How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays? Forum

Discussions related to the bar exam are found in this forum
Forum rules
Anonymous Posting

Anonymous posting is only appropriate when you are sharing sensitive information about bar exam prep. You may anonymously respond on topic to these threads. Unacceptable uses include: harassing another user, joking around, testing the feature, or other things that are more appropriate in the lounge.

Failure to follow these rules will get you outed, warned, or banned."
User avatar
Asroma

New
Posts: 74
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2017 12:41 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by Asroma » Fri Jul 21, 2017 3:49 pm

JoeSeperac wrote:
If you received a scaled score of 47.82 on a July 2016 MEE answer, this was an exactly passing score. This would have contributed 13.3 points to your total UBE score (which is 5% of 266). If you had exactly passing scores for all 6 MEE answers, this would have contributed 79.8 points to your total UBE score (which is 30% of 266). In theory, the most you could ever get in points on the MEE is 30% of 400, or 120 points (you would have to write 6 model answers). Interestingly, if you answered none of the 6 MEE essays, you would still receive about 35 points towards your total UBE score (meaning you could pass NY with a 170 MBE, above average MPTs and not a word written for the essays).
:shock:

ConfusedL1

Bronze
Posts: 283
Joined: Tue Feb 24, 2015 6:53 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by ConfusedL1 » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:34 pm

Asroma wrote:
JoeSeperac wrote:
If you received a scaled score of 47.82 on a July 2016 MEE answer, this was an exactly passing score. This would have contributed 13.3 points to your total UBE score (which is 5% of 266). If you had exactly passing scores for all 6 MEE answers, this would have contributed 79.8 points to your total UBE score (which is 30% of 266). In theory, the most you could ever get in points on the MEE is 30% of 400, or 120 points (you would have to write 6 model answers). Interestingly, if you answered none of the 6 MEE essays, you would still receive about 35 points towards your total UBE score (meaning you could pass NY with a 170 MBE, above average MPTs and not a word written for the essays).
:shock:
How the @#$@$ is that possible.

User avatar
crumb cake

Bronze
Posts: 394
Joined: Tue Jun 23, 2015 7:36 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by crumb cake » Fri Jul 21, 2017 11:57 pm

Asroma wrote:
JoeSeperac wrote:
If you received a scaled score of 47.82 on a July 2016 MEE answer, this was an exactly passing score. This would have contributed 13.3 points to your total UBE score (which is 5% of 266). If you had exactly passing scores for all 6 MEE answers, this would have contributed 79.8 points to your total UBE score (which is 30% of 266). In theory, the most you could ever get in points on the MEE is 30% of 400, or 120 points (you would have to write 6 model answers). Interestingly, if you answered none of the 6 MEE essays, you would still receive about 35 points towards your total UBE score (meaning you could pass NY with a 170 MBE, above average MPTs and not a word written for the essays).
:shock:
So are you saying that a scaled score of ~47 is a passing score, and you get 35 points for doing nothing?

uceoledinbdnrn

Bronze
Posts: 122
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2017 11:06 am

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by uceoledinbdnrn » Sat Jul 22, 2017 12:03 am

ConfusedL1 wrote:
Asroma wrote:
JoeSeperac wrote:
If you received a scaled score of 47.82 on a July 2016 MEE answer, this was an exactly passing score. This would have contributed 13.3 points to your total UBE score (which is 5% of 266). If you had exactly passing scores for all 6 MEE answers, this would have contributed 79.8 points to your total UBE score (which is 30% of 266). In theory, the most you could ever get in points on the MEE is 30% of 400, or 120 points (you would have to write 6 model answers). Interestingly, if you answered none of the 6 MEE essays, you would still receive about 35 points towards your total UBE score (meaning you could pass NY with a 170 MBE, above average MPTs and not a word written for the essays).
:shock:
How the @#$@$ is that possible.
TBF a 170 is MBE is pretty savage (top 2% ish).

