One Weird Trick for MBE Success

A friend of mine from law school — Judy Parker — recently contacted me to tell me how she approached the MBE.

Her technique is a strange one (as she readily admitted), but it worked for her. Maybe it will work for you?

Judy’s description of her MBE strategy is below:

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First, I studied like normally, but I took careful stock of how well I was doing on each of the MBE sections.

When I took the MBE itself, I did *not* rush through question by question, but instead identified the typology of each question — I wrote a letter over each question in highlighter — T for Torts, E for Evidence,

Then once all 100 questions were identified, I went section by section, doing all the Ts at the same time; then the Es, etc.

(Naturally, the self-analysis I had done earlier that summer allowed me to hedge which sections would be stronger for me and which I had a harder time with. If I could answer five torts questions correctly in the same time it took me to answer one property question correctly, why wouldn’t I do so?)

In my opinion, the bar is designed to frustrate the takers and throw the takers off as much as possible. My plan mitigates that.

It also mitigates the strong psychological effect of having everyone in the room look at the same first ten questions all at the same time — someone is sure to make little moans or be happy with those questions and it throws others off. My plan makes you focus on categorizing what is right for you rather than what others are doing.

I took about one or two practice exams using this method and I guarantee that the time it takes to categorize is more than made up in the ease of staying within all the same types of questions — your mind doesn’t have to switch back and forth 100 times, but only six times, from subject to subject.

Unconventional? Sure — but it worked.

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Thanks, Judy. (And if any of your winery clients give you a few cases around Christmas time, send one my way!)

If you think this strategy might work to help you improve your MBE results, be sure you follow Judy’s lead and practice the method a few times before the actual bar exam to make sure you can get everything done under time pressure.

I would also caution someone using this method to be very careful about transferring their answers to the bubble-in sheet. Be sure that if you are answering question 33, you fill in bubble 33, and then when you skip to the next questions, say number 38, you fill in bubble 38. One or two incorrect bubble fills could lead to a bad result.

If you give this method a try, let me know how it goes.