimize your studying is by helping you slowly build up your mixed practice. These platforms allow you to customize exactly what you work on each day. This means today you can choose to work on contracts MBE questions; tomorrow you can add torts to do a mixed contracts and torts MBE set; the next day you can add civil procedure. This allows you to slowly build up your mixed practice in a way that is not overwhelming.

It does not have to be, and should not be, all or nothing. You can slowly add each topic until you get to all of them. The same advice can be given with timing. You want to start slow and gradually bring yourself to complete practice sets under test-like conditions. Start by introducing a two-minute timer on each question you complete. Push yourself to finish each question within two minutes. After a couple of days of that, try one minute and 50 seconds.

Keep going until you get one minute and 48 seconds per question on average. It is important to practice under test-like conditions in the weeks leading up to the bar exam for many reasons. First, this will give you the best indication on how you will score during the actual exam. Second, this is a great way to build your endurance and form good routines and strategies for quickly transitioning from one topic to the next.

As you likely already know, the bar exam will not give you all 25 torts questions in a row, and then all 25 evidence questions in a row. Your exam will bounce between topics, sometimes repeating them, most of the time - not. Because of this, you need to practice mixed sets to build a topic recognition into your MBE routine. The bar exam will not tell you which topic is being tested. And sometimes it is hard to differentiate between them, like with criminal law and evidence.

Preparing under test-like conditions will allow you to practice quickly transitioning between topics, rule recall, and time management. We are almost out of time, so let's recap. If you are struggling with the MBE or just want to raise your score, the first step should be diagnosing your issue. When you know exactly what your issue is, you will be able to take a more targeted approach to remedying it.

Slowing yourself down and completing open-book practice sets are helpful strategies for building the foundation for answering an MBE question and understanding the law. Over time, as you grow more and more confident in your MBE abilities, gradually transitioning to closed-book timed practice sets will prepare you for what it will be like on test day. And with that, we're out of time.

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