Strategies and Tactics for the MBE Sixth (6th) Edition Review

The newest edition of the Strategies and Tactics for the MBE book by Steven Emanuel was released a few weeks ago. I have looked over the book and compared it with the 5th edition and there are several major changes, most of them for the better. This is, in my opinion, the best MBE study guide there is, and my primary book when preparing for the MBE. It is great to see it continuously updated and the roughly $80 price is really a steal for such a good resource that contains around 600 practice questions with excellent explanations of the answer choices.

The major change to the book is the addition of Civil Procedure, both a substantive review as well as practice questions. Those of you familiar with the book will know that it has study strategies and exam tactics for all of the subjects, but in addition, Emmanuel has added a substantive review for Civil Procedure because of the lack of MBE focused substantive review materials available. This was a great move and one they did not have to do as they could have chose not to include it and instead sold it only as a separate substantive review book. The substantive review is not small either, it clocks in at about 22 pages. The Civil procedure questions are written by Emanuel as there have not been any released questions from the NCBE at this point for Civil Procedure. As has been the case so far, the actual civil procedure questions on the MBE have been pretty straightforward and simple compared to the other 6 subjects so the questions contained in this book are, so far, a little more difficult than the actual civil procedure questions on the MBE. This is the opposite from the other 6 subjects where a majority of the questions on the MBE are a bit more difficult than the ones contained in this book, although all the questions from the original 6 subjects in this book are actual questions from past MBEs making them the closest thing to what you will actually see when you take the exam.

Another addition to the book is the addition of a bonus 100 previously used MBE questions called the OPE4. This is not as useful as it is simply a reprint directly from the NCBE but the author has clearly indicated that this was due to him receiving the questions shortly before printing. The answers are intermingled throughout the questions (similar to the Volume II of S&T but even worse in this version) which makes it nearly impossible to use these questions as practice questions but instead merely as a review. I suspect in the next edition we will see the proper treatment given to these questions with the proper format and solid descriptions of all four answer choices given. For now, I would only recommend using the extra 100 questions in the back of the book as a quick review if you have exhausted all other sources of questions.

Overall the book still has the same look and feel that makes it so successful. Do not be intimidated by its size, which is now quite hefty at over 800 pages. There are over 600+ practice questions in the book so that is what most of the content is. The substantive part is very manageable and written in plain English, not outline format. Please do not confuse this book with the Volume II book of the same name, as they are now almost the same color, which is why it may be easy to mistake. This book is a dark blue (almost purple) and the Volume II book (which is just a question book and contains about 350 additional questions) is more of a light blue, and has a big number “2” on the cover.

A big thank you to Steve Emanuel for continuing his excellent work on this book, it is the core of my MBE teachings and I am thrilled to see it is being regularly updated to keep up with the recent MBE changes.