Looking for free tools to help you pass the bar exam? We’ve collected all of our best free bar exam resources in one place!  !

Need help interpreting your bar exam score report or creating a study plan for your next attempt? Our bar exam experts can help! Check out our or services!

Need a bar exam score boost? Looking for one-on-one attention in your bar prep? Our are ready to help you pass!

Bar Exam

Michigan Bar Exam Appeals: How to Figure Out the Amount of Points you Need to Pass

2 Comments/in

Are you considering writing a Michigan bar exam appeal? Are you wondering whether it is worth it to appeal your Michigan bar exam score?

A big factor in making the decision to appeal is to figure out how many points you actually need to write a successful Michigan bar exam appeal.  With the new scoring method (which looks like they are just adding 32 or 33 points to everyone’s raw essay score to get the scaled essay score, at least this February 2015 round), it is even harder to figure out how many points are needed to write a successful appeal.

Update 1/1/23: Michigan no longer allows examinees to appeal their bar exam score! We will no longer be writing appeals for Michigan Bar Exam takers. Read more

February 2015 Michigan Bar Exam Results have been Released!

in

February 2015 Michigan bar exam results have been posted by seat number on the Michigan Board of Law Examiner’s website online.

It appears as though all of the numbers of those who passed the exam are posted (including those who have not passed the MPRE or have not received a character and fitness clearance. We could be wrong since the language isn’t exactly clear, but last July this is what the Board of Law Examiner’s did!)

Official results of the February 2015 Michigan bar exam have been mailed and applicants should expect to receive them in a few days – probably by Friday or Saturday. We always recommend that you wait until you receive official results before publicly announcing whether you passed or failed!  So far as we know, Michigan has always accurately posted seat numbers, but it is wiser to wait since posting by seat number is relatively new! (The first time they posted by seat number was last February so this is their third time posting my seat number!) Read more

When are Michigan Bar Exam Results Posted Online?

in

If you are wondering when the February 2015 Michigan bar exam results will be released, please check out this post for an in-depth review of past February Michigan bar exam results release dates.

If you are the kind of person to neurotically check the Michigan Board of Law Examiner’s website from 8:30 AM until 5:00 PM —  (first of all, join the club),  but second of all, note that the last couple announcements were made around 12:00 PM or 4:00 PM. Read more

Why is the Average MBE Scaled Score for the February 2015 bar exam so low?

1 Comment/in

bar examWhy is the Average MBE Scaled Score for the February 2015 bar exam so low?

We have received some inquiries regarding multistate bar exam results after Pennsylvania released statistics that stated that the average multistate bar exam (MBE) scaled score for the February 2015 bar exam was 136.17. This may seem low, especially after the mean scaled multistate bar exam score for the July 2014 bar exam dropped a few points from 144.3 to 141.5 and caused a stir in the legal community.

However, upon closer inspection, it appears that a score of 136.17 is statistically in line with typical February bar exam results. In the past ten years, the mean scaled score for the February bar exam ranged from 135.7 to 138.6 with the average being 137.37. Read more

Our New Book: How to Pass the Michigan Bar Exam!

in

We are very excited to announce that we will be publishing a book on how to pass the Michigan bar exam. The first edition has received great reviews among the people who have read it. The most common comment we have heard from our attorney-reviewers was “I wish this existed when I took the bar exam!”

The book, How to Pass the Michigan Bar Exam, is written by myself, Ashley Heidemann. I received a score of over 180 on the Michigan bar exam and have been tutoring students, as well as passionately learning everything I could about the Michigan bar exam since 2011. Read more

The Art of Waiting for Bar Exam Results…

8 Comments/in

How do You Wait for Bar Exam Results?

There are many different kinds of waiting for bar exam results that generally  fall between two extremes:

Extreme 1: Refresh the State Board’s website every two seconds. Some students check the website of their state board of law examiners’ constantly. They are the kind of students that follow our lead and download this annoying page monitor that automatically checks the website every second, chimes whenever it changes, and causes way too many mini-heart attacks. This type of person also has a propensity to annoy their peers and drive everyone crazy (since they won’t stop talking about results!)…but at the same time, everyone loves them, too,  because it is well-known that when bar exam results are released, this person will be the first to notify them.  It almost takes the pressure off of others to check the site so often.

Read more

What is the new Michigan bar exam grading formula? 

4 Comments/in

Earlier this year, the Michigan Board of Law Examiners disclosed that it would be grading essays according to a new undisclosed grading curve. The curve is supposed to ensure that “essay test scores across administrations reflect the same skill level” and continue to “reflect differences in the difficulty between the multiple choice and essay portion of the exam.”

