HOW ARE THE ESSAYS DIFFERENT FROM THE MPT? One obvious answer is that the bar exam essays are different from the Multistate Performance Test (MPT)--or the California Performance Test--because the essays require knowing a lot of law, which the MPT does not.But don't let that difference distract you. It''s easy to overlook key similarities. First, both the essays and the MPT require a bar candidate to stay in control of time. Second, both the essays and the MPT require a bar candidate to read
"People always say that time changes things, but actually, you have to change them yourself." -- Andy Warhol
The bar exam season is here, and so students are asking me, "How many practice MBE questions should I do every day?" They expect me to give them a big number, like 33 or 50 or 100.
In fact, I take a totally different approach to the MBE. Numbers have nothing to do with it. My method for raising your score on the MBE is painful but effective, and it does not involve 33 or 50 or 100. I say that the way to raise your MBE score is to learn more law and learn to do patient legal analysis. That's right: learn more law, do better on the bar exam. What a concept! But learning more law is painful. Patiently applying the law to practice fact patterns, one element at a time, is slow and agonizing. And on many days, you won't feel the progress you are making.
Bar candidates who spent a full day in February 2007 writing practice bar exam essays under exam conditions became notably more cheerful and confident, says BarWrite® president Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D. "Students reported a tremendous boost to their morale."
The experiment was so successful that starting with the new bar-preparation class that begins on May 19, 2007, bar-preparer BarWrite® will include a full day of writing practice bar exam essays as a regular part of the "Ten-Day Group Coaching School."
The facts of the PMBR case are riveting. At every administration, the NCBE uses some recent MBE questions again, so as to make sure that the new exam is of the same level of difficulty as the previous exam. PMBR, knowing this, would systematically copy the MBE questions and use them in the pre-test it administered during its classes preparing candidates for the next exam. Most disappointingly, PMBR made the fact that its questions were so much like the real questions on the MBE into one of its primary advertising claims.
The case reminds us all, however, that the MBE is an extremely difficult exam.
Here is a journalist's report on my comments on NCBE v. PMBR.
"The BarWrite method for the MBE requires students actually to master many of the rules of law that the MBE tests," Dr. Gallagher says. "What a concept! Know more law, do better on the MBE."
The method PMBR preached in its three-day classes, Dr. Gallagher says, was different. It suggested students should do 50 questions a night, but it did not systematically teach the law. Doing 50 questions a night without systematically learning the law does not raise most people's MBE scores. . . ."
PERFORM YOUR BEST ON THE BAR EXAM PERFORMANCE TEST
SCORING HIGH ON BAR EXAM ESSAYS: Book and CDs
Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D., Founder and President of BarWrite® and BarWrite Press
About BarWrite® Blog
Welcome to BarWriteBlog.com, the blawg about the bar exam and the first year of law practice, including researching and writing memoranda, briefs, and letters.
BarWrite® and BarWrite Press
OUR IN-HOUSE COURSES: For law schools and law firms By practicing basic skills with a variety of materials, students in BarWrite®'s intensive one-day and two-day boot camps, for legal education and continuing legal education, learn to organize work products more efficiently, "like a sport."
OUR BAR-PREP COURSES BarWrite® means results-driven supplemental boot camps, workshops, and 1-on-1 coaching that prepare students to dominate the bar exam essays, the MBE and the Multistate Performance Test (MPT).
