I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they doing Forum

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totesTheGoat

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by totesTheGoat » Sat Jul 28, 2018 4:26 pm

Alright everybody, let's try this again a second time. Leave all the racial stuff for another thread. If anybody cares to discuss it, start your own thread. Preferably in the lounge.

I cleaned out the craziest parts (and responses to the craziest parts) from the thread.

I'm going to delete any post from here forward that has any off-topic content.

TheJuryMustDie

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by TheJuryMustDie » Sat Jul 28, 2018 8:59 pm

totesTheGoat wrote:Alright everybody, let's try this again a second time. Leave all the racial stuff for another thread. If anybody cares to discuss it, start your own thread. Preferably in the lounge.

I cleaned out the craziest parts (and responses to the craziest parts) from the thread.

I'm going to delete any post from here forward that has any off-topic content.
You appear so dictatorial! Take a chill pill man! :P

Guccifer91

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by Guccifer91 » Sun Jul 29, 2018 6:19 pm

TheJuryMustDie wrote:
totesTheGoat wrote:Alright everybody, let's try this again a second time. Leave all the racial stuff for another thread. If anybody cares to discuss it, start your own thread. Preferably in the lounge.

I cleaned out the craziest parts (and responses to the craziest parts) from the thread.

I'm going to delete any post from here forward that has any off-topic content.
You appear so dictatorial! Take a chill pill man! :P
It takes Xanax to be a true dictator

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totesTheGoat

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by totesTheGoat » Mon Jul 30, 2018 12:07 pm

TheJuryMustDie wrote:
totesTheGoat wrote:Alright everybody, let's try this again a second time. Leave all the racial stuff for another thread. If anybody cares to discuss it, start your own thread. Preferably in the lounge.

I cleaned out the craziest parts (and responses to the craziest parts) from the thread.

I'm going to delete any post from here forward that has any off-topic content.
You appear so dictatorial! Take a chill pill man! :P
It's my "mod voice". :lol: It's intentional, that way I can still contribute as a normal person on this site with a clear distinction between when I'm just another user and when I'm moderating a thread. Maybe I'll dial down the "all business" tone a bit.

Smiddywesson

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by Smiddywesson » Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:46 pm

I think the bar exam has been dumbed-down quite a bit. I took it in 1989 and again in February, 2019, and it's a lot easier now than it was then.

Personally, anybody who can't pass a dumbed-down bar written in his own native language should put forth the efforts to learn said language or risk being considered a dumbed-down examinee. Just exactly what language would convenience you if English doesn't fit?

To put this into perspective, who would you rather operate on your brain, the person who passed the test, or the person with ready excuses?

Maybe you people should be allowed to practice, but to be fair, the clients should be made aware of their peril, perhaps by forcing you to wear leper bells or something.

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TheJuryMustDie

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by TheJuryMustDie » Mon Mar 11, 2019 6:05 pm

edwardt1988 wrote:
JohnStamos wrote:
nixy wrote:
GoneSouth wrote:
nixy wrote:The point of the bar is gatekeeping. Of course it’s not supposed to be easy. And testing exceptions is a perfectly valid way of testing the general principles. It’s admittedly a crappy way to evaluate lawyer skills, but if you’re going to complain about that, challenge the concept of the test rather than rearranging the deck chairs of the specific questions.

At the very least, you should expect to have to read the text of the questions, I mean, come on.
You say “the point of the bar is gatekeeping,” like it’s just some accepted and acceptable fact. But it’s not. The bar has never claimed to be a way of regulating the number of licensed lawyers. It’s supposed to be an examination of competence.

It would be pretty shitty form of gatekeeping to close the gate only after people have invested three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on law school. The bar should t be designed to allow a certain number of people to less each year—it should be designed to allow all who are competent to pass.
There’s a difference btw the bar’s claimed purpose and its actual purpose. There’s been a lot of research on how, historically, it has served exactly as gatekeeping, to keep our people of color, lower income people, etc. The legal profession is also unlike the medical profession - we have very few limits on entry, and weed people through the bar exam. Medicine does the reverse.