We assumed that this grading scale was going to be very complicated – maybe points were added to particularly difficult questions or maybe the Board came up with a complex formula based on the exam scores. After reading several essays and looking at several score reports for the July 2014 bar exam, we noticed a pattern in the amount of points awarded.

Read more

How Many Points Should I Request on my Michigan Bar Exam Appeal?

6 Comments/in

Are you writing your Michigan bar exam appeal? If so, we are happy to give you some guidance! We write Michigan bar exam appeals ourselves (through our law firm) –  but we also know that many students want to write their own appeals rather than paying an attorney to do it for them. We have plenty of information of what we have seen work – and not work. Please click here to see all of our blog posts on how to write a Michigan bar exam appeal if you are seriously considering your own appeal.

Update 1/1/23: Michigan no longer allows examinees to appeal their bar exam score! We will no longer be writing appeals for Michigan Bar Exam takers. Read more

When Will the February 2015 Michigan Bar Exam Results be Released?

in

bar exam Wondering when the February 2015 Michigan Bar exam results will be released?

So are we! We did some research and discovered the past release dates for February Michigan bar exams. We discovered that the past four release dates have been on Wednesdays. The earliest release date for the past seven  February Michigan bar exams has been April 20. The latest has been May 19.

We predict that the release date will be sometime in May due to the high number of applicants (as well as that strange grading formula they started following in July, which seemed to delay the release of results).

Below is the research that we did. To be thorough, we listed the days the results were mailed, as well as the date they were mailed and the number of applicants taking the exam. Read more

Sign up for our Michigan Bar Exam Course today!

in

michigan bar examWe are happy to announce our new Michigan Bar Exam course for the July 2015 Michigan bar exam! This course tells you everything you need to know to conquer the essay portion of the Michigan bar exam.

If you are looking for something more personal to supplement your commercialized bar prep course, sign up for our Michigan Bar Exam Course today.

The Michigan Bar Exam Course is taught by Ashley Heidemann, who received a top score of over 180 on the Michigan Bar Exam on the February 2011 bar exam.  Read more

Four Tips for Planning a Post-Bar Exam Vacation

11 Comments/in
A picture from my current post-bar exam vacation to Puerto Rico.

A picture from my current post-bar exam vacation to Puerto Rico.

Looking to plan a stellar post-bar exam vacation? I highly recommend it! A post-bar exam vacation can help prevent burnout while you are studying for the exam (it will be a “reward” that will help you stay motivated to keep going until the end). It can also help keep stress to a minimum when the bar exam is over. You won’t have time to obsess over what the “right answers” were after the bar exam is over – you will be too busy getting ready to go on vacation. Lastly, it provides a nice transition. If you go right from taking the bar exam to working (or waiting for results/job searching), a short trip (or a longer one) will provide a well-deserved period of time to relax and regroup. After all, the bar exam is a huge mental and emotional task. A vacation can help you hit the reset button. Read more

A Note to the February 2015 Michigan Bar Exam Takers: Onward to the MBE Day!

in

july 2014 bar examThe essay portion of the February 2015 Michigan bar exam certainly had some curveballs that no one anticipated – gun rights in a Constitutional Law question, jury selection issues in the Criminal Procedure question, among others. PHEW. If you did not feel prepared for these topics, join the vast majority of the other Michigan bar exam takers. With that said…

While the topics were not all standard, the subjects, at least, were.

Wills was tested instead of Trusts (which we predicted would be the case, but it was really a 50-50 chance). And there were no major surprises: To many students’ great relief, there was no Secured Transactions question, nor were there any questions on No Fault, Commercial Paper, Agency, Partnership, Conflicts, etc. Instead, it was the standard exam with 9 questions based on MBE topics and 6 typical essay subjects (Domestic Relations, Personal Property, Workers’ Compensation, Corporations, Professional Responsibility, Wills).  This is to say – the subjects were not super-surprising, even though some of the topics certainly were. Read more

Should I Study the Day Before the Bar Exam?  

in

Should I Study the Day Before the Bar Exam?  

Many students ask us, “Should I study the day before the bar exam?” We always used to advise students not to study much, if at all. Why not? Studying the day before the exam tends to make students more panicked…which causes them to lose sleep and perform more poorly on the bar exam. Thus, trying to study the day before the exam can be more hurtful than it is helpful. Further, in general, you are not going to learn that much more the day before the bar exam. If you don’t know it by now, there is a good chance you will not learn anything that helpful in the remaining hours left before the bar exam.

Read more