So last week we received a nice memo from the President of the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) letting us know that the long-awaited changes to the MBE are now official and that starting with the February 2015 examination, we will be seeing Civil Procedure as the 7th tested subject. As you know, the MBE has 200 multiple-choice questions, of which 190 are scored items and 10 are experimental questions that are not graded. We’ve seen civ pro-like questions for some time in those experimental questions, but now it’s official. With the addition of Civil Procedure to the MBE, that means that the number of questions per topic will decrease. Starting in 2015, there will be 28 questions covering Contracts, and 27 questions covering each of the six remaining topics, for a total of 190 graded questions, and of course the 10 experimental. Every U.S. jurisdiction but Louisiana uses the MBE.
The NCBE has promised to release test specifications for the MBE Civil Procedure items no later than June 30 of this year. In the meantime, the specifications for Civil Procedure, already a topic on the Multistate Essay Examination, are available on the NCBE website, http://www.ncbex.org. 3 years seems far away but for those of you in law school that will be taking the exam after July 2014, this will affect you. Whether or not this is good news or bad news depends on whether you dislike civ pro more or less than the other 6 subjects. Here is a link to the official memo that was sent out.
As for the Feb 2013 MBE that we just saw, it was tough as usual, but no major surprises. Evidence questions were a touch trickier than usual, but the question length was the same and time was not as much a factor this time as it normally is.