Whether that’s acceptable is entirely different from whether it’s accepted fact. But even if it’s not acceptable, there’s no point preparing for the exam you think it should be as opposed to the exam as it actually exists.
I don't want to get off topic, but as a woman of color I can confirm this happens. The way the questions are worded is specifically used to discriminate against black and nonnative speakers. This is why it's justified to allow certain groups into a law school despite their LSAT scores. Unfortunately, the discrimination on the bar exam has yet to be remedied. I knew this would be an issue and prepared accordingly. My problem with the test stated in the OP is NOT about racism specifically, although it may also apply here, but about the way the questions are worded to confuse issues for those who are otherwise prepared for those issues.
This is very interesting. As a non-native speaker, I didn’t notice this to be an issue during the bar or LSAT. Perhaps it’s because I came to this country as a teen. I don’t really want to derail this thread, but I’d love to hear more about this issue, seems interesting.

As to the rest of this thread, OP and some of the other people seems to ignore the fact that you don’t need to get everything right to pass. You can miss a lot and still pass. The bar is a minimum competency exam, and it lives up to its name, because you can essentially know just the general rules and a few exceptions and still pass. To some degree, a lawyer who can quickly analyze a fact pattern and figure out that a certain exception applies is more competent than one who can’t.

The bar seems to let in the everyone who is at least somewhat competent, but the test also wants to differentiate between takers based on their breadth of knowledge. I’m not sure that’s such a big issue, especially since nobody will ever care how well you did on the bar, as long as you pass.
I am unsure of that. An examination of minimum competence would only require you to get 50% or over to pass. As things, getting almost 70% right on MBE would only make you 'barely' pass! That's not minimum competence test I'm afraid!

TheJuryMustDie

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by TheJuryMustDie » Mon Mar 11, 2019 7:00 pm

Smiddywesson wrote:I think the bar exam has been dumbed-down quite a bit. I took it in 1989 and again in February, 2019, and it's a lot easier now than it was then.

Personally, anybody who can't pass a dumbed-down bar written in his own native language should put forth the efforts to learn said language or risk being considered a dumbed-down examinee. Just exactly what language would convenience you if English doesn't fit?

To put this into perspective, who would you rather operate on your brain, the person who passed the test, or the person with ready excuses?

Maybe you people should be allowed to practice, but to be fair, the clients should be made aware of their peril, perhaps by forcing you to wear leper bells or something.
That's a needless jab! I'm unsure if it is necessary to exhibit your profound intellection here when no one has questioned it. You can glory all you want in your dexterous ability to comprehend legal concepts and make mince of the bar exam, but it is a tad narcissistic and rather conceited to think everyone who isn't as 'legally sagacious' as you is a 'dumb-down' lawyer.

diatribe

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by diatribe » Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:02 pm

TheJuryMustDie wrote:
edwardt1988 wrote:
JohnStamos wrote:
nixy wrote:
GoneSouth wrote:
nixy wrote:The point of the bar is gatekeeping. Of course it’s not supposed to be easy. And testing exceptions is a perfectly valid way of testing the general principles. It’s admittedly a crappy way to evaluate lawyer skills, but if you’re going to complain about that, challenge the concept of the test rather than rearranging the deck chairs of the specific questions.

At the very least, you should expect to have to read the text of the questions, I mean, come on.
You say “the point of the bar is gatekeeping,” like it’s just some accepted and acceptable fact. But it’s not. The bar has never claimed to be a way of regulating the number of licensed lawyers. It’s supposed to be an examination of competence.

It would be pretty shitty form of gatekeeping to close the gate only after people have invested three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on law school. The bar should t be designed to allow a certain number of people to less each year—it should be designed to allow all who are competent to pass.
There’s a difference btw the bar’s claimed purpose and its actual purpose. There’s been a lot of research on how, historically, it has served exactly as gatekeeping, to keep our people of color, lower income people, etc. The legal profession is also unlike the medical profession - we have very few limits on entry, and weed people through the bar exam. Medicine does the reverse.