User avatar
LSATWiz.com

Silver
Posts: 983
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2017 10:37 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by LSATWiz.com » Sat Jul 22, 2017 11:13 am

uceoledinbdnrn wrote:
ConfusedL1 wrote:
Asroma wrote:
JoeSeperac wrote:
If you received a scaled score of 47.82 on a July 2016 MEE answer, this was an exactly passing score. This would have contributed 13.3 points to your total UBE score (which is 5% of 266). If you had exactly passing scores for all 6 MEE answers, this would have contributed 79.8 points to your total UBE score (which is 30% of 266). In theory, the most you could ever get in points on the MEE is 30% of 400, or 120 points (you would have to write 6 model answers). Interestingly, if you answered none of the 6 MEE essays, you would still receive about 35 points towards your total UBE score (meaning you could pass NY with a 170 MBE, above average MPTs and not a word written for the essays).
:shock:
How the @#$@$ is that possible.
TBF a 170 is MBE is pretty savage (top 2% ish).
i'm not sure the examiners would bother reading the essays of someone with a 170 MBE. I mean, why don't they return the essay scores of those who passed? I can't prove it, but my strong suspicion is if your MBE is above a certain figure, they're doing a once over.

Want to continue reading?

Register now to search topics and post comments!

Absolutely FREE!


soonerfreak

New
Posts: 18
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2014 4:47 am

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by soonerfreak » Sat Jul 22, 2017 12:05 pm

UBETutoring wrote:
uceoledinbdnrn wrote:
ConfusedL1 wrote:
Asroma wrote:
JoeSeperac wrote:
If you received a scaled score of 47.82 on a July 2016 MEE answer, this was an exactly passing score. This would have contributed 13.3 points to your total UBE score (which is 5% of 266). If you had exactly passing scores for all 6 MEE answers, this would have contributed 79.8 points to your total UBE score (which is 30% of 266). In theory, the most you could ever get in points on the MEE is 30% of 400, or 120 points (you would have to write 6 model answers). Interestingly, if you answered none of the 6 MEE essays, you would still receive about 35 points towards your total UBE score (meaning you could pass NY with a 170 MBE, above average MPTs and not a word written for the essays).
:shock:
How the @#$@$ is that possible.
TBF a 170 is MBE is pretty savage (top 2% ish).
i'm not sure the examiners would bother reading the essays of someone with a 170 MBE. I mean, why don't they return the essay scores of those who passed? I can't prove it, but my strong suspicion is if your MBE is above a certain figure, they're doing a once over.
Makes sense, I've heard some states don't grade if they are too low so why would they grade for really high ones? They probably assume that the test taker could have thrown away three essays talking about who will win the CFP this year and still pass.

JoeSeperac

Moderator
Posts: 507
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:30 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by JoeSeperac » Sat Jul 22, 2017 12:27 pm

crumb cake wrote:
Asroma wrote:
JoeSeperac wrote:
If you received a scaled score of 47.82 on a July 2016 MEE answer, this was an exactly passing score. This would have contributed 13.3 points to your total UBE score (which is 5% of 266). If you had exactly passing scores for all 6 MEE answers, this would have contributed 79.8 points to your total UBE score (which is 30% of 266). In theory, the most you could ever get in points on the MEE is 30% of 400, or 120 points (you would have to write 6 model answers). Interestingly, if you answered none of the 6 MEE essays, you would still receive about 35 points towards your total UBE score (meaning you could pass NY with a 170 MBE, above average MPTs and not a word written for the essays).
:shock:
So are you saying that a scaled score of ~47 is a passing score, and you get 35 points for doing nothing?
On the New York July UBE exam, an essay/MPT that receives a scaled score of about 47-48 will be an exactly passing essay. And yes, if you write nothing for the 6 MEE questions, it should contribute 35 points to your total UBE score. I know this because I have seen scores from blank essays (for example, a good number of examinees wrote nothing on the Secured Transactions essay in J16)

