Category: Bar Exam

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Virginia Bar Exam

Virginia February 2013 Bar Exam Results Posted

Results are posted.  Good luck!

http://www.vbbe.state.va.us/bar/barresults.html

Overall pass rate was just over half of test takers passing at 57.45%, with 65.71% of first time takers passing.  The top prize this time goes to UVA with an overall pass rate of 90.48% and a 100% pass rate for all of their first time test takers.  Liberty University also had all of their first time takers pass, so congratulations as well.  Congratulations to everyone who passed!  The swearing in ceremony is June 3rd this year, Monday @ 10AM.

If you did not pass, please don’t give up.  Look over how you studied, how many hours you put in, etc.  Did you have a plan?  If so, did you stick to it?  Analyze what you did and think about how you would have done things differently and make that your new plan for this July.

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Bar Exam MBE

February 2013 MBE Score Analysis

The official national mean scores for the Feb 2013 MBE exam have been posted.  Looks like people did slightly better this past February than usual as the mean was 138.0, which is about a point or so higher than the typical Feb mean.  The range of scoring was pretty normal, showing a low score of 73.3 to a most excellent high score of 183.2.  Good luck to everyone still waiting for results to be released for their jurisdiction.

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Bar Exam CA Bar Exam DC Bar Exam MD Bar Exam NY Bar Exam Virginia Bar Exam

Feb 2013 Bar Exam Results anticipated posting dates for VA, DC, MD, NY, TX and CA

We’re getting closer to February’s bar exam results, with Virginia’s coming next week.  Here are the expected and anticipated dates for the February 2013 bar exam results for VA, DC, MD, NY, TX and CA:

Virginia – Expected April 25, 2013
DC – Anticipated May 1, 2013
Maryland – Expected May 3, 2013
Texas – Expected May 3, 2013
New York – Anticipated May 9, 2013
California – Expected May 17, 2013

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Bar Exam DC Bar Exam

Feb 2013 DC Bar exam Essay day Analysis

The Feb 2013 DC Bar exam is over!  Congrats to everyone who took it, just for surviving.  This one was a little tougher than usual in some ways.  To start with, we had two persuasive MPTs, and neither was a memo.  Definitely not the best way to start the bar exam.  The good news is that the essays were MBE subject heavy which was a nice treat.  In fact, for the first time ever we had four out of six essay questions that were MBE subjects.  They were Property, Con law, Evidence and Contracts.  Speaking of predictions, getting 5 out of 6 ain’t all that bad so I was feeling pretty good. The other two questions were Agency and Fed Civ Pro.

For the MPTs, as I said, neither were memos.  One was a letter and one was a brief.  Both were persuasive, which for most people is a more difficult assignment.  Time was a major issue on these MPTs, and finishing both in 3 hours was more difficult than usual.

Now that it’s over, I’m going to relax and not think about anything bar exam related.  We’ve got a few months till the results come out.  I’ll post when I know more details about when to expect results.

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Bar Exam MBE

Changes to the MBE – Civil Procedure is coming in 2015

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.

Categories
Virginia Bar Exam

Virginia Feb 2013 Bar Exam Essay Analysis

The Feb 2013 Virginia bar exam is over.  The questions were right in line with predictions and the MBE (to be discussed in a later post) was average.  Question 1 started out with property, a Virginia favorite, followed by my favorite local govt law and VA Civ pro for question 2.  Question 3 was a hybrid wills and Prof Responsibility question.  The fourth questions was UCC2, sales, and finishing up the questions for the morning section was our old friend corporations.  The afternoon gave us another local govt question followed by the evil subject known as creditors rights which was mixed with more corporations and property. There was a nice Federal Jurisdiction question, and then finally, a nice gift of a question featuring personal property and wills.  Short answer/multiple choice were straightforward as always, with a few gimmies and a couple head scratchers, but nothing crazy.  It was interesting to see the bar examiners leave out UCC 3 and 9 (thank you!) and go a big lighter than usual on the VA civ procedure (thank you again!).  Depending on how you studied for this exam, it either seemed very hard, or tough, but fair.

Good luck to everyone that took the exam!  I’ll post estimated dates for when bar exams across the country will be posting their results.  Got a few months of painful waiting until then, so try and think about something else other than the exam for the time being.