Whether that’s acceptable is entirely different from whether it’s accepted fact. But even if it’s not acceptable, there’s no point preparing for the exam you think it should be as opposed to the exam as it actually exists.
I don't want to get off topic, but as a woman of color I can confirm this happens. The way the questions are worded is specifically used to discriminate against black and nonnative speakers. This is why it's justified to allow certain groups into a law school despite their LSAT scores. Unfortunately, the discrimination on the bar exam has yet to be remedied. I knew this would be an issue and prepared accordingly. My problem with the test stated in the OP is NOT about racism specifically, although it may also apply here, but about the way the questions are worded to confuse issues for those who are otherwise prepared for those issues.
This is very interesting. As a non-native speaker, I didn’t notice this to be an issue during the bar or LSAT. Perhaps it’s because I came to this country as a teen. I don’t really want to derail this thread, but I’d love to hear more about this issue, seems interesting.

As to the rest of this thread, OP and some of the other people seems to ignore the fact that you don’t need to get everything right to pass. You can miss a lot and still pass. The bar is a minimum competency exam, and it lives up to its name, because you can essentially know just the general rules and a few exceptions and still pass. To some degree, a lawyer who can quickly analyze a fact pattern and figure out that a certain exception applies is more competent than one who can’t.

The bar seems to let in the everyone who is at least somewhat competent, but the test also wants to differentiate between takers based on their breadth of knowledge. I’m not sure that’s such a big issue, especially since nobody will ever care how well you did on the bar, as long as you pass.
I am unsure of that. An examination of minimum competence would only require you to get 50% or over to pass. As things, getting almost 70% right on MBE would only make you 'barely' pass! That's not minimum competence test I'm afraid!
You mistake minimum "competence" with "more right than wrong." Competence is apparently valued at 70% in the eyes of the examiners. i.e. if you're a C student, you're just barely competent. Someone who gets a 51% is a low low F student and thus incompetent

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by rcharter1978 » Tue Mar 12, 2019 11:10 am

LOL, I think the bar will almost always seem like an unfair and conspiratorial shitshow until you pass.

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JoeSeperac

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by JoeSeperac » Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:04 pm

rcharter1978 wrote:LOL, I think the bar will almost always seem like an unfair and conspiratorial shitshow until you pass.
You are absolutely correct. Here are some comments about the MBE:

Glad to see everyone thought the MBE was crazy hard. Morning session was impossible and I finished an hour early in the afternoon... wtf?

MBE=super ridiculously hard, I thought. For a serious percentage of the questions, it wasn't even about what you studied or knew, it was about best guess. It was awful.

Did you see the Dude who left after the 1st hour into the MBE. The guy was in tears.

The MBE was IMPOSSIBLE.

that MBE was f***king insane


BTW, these comments were from 10 years ago. Every exam, everyone thinks the same thing. Forget what you thought about your performance and just trust the statistics.

https://abovethelaw.com/2009/07/bar-exa ... s#comments

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Re: I noticed that the "instinctive" answer on several MBE questions was clearly wrong after going back. Why are they do

Post by lawgirl3521 » Tue Mar 19, 2019 2:35 pm

TheJuryMustDie wrote:
Smiddywesson wrote:I think the bar exam has been dumbed-down quite a bit. I took it in 1989 and again in February, 2019, and it's a lot easier now than it was then.

Personally, anybody who can't pass a dumbed-down bar written in his own native language should put forth the efforts to learn said language or risk being considered a dumbed-down examinee. Just exactly what language would convenience you if English doesn't fit?

To put this into perspective, who would you rather operate on your brain, the person who passed the test, or the person with ready excuses?

Maybe you people should be allowed to practice, but to be fair, the clients should be made aware of their peril, perhaps by forcing you to wear leper bells or something.
That's a needless jab! I'm unsure if it is necessary to exhibit your profound intellection here when no one has questioned it. You can glory all you want in your dexterous ability to comprehend legal concepts and make mince of the bar exam, but it is a tad narcissistic and rather conceited to think everyone who isn't as 'legally sagacious' as you is a 'dumb-down' lawyer.
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