FYI, if you answered "A" for all 175 MBE questions, you would get about 90 UBE points. If you look at NCBE's website, you can see that the worst MBE gets 85 points (meaning this examinee did 22% correct when if he simply chose one answer for all 175 questions, he would have been better off at about 25% correct):
http://www.ncbex.org/publications/stati ... tatistics/

The Written statistics are very close to the MBE statistics (e.g. see http://seperac.com/pdf/IL-2012-Percenti ... Charts.pdf), so the worst written score in J16 (out of 46,000+ examinees) received about 85 UBE points. So if you get a 170 on the MBE (170 UBE points) and get a 96 on the MEE/MPT (which would put you in the worst 1% of MEE/MPT scores), you would pass the NY UBE with a 266.

GGMcSwift

New
Posts: 26
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2015 12:19 am

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by GGMcSwift » Sat Jul 22, 2017 7:58 pm

No info on what raw score/percentage correct = what scaled score for MBE right?

JoeSeperac

Moderator
Posts: 507
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:30 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by JoeSeperac » Sun Jul 23, 2017 12:14 pm

GGMcSwift wrote:No info on what raw score/percentage correct = what scaled score for MBE right?
For the F17 exam, I used the MBE subscore percentiles to figure out the raw scores by subject and then I added them up to figure out the total raw score. For example, on the F17 MBE, a 125/175 raw (71.4% correct) led to a scaled MBE score of 146. I will make a calculator for this once I have July scores in November.

Basically, you want at least 63% correct on the MBE. From another post of mine:

Since only 175 MBE questions will be graded on the upcoming UBE exam, you want to answer a minimum of 110 of these graded questions correctly (63%). According to a 1997 study entitled Basic Concepts in Item and Test Analysis, "the ideal percentage of correct answers on a four-choice multiple-choice test is not 70-90%. According to Thompson and Levitov (1985), the ideal difficulty for such an item would be halfway between the percentage of pure guess (25%) and 100%, (25% + {(100% - 25%)/2}. Therefore, for a test with 100 items with four alternatives each, the ideal mean percentage of correct items, for the purpose of maximizing score reliability, is roughly 63%."

If you search my posts, they talk a lot about scaling & percentages.

Want to continue reading?

Register for access!

Did I mention it was FREE ?


MoeS99

New
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Jul 08, 2017 5:05 am

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by MoeS99 » Sun Jul 23, 2017 12:21 pm

JoeSeperac wrote:
GGMcSwift wrote:No info on what raw score/percentage correct = what scaled score for MBE right?
For the F17 exam, I used the MBE subscore percentiles to figure out the raw scores by subject and then I added them up to figure out the total raw score. For example, on the F17 MBE, a 125/175 raw (71.4% correct) led to a scaled MBE score of 146. I will make a calculator for this once I have July scores in November.

Basically, you want at least 63% correct on the MBE. From another post of mine:

Since only 175 MBE questions will be graded on the upcoming UBE exam, you want to answer a minimum of 110 of these graded questions correctly (63%). According to a 1997 study entitled Basic Concepts in Item and Test Analysis, "the ideal percentage of correct answers on a four-choice multiple-choice test is not 70-90%. According to Thompson and Levitov (1985), the ideal difficulty for such an item would be halfway between the percentage of pure guess (25%) and 100%, (25% + {(100% - 25%)/2}. Therefore, for a test with 100 items with four alternatives each, the ideal mean percentage of correct items, for the purpose of maximizing score reliability, is roughly 63%."

If you search my posts, they talk a lot about scaling & percentages.
63% to pass, or 63% to get the mean (i.e., considerably higher than passing)?

lazyassassin

New
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2017 3:08 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by lazyassassin » Sun Jul 23, 2017 12:32 pm

Sitting for Delaware's exam tomorrow. Took Maryland this past February. The difficulty of the practice Delaware essays make Maryland's essays look like a vacation. If you think you're worried, Google the Delaware exam and take a look at what is in store for the poor bastards here in the first state.

JoeSeperac

Moderator
Posts: 507
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:30 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by JoeSeperac » Sun Jul 23, 2017 12:54 pm

MoeS99 wrote:63% to pass, or 63% to get the mean (i.e., considerably higher than passing)?
63% is usually passing for the MBE - it will generally lead to a scaled MBE score of 133-136. The national MBE mean in July is much higher. From 1972-2016, the average national July MBE mean is 142.05 (which is about 67%-69% correct). The highest average July MBE was 145.6 in 2008 and the lowest was 137.9 in 1972 (when the MBE was first introduced). In July 2016 it was 140.3.

Generally, the higher the MBE mean for an administration, the higher the pass rate. For example, below is a link to a chart from a Psychometric Audit of the Texas Bar Exam that shows the percent passing the Texas bar exam between Feb 2000 and July 2013 as a function of the mean MBE score in Texas on the exam date:

http://seperac.com/pdf/Texas-psychometr ... ge%207.pdf

JurorEight

New
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 3:36 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by JurorEight » Sun Jul 23, 2017 3:40 pm

JoeSeperac wrote:
crumb cake wrote:
Asroma wrote:
JoeSeperac wrote:
If you received a scaled score of 47.82 on a July 2016 MEE answer, this was an exactly passing score. This would have contributed 13.3 points to your total UBE score (which is 5% of 266). If you had exactly passing scores for all 6 MEE answers, this would have contributed 79.8 points to your total UBE score (which is 30% of 266). In theory, the most you could ever get in points on the MEE is 30% of 400, or 120 points (you would have to write 6 model answers). Interestingly, if you answered none of the 6 MEE essays, you would still receive about 35 points towards your total UBE score (meaning you could pass NY with a 170 MBE, above average MPTs and not a word written for the essays).
:shock:
So are you saying that a scaled score of ~47 is a passing score, and you get 35 points for doing nothing?
On the New York July UBE exam, an essay/MPT that receives a scaled score of about 47-48 will be an exactly passing essay. And yes, if you write nothing for the 6 MEE questions, it should contribute 35 points to your total UBE score. I know this because I have seen scores from blank essays (for example, a good number of examinees wrote nothing on the Secured Transactions essay in J16)

FYI, if you answered "A" for all 175 MBE questions, you would get about 90 UBE points. If you look at NCBE's website, you can see that the worst MBE gets 85 points (meaning this examinee did 22% correct when if he simply chose one answer for all 175 questions, he would have been better off at about 25% correct):
http://www.ncbex.org/publications/stati ... tatistics/

The Written statistics are very close to the MBE statistics (e.g. see http://seperac.com/pdf/IL-2012-Percenti ... Charts.pdf), so the worst written score in J16 (out of 46,000+ examinees) received about 85 UBE points. So if you get a 170 on the MBE (170 UBE points) and get a 96 on the MEE/MPT (which would put you in the worst 1% of MEE/MPT scores), you would pass the NY UBE with a 266.

Is this just a New York UBE thing or does every UBE state give someone 35 points right off the top even if you leave an MEE completely blank?

Register now!

Resources to assist law school applicants, students & graduates.

It's still FREE!


User avatar
Yugihoe

Silver
Posts: 691
Joined: Thu Apr 12, 2012 4:25 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by Yugihoe » Sun Jul 23, 2017 3:57 pm

JoeSeperac wrote:
MoeS99 wrote:63% to pass, or 63% to get the mean (i.e., considerably higher than passing)?
63% is usually passing for the MBE - it will generally lead to a scaled MBE score of 133-136. The national MBE mean in July is much higher. From 1972-2016, the average national July MBE mean is 142.05 (which is about 67%-69% correct). The highest average July MBE was 145.6 in 2008 and the lowest was 137.9 in 1972 (when the MBE was first introduced). In July 2016 it was 140.3.

