What Subjects are Tested on the Multistate Essay Exam?

What Subjects are Tested on the Multistate Essay Exam?

As you study for the Multistate Essay Exam, you may wonder: what are the subjects tested on the Multistate Essay Exam? You may also wonder what subjects are more highly tested than others. Knowing how often a subject is tested can help you maximize your efficiency when you study for the Multistate Essay Exam.

The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) (the organization that writes the Multistate Essay Exam questions) lists the following subjects as potential areas of law that could be tested on the Multistate Essay Exam:

• Business Associations (Agency and Partnership; Corporations and Limited Liability Companies),
• Civil Procedure,
• Conflict of Laws,
• Constitutional Law,
• Contracts,
• Criminal Law and Procedure,
• Evidence,
• Family Law,
• Real Property,
• Torts,
• Trusts and Estates (Decedents’ Estates; Trusts and Future Interests), and
• Uniform Commercial Code (Secured Transactions).
• [Note: Negotiable Instruments is no longer tested on the Multistate Essay Exam]

However, not all subjects are tested equally.  We’ve listed the subjects in order from most-to-least tested below. These can all be seen in the chart above as well.

Note that your jurisdiction can no longer choose which six essays to test from the ones that are drafted by the NCBE. The NCBE used to offer a choice of 7-9 questions for jurisdictions to choose from. Now, they only offer six questions, eliminating the choice of the jurisdiction over which essays to test. Below is a reflection of what was tested on the Uniform Bar Exam. This is the most important for you to know since this affects what will be tested on the UBE and MEE moving forward.

Highly Tested Subjects
Ranked from Most-to-Least Tested

• Tier One: Highly Tested Subjects on the Uniform Bar Exam  (In Order of Most-to-Least Tested)

  • Civil Procedure (21 full essays plus 1 combined with another subject)
  • Agency and Partnership (13 full essays plus 5 combined with another subject)
  • Contracts (17 full essays)
  • Real Property (15 full essays)
  • Secured Transactions (14 full essays)
  • Corporations and LLCs (11 full essays plus 5 combined with another subject)
  • Evidence (11 full essays plus 3 combined with another subject)
  • Decedents’ Estates (Wills) (10 full essays plus 4 combined with another subject)
  • Trusts and Future Interests (10 full essays plus 3 combined with another subject)
  • Constitutional Law (9 full essays plus 2 combined with another subject)
  • Torts (8 full essays plus 3 combined with another subject)
  • Family Law (10 full essays)

  Tier Two: Lesser-Tested Subjects on the Uniform Bar Exam (In Order of Most-to-Least Tested)

  • Criminal Procedure (8 full essays plus 2 combined with another subject)
  • Criminal Law (6 full essays plus 1 combined with another subject)
  • Conflict of Laws (This is usually combined with Decedents’ Estates, Family Law, Civil Procedure, or Corporations/LLCs. It is not tested on its own.) (0 full essays, 6 essays combined with another subject)

A few additional notes

• Sometimes the National Conference of Bar Examiner’s (NCBE) labels a subject “Criminal Law and Procedure” when really it is just one or the other being tested. We listed the true amount of times those subjects were tested above.
• We started collecting data from 2011 on because that is when the NCBE created the Uniform Bar Exam so it paints a truer picture of what is really tested on the multistate essay exam!
• Prior to February 2014, the NCBE used to create 9 questions for the MEE and allow jurisdictions to choose which six to include on their exams. Now, the NCBE only creates six questions.

Feel free to download the MEE chart (or email us at info@jdadvising.com if you are having difficulty downloading it!) If you repost it somewhere on the internet, we would appreciate a link to this site :) Thank you! If you are looking for only the six essays that have been tested on the Uniform Bar Exam, please see this post for our UBE Chart.

Lastly, just like all subjects are not treated equally, neither are all topics!

The NCBE tends to test certain topics within each subject more than other topics.

See this post for an overview of the highly tested MEE topics. If you are looking for an overview of the highly-tested topics on the MEE, check out our MEE One-Sheets. These give you an overview of the highly-tested areas of the MEE in one sheet, front and back. We sell them in our online store.

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