February 2022 Michigan Bar Exam Recap

February 2022 Michigan Bar Exam Recap

Congratulations to all of those who sat for the February 2022 Michigan bar exam! Hopefully, you are all enjoying a bit of a mental reprieve while waiting for results. You have certainly earned a break after all of your hard work!

Looking back at what was tested, while there were a couple of interesting subjects and issues, the exam as a whole did not feel more difficult than usual.  However, that does not mean that the questions were easy!  The bar exam is always challenging, and something on the exam likely surprised you, which is perfectly normal.  Remