Category: MBE

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Bar Exam MBE Study Materials

Book Review – 2010 Edition of Strategies and Tactics for the MBE

With just over 1 week until the February 2010 bar exam, I felt it was a good time to do a book review of one of the best and well-known study guides out there:

Strategies and Tactics for the MBE

Most bar examinees know the 2006 edition with its olive color, but finally a new edition is out, the 2010 edition, and the book is now in two volumes.

Volume 1 is the same format as the old one: 6 chapters (1 for each MBE subject) with practice questions, and a 200-question practice MBE exam in the back.

Volume 2 is approx 300 additional MBE questions.

I was excited to receive the new edition as I believe that the old (2006) edition is still the BEST study guide for the multistate bar exam. However, upon receiving the new edition, I realized that it was very similar to the old 2006 edition. In fact, it was so similar that I felt compelled to get my 2006 copy and compare. Here is what I discovered:

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Bar Exam MBE

1/2 way done with July 2009 Bar…

Tomorrow is the MBE… I recommend a solid evening of studying flash cards or doing random MBE questions… Many people don’t want to study the day before the MBE, but I highly recommend it and it is part of my methodology… Get a normal night of sleep, and rest assured you will do well tomorrow!

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Bar Exam DC Bar Exam MBE Study Materials

Final thoughts on self-study materials for the DC Bar and MBE/MEE/MPT

Now that the Feb 2009 bar is behind us, I wanted to discuss the materials I used… I must be honest, 90-95% of my study was on the MBE. I put in less than 1 week of study on the MEE subjects (much less than 40 hours), and about 20 hours of study for the MPT. So the other 300-400 hours I spent studying were MBE focused… I did this because the MBE is 50% of the exam, and the MBE subjects are usually 2-3 of the 6 essay questions on the MEE. The MPT does not require more than 20-40 hours of study, so I decided to roll the dice and focus heavily on the MBE subjects and MBE test-taking strategies and tactics. I feel that the gamble paid off well, as I was quite comfortable with the MBE material, MBE essay topics on the MEE, and the 3 MEE questions that I did have that were non-MBE subjects, I felt that I did about the same as everyone else I talked to after the exam… So I don’t think I would have gained much by having spent more time studying on the MEE subjects, but I definitely think I would have done worse on the MBE had I studied less for it…

Anyway, on to my ratings of the materials:

Here is my analysis of all the materials on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest)

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Bar Exam MBE

100 days till the bar

So with 100 days until the bar exam I think this is a good time to kick into effect my study plan… I am going to start with a sit down and outline of all 32 PMBR audio lecture CDs. These CDs cover all 6 MBE subjects. I am going to do them in alphabetical order, so:

Constitutional Law
Contracts
Criminal Law/Pro
Evidence
Property
Torts

After this, I’m going to hammer through all of the PMBR Earlybird questions (~50 questions per subject, so ~300 questions total). I think this should be sufficient to get my legal juices flowing, so to speak… I also plan to listen to the PMBR lectures randomly in my car anytime I am in my car (8-10 hours a week), and also anytime I am at the gym (4-5 hours a week)…

I’ll report back when I’ve finished listening to all the CDs and gotten all the earlybird questions done and reviewed… I hope to have this done by the end of the month, so that will be about 3 months until the bar exam, which is when I hope to have my study schedule 100% finalized.