Washington DC (UBE) & Virginia Bar Exam Tutoring & Self-Study

Well, the time has come… Just a few days till the DC Bar Exam and I am definitely underprepared for the MEE section… I feel good about the MPTs though, having done 3 previous MPTs this week, I will do 1 more tomorrow but I’ve been doing very well on them so far… My hand gets tired after all the writing, and I wish there was more than 1.5 hours per question, but c’est la vie…

I’ve been reading plenty of previous MEE questions from about 2003/2004 to the present… I am woefully unprepared for the MEE-only subjects, but strong (as should be expected) on the MBE subjects… I plan to focus heavily on Trusts, Wills, Family Law, and Corporations this weekend by reading the BAR/BRI Conviser outlines for those 4 subjects, as well as the outlines in the Rigos/Emanuel MEE book… I plan to finish my day on Sunday doing all 9 actual MEE questions from February 2008…

Oh, and I will be reading Strategies and Tactics and doing a handful of PMBR MBE questions each night from now until the bar… I have not yet decided how I will be spending my Monday/Monday night, but I think I’ll be doing about a 50/50 split on MBE/MEE stuff… Tuesday night will obviously be 100% MBE study…

Believe it or not, I’m actually looking forward to the bar exam, as I am curious what the current, actual MBE questions look like… The MEE/MPT I don’t really care about, but the MBE fascinates me and I can’t wait to see what fine-line questions they have prepared…

BTW, I took the newly posted MBE-OPE-1/2 exams from the NCBE and the questions are reflective of the NEW style of MBE questions, so I would highly recommend to anyone to pay the $52 and buy both exams and do the questions to familiarize yourself with the new style… I love the new simplified style of questions, they are much easier to read, more straightforward, and really hone in on knowledge of the law, instead of multiple-choice “tricks”…

Well, with just over 1 week till the bar, I thought I’d post a few updates:

1) I received my admission ticket to the exam on Wednesday. It was mailed out Tuesday and arrived the next day via first class mail. Very straightforward, MPT/MEE the first day, MBE the 2nd day, no surprises…

2) I took about 2 weeks off studying as I had tons of work/travel to do, so I haven’t done much in the way of MEE/MPT studying… I read the barbri conviser outlines for the MEE subjects, and skimmed the Rigos/Emanuel MPT book, but that’s about it… I went back and did the 200 question PMBR practice test and did very well on it, with a passing raw score, which was my goal… So I’m feeling pretty good about the MBE, but I really want to score as many points there as possible to make up for bad MEE performance, so I’m going to continue to focus my efforts all the way through the exam on the MBE…

3) So, the plan is to do the feb and july 2008 MPTs and MEEs, and that’s about it for those 2 exams… I am hoping the trends for the usual subjects and rotations of subjects continues on the MEEs, but either way, with the addition of the MBE subjects on the MEE, I feel much more comfortable focusing on the MBE… As Feinberg says, “If after 4 years of undergrad, and 3 years of law school, you still haven’t figured out how to bs your way through a bluebook during an essay exam, then you don’t deserve to be a lawyer!” :-)

Finished up the 200 question practice MBE in the Strategies and Tactics book this weekend, then went over all the answers. I thought it was very helpful… So much so in fact, that I’ve decided to do a 200Q practice exam every weekend from now till the bar (That’s 4 more practice exams)… I may not be able to get one in next weekend due to work travel, but that shouldn’t be a problem since I only have two more practice exams that I am aware of. (The barbri simulated MBE and the PMBR one)… So maybe I’ll end up spending those other 2 weekends doing MPT’s and MEE’s…

I’ve decided to focus more on the MPT than the MEE, simply because the MEE will most likely be 2-3 MBE subjects, so that leaves roughly 12%-16% of the entire bar exam on the MEE subjects, so the MPT being 25% should warrant roughly twice the study time… I am not going to give it twice the study time, but I will probably give it 50% more study time than the MEE subjects… And of course, I am going to focus my MEE subject study on the more probable topics to be tested…

Exactly 1 calendar month until the bar exam… I am going to begin MEE/MPT studying Monday… Up to this point, I’ve been 100% focused on MBE subjects… I have finished all the practice questions in Strategies and Tactics… That’s 354 questions, which I completed in an average time of 1.5 minutes per question (fastest questions were Torts and Evidence which I finished in about 1.2 and 1.3 minutes per question, respectively… Slowest was Con Law, which I finished in 1.8 minutes per question) so time doesn’t appear to be too big of an issue at this point…

This weekend, I am doing the 200-question practice MBE in Strategies and Tactics, as I plan to do a 3 hour timed session this morning of the AM portion of the exam (100 questions) and then go over the answers this afternoon, then do the same tomorrow with the PM portion… I hope to score, at a bare minimum, a 130 raw, with my target being a 150 raw score… This will be the first time I have done mixed-subject MBE questions…

I believe this is when most of the bar review courses start, with 7 weeks till the bar… I have done approx 300 PMBR Red Book questions across the 6 MBE subjects, as well as reviewed flash cards and Strategies and Tactics when I can… I’ve also been continuing to listen to the PMBR CDs when I am in my car… I must admit, I slowed down over the holidays, and after the new year, but I am ready to kick things off for the “final” 7 weeks till the bar… Unfortunately, my full-time job is becoming more demanding as time goes on and February will be a very busy month (go figure)…

Anyway, my immediate goal is to complete all of the practice questions in the Strategies and Tactics book. There are 354 questions total across all 6 MBE subjects, and all are released NCBE questions from previous bar exams… To date, I’ve only done PMBR sample questions so I’m curious to see the difference in the style/difficulty of the questions… Once I’m done, I plan to do the NCBE Annotated Preview 2006… My goal is to finish all 354 questions by next Friday, Jan 16th. I think that is possible, even though I am traveling on business 2 days next week…

I’ve been continuing to make notecards, but I don’t have the time to review them as much as I’d like to… Con Law and Contracts are killing me… By FAR my worst two subjects… Property and Evidence are my best so far… I know this is somewhat backwards, so I’m hoping that Con Law “comes to me” at some point before the bar, because right now it’s brutal…