Generally, the higher the MBE mean for an administration, the higher the pass rate. For example, below is a link to a chart from a Psychometric Audit of the Texas Bar Exam that shows the percent passing the Texas bar exam between Feb 2000 and July 2013 as a function of the mean MBE score in Texas on the exam date:

http://seperac.com/pdf/Texas-psychometr ... ge%207.pdf
So getting 110/175 or 63% is below the mean (which was about a 140 in July 2016). How much do you need to get on the MEE/MPT to pass then in an UBE jurisdiction? From other calculators I've seen floating around, One could get a 50th percentile mean score, and still pass with a 25th and 20th percentile scores on the MPT and MEE.

JoeSeperac

Moderator
Posts: 507
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:30 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by JoeSeperac » Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:08 pm

JurorEight wrote:Is this just a New York UBE thing or does every UBE state give someone 35 points right off the top even if you leave an MEE completely blank?
I am not sure about other states - I would need to see essays and scores from those states. If I had to guess, I would say the other states are the same.

As an aside, the only reason I can give this insight into the exam is because NY is more transparent with their scoring than other states. Transparency is good because if there are mistakes, people like me will find them. For example, in Feb 2012, there was a rounding error on NY score reports if the scaled MBE score was either a whole integer (e.g. 126.0) or had a decimal place of .5 (e.g. 134.5). In such instances, the Common Scaled Score was incorrectly rounded up to the nearest .5. For example, if someone had a scaled MBE score of 126.0, the Common Scaled Score should have been 630 (126.0 x 5), but the Common Scaled Score on F12 Score Reports was 630.5. I talked about this error on my website and it was fixed the next exam.

In contrast, other states try to release as little as possible (NCBE tells jurisdictions to to this) but this is bad because then the mistakes will never be discovered. For example, D.C. does not provide failing examinees with a copy of their essays (they can only attend a 2-hour review session to review their essays) which makes zero sense. Arguably, examsoft could have a feature that lets you see your essays six months after the exam. So if a jurisdiction is unwilling to release examinee essays, what does that tell you?

JurorEight

New
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 3:36 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by JurorEight » Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:16 pm

JoeSeperac wrote:
JurorEight wrote:Is this just a New York UBE thing or does every UBE state give someone 35 points right off the top even if you leave an MEE completely blank?
I am not sure about other states - I would need to see essays and scores from those states. If I had to guess, I would say the other states are the same.

As an aside, the only reason I can give this insight into the exam is because NY is more transparent with their scoring than other states. Transparency is good because if there are mistakes, people like me will find them. For example, in Feb 2012, there was a rounding error on NY score reports if the scaled MBE score was either a whole integer (e.g. 126.0) or had a decimal place of .5 (e.g. 134.5). In such instances, the Common Scaled Score was incorrectly rounded up to the nearest .5. For example, if someone had a scaled MBE score of 126.0, the Common Scaled Score should have been 630 (126.0 x 5), but the Common Scaled Score on F12 Score Reports was 630.5. I talked about this error on my website and it was fixed the next exam.

In contrast, other states try to release as little as possible (NCBE tells jurisdictions to to this) but this is bad because then the mistakes will never be discovered. For example, D.C. does not provide failing examinees with a copy of their essays (they can only attend a 2-hour review session to review their essays) which makes zero sense. Arguably, examsoft could have a feature that lets you see your essays six months after the exam. So if a jurisdiction is unwilling to release examinee essays, what does that tell you?

Great, thank you for that input.

JoeSeperac

Moderator
Posts: 507
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:30 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by JoeSeperac » Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:19 pm

Yugihoe wrote:So getting 110/175 or 63% is below the mean (which was about a 140 in July 2016). How much do you need to get on the MEE/MPT to pass then in an UBE jurisdiction? From other calculators I've seen floating around, One could get a 50th percentile mean score, and still pass with a 25th and 20th percentile scores on the MPT and MEE.
I don't have a calculator for this yet, To figure it out, just go to NCBE's website and look at the July 2016 statistics:
http://www.ncbex.org/publications/stati ... tatistics/

The Written scaled score percentiles should match the MBE percentiles. So if passing is 270 and you have a 140 MBE, then you need 130 on the Written portion. A 130 in July 2016 reports a percentile of 8.7. Accordingly, add this 8.7 to every prior percentile (just paste it all into excel) to get a total of 28.1. This means if you scored a 130 on the MEE/MPT in July 2016, you did better than 28.1% of UBE examinees nationwide (while your MBE of 140 means you did better than 48.7% of all J16 examinees).

Get unlimited access to all forums and topics

Register now!

I'm pretty sure I told you it's FREE...


superham1

New
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 8:24 am

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by superham1 » Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:44 pm

I've made my own outline by combining the outlines of Kaplan and Barbri and Themis during the lawschool years and read them over and over until the bar prep period (like almost 3months before the bar exam).

During the bar prep period, I have focused on taking the past essay exams. I have actually took the exams as if I was in the real exam session EVERYDAY(took almost 300 essays) and I reviewed my answers by comparing it with the model answers and add into my outline some of the laws which was not in my outline.

Also did 34 mbes everyday and reviewed the answers with explanations and did the same thing with the laws that were not in my outline.

4weeks before the bar exam, I have only took 1 essay exam and 9 mbes a day. and for the rest of the time I have focused on memorizing the outline. Reading it over and over and over and over and over and over and over~~~~~~~~~~~

And I have passed.

User avatar
esq

Silver
Posts: 591
Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:59 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by esq » Tue Aug 15, 2017 5:37 pm

I'd say that the most important thing is constant, active, repetition, but mostly through the MBE.

After I went through my course outlines/lectures, testing on MBE questions over and over again (and taking the time to not only read all of the explanations, but to cut and paste [which was the active part of it for me] the explanations onto a word document with general headers [i.e., Substantive DP where P was invalid & +40 yrs old]) helped me to memorize the black letter law and the intricacy of its application. Most of the explanations explain the reason for what was correct, and what was wrong, with a restatement of the rule--many in easier language and terms that that I liked better, for memorization purposes, than what was found in my formal outline materials. When you do practice the MBE over and over, eventually it beats the rule into your head by constantly reminding you of the rule elements that you are accustomed to forget--e.g., if you continually forget the Political Question part of the acronym RAMPS for jurisdiction, you will eventually remember it and how it applies if you do nothing more than repeatedly test the MBE questions. Sometimes I would do just 10 at a time if I was feeling burnout, which the phone app provided by Kaplan for this was really helpful for, though I would mix it up if I was feeling burnout and definitely practiced the full 6 hour test to make sure I was on target with my timing/scores.

Outside of that, I downloaded all the lectures in MP3 format onto a USB (which is provided for all Federal subjects--sadly not CA subjects if you take Kaplan), and plugged it into my car so it was playing whenever I drove somewhere. My mind would mentally tune in whenever they mentioned something I felt a little unclear about, and so I was automatically correcting my understanding of the rules without really focusing on beating myself up to do it at many points in my study. You'd be amazed by how effective that was since there was really nothing else to do while I was driving, and you drive quite a bit even if you are just driving down the street to grab a bite to eat while you are studying. Sometimes I'd listen to lectures while I was going to sleep, but closer to the test I found that this was counter productive--since it would keep me up at night due to me being worried that I didn't know enough instead of putting me out like it did in the beginning.

Outside of (1) MBE practice and MOST IMPORTANTLY review of the answers [getting them right wasn't as important as doing them quickly, and reviewing--they would especially stick out when I got them wrong], and (2) passive listening to lectures [most effective in my car], which happened (3) after going through the video lectures and outlines [as fast as humanly possible at x2 speed, while following and typing into video outline I might add], I (4) downloaded 1 to 3 page quicksheet style outlines, which can literally be Googled, for each of my subjects before I started my Bar studies so I knew I had some kind of quick reference outline with all the most important information for each subject. Sometimes the acronyms, information, isn't exactly what you think it should be. This is good, because it will force you to remember, or look up in your own bar materials, the rules or acronyms and change it to what you prefer--which further impresses the rule into your brain. These quicksheets can be found for both FED and state rules [usually Evidence, P. Conduct, and Rules have FED and state distinctions in the same document--so FED/State quicksheet outlines for these subjects aren't really separate] and I think I finally got around to focusing on them a week before the bar, which meant that I was confident about the changes I was making to them and the mental notes of those changes stuck with me during the bar because it was an active process. That process took me about 6 hours. I then reviewed these outlines, repeating the rules out loud to myself in the hotel room, the day before the exam. At that point, I had done as much as was helpful with the MBE, didn't want to bog my mind down with outlines/long lectures, and found it helpful to refresh and sharpen my understanding of the streamlined rules on through my 1-3 page quicksheet outlines.

TLDR version: Practicing the MBE is the most important way to memorize the rules you will need after your initial review, so cut corners and save time by finding more efficient ways to feed yourself the information in other ways (i.e., MP3 playback, download and customize quicksheet outlines instead of reinventing the wheel--which is time consuming).

ndp1234

Bronze
Posts: 408
Joined: Sat May 31, 2014 12:30 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by ndp1234 » Sat Aug 19, 2017 5:28 pm

uceoledinbdnrn wrote:
ConfusedL1 wrote:
Asroma wrote:
JoeSeperac wrote:
If you received a scaled score of 47.82 on a July 2016 MEE answer, this was an exactly passing score. This would have contributed 13.3 points to your total UBE score (which is 5% of 266). If you had exactly passing scores for all 6 MEE answers, this would have contributed 79.8 points to your total UBE score (which is 30% of 266). In theory, the most you could ever get in points on the MEE is 30% of 400, or 120 points (you would have to write 6 model answers). Interestingly, if you answered none of the 6 MEE essays, you would still receive about 35 points towards your total UBE score (meaning you could pass NY with a 170 MBE, above average MPTs and not a word written for the essays).
:shock:
How the @#$@$ is that possible.
TBF a 170 is MBE is pretty savage (top 2% ish).
I have a friend that is stellar at multiple choice questions, literally Rayman-like qualities, but he sucks at essays because he's a really slow writer and overthinks essays. In law school, he probably was only able to finish one or two exams on time and was always the last person left in the exam room. He told me he didn't answer some of the essays or that a majority of them were not complete (not sure really how many) but he got a 176 MBE. I didn't even think the scores went that high. He ended up with the exact score needed to pass NY (266).

JoeSeperac

Moderator
Posts: 507
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:30 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by JoeSeperac » Tue Sep 12, 2017 12:26 pm

ndp1234 wrote: I have a friend that is stellar at multiple choice questions, literally Rayman-like qualities, but he sucks at essays because he's a really slow writer and overthinks essays. In law school, he probably was only able to finish one or two exams on time and was always the last person left in the exam room. He told me he didn't answer some of the essays or that a majority of them were not complete (not sure really how many) but he got a 176 MBE. I didn't even think the scores went that high. He ended up with the exact score needed to pass NY (266).
Did you ever see his passing score sheet? I'm curious because I regard this as a statistical anomaly. A 266 total score and 176 MBE score means a written score of 90. According to NCBE statistics, 99.9% of examinees scored above a 90 on the written portion on the July 2016 UBE exam. Of the 300+ examinees who failed the NY UBE exam and sent me their scores, the lowest written average was 94.5 (examinee had an MBE of 111.4). Of the 4,000+ examinees who failed the pre-UBE NY bar exam and sent me their scores, only six examinees had a written average of 90 or lower (I converted the pre-UBE written scores to UBE scores although this is not a perfect reflection since it is based on one MPT rather than two and five essays rather than six). Please note that for these six examinees, their average MBE score was 102.7. Thus, to get a 176 on the MBE but only a 90 on the written is virtually impossible if the examinee actually put effort into the essays/MPT. Even if I assume the examinee did terrible on the MPTs because he wrote very slow and got nothing down, the examinee’s MBE knowledge should have carried over to the essays especially since on the J16 exam, 68% of an examinee’s MEE score came from MBE subjects.

Communicate now with those who not only know what a legal education is, but can offer you worthy advice and commentary as you complete the three most educational, yet challenging years of your law related post graduate life.

Register now, it's still FREE!


kingkonglaw

New
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Oct 19, 2017 5:10 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by kingkonglaw » Tue Oct 24, 2017 5:35 pm

txlawhawk6 wrote:
jtom195 wrote:
ConfusedL1 wrote:I'm basically just making flash cards, but at this point the essays are the only things that worry me because I don't want to misstate the law/miss an issue. Any help?
There's too much information out there to try and memorize everything that could possibly be tested on the essay portion of the bar exam. You need to prioritize your flashcards/issues by focusing on the most important rules first (e.g., negligence, diversity jurisdiction, hearsay, etc.). Working on the rules that are most frequently tested is a good starting place (you can download a free top 120 list here: https://www.barnumbers.com/). If you know these rules cold, you'll rack up enough points to pass without having to worry about every exception to every exception and all the nuanced details of the law. Focus on the rules/issues that are gonna get you the most points, and then (if you have extra time) you can look at some of the finer details. But if you get bogged down by all the little details, and don't know the really important issues, you'll shoot yourself in the foot. Ultimately, the bar exam (like most exams) is about getting points - focus on the rules that are going to yield the most points for you. Best of luck!
Is there a Texas version of this anywhere?
bumped. Is there a texas version of this? Please help. :?

User avatar
Yugihoe

Silver
Posts: 691
Joined: Thu Apr 12, 2012 4:25 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by Yugihoe » Thu Nov 23, 2017 9:30 am

Didn't Memorize any law or study for the MPT or MEE. Can confirm that just knowing the format of how to write those and doing multiple choice is enough to pass.

User avatar
TheWalrus

Silver
Posts: 1135
Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2013 3:24 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by TheWalrus » Thu Nov 23, 2017 10:36 am

kingkonglaw wrote:
txlawhawk6 wrote:
jtom195 wrote:
ConfusedL1 wrote:I'm basically just making flash cards, but at this point the essays are the only things that worry me because I don't want to misstate the law/miss an issue. Any help?
There's too much information out there to try and memorize everything that could possibly be tested on the essay portion of the bar exam. You need to prioritize your flashcards/issues by focusing on the most important rules first (e.g., negligence, diversity jurisdiction, hearsay, etc.). Working on the rules that are most frequently tested is a good starting place (you can download a free top 120 list here: https://www.barnumbers.com/). If you know these rules cold, you'll rack up enough points to pass without having to worry about every exception to every exception and all the nuanced details of the law. Focus on the rules/issues that are gonna get you the most points, and then (if you have extra time) you can look at some of the finer details. But if you get bogged down by all the little details, and don't know the really important issues, you'll shoot yourself in the foot. Ultimately, the bar exam (like most exams) is about getting points - focus on the rules that are going to yield the most points for you. Best of luck!
Is there a Texas version of this anywhere?
bumped. Is there a texas version of this? Please help. :?
For the Texas ones, just repeatedly read the model answers in whatever bar prep book you are using.

Tony48

New
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2017 6:47 pm

Re: How the !@$% do people memorize all the law necessary for essays?

Post by Tony48 » Fri Nov 24, 2017 10:43 pm

I think the harder part is making sure you keep the state distinctions separate from common law.

But like I'm sure others have mentioned, you're not memorizing everything; just the important stuff. And after doing a bunch of reading, a bunch of MC and a bunch of essays, it starts to stick. Just like with anything, repetition is the key to improvement.

Seriously? What are you waiting for?

Now there's a charge.
Just kidding ... it's still FREE!


Post Reply Post Anonymous Reply  

Return to “Bar Exam Prep and Discussion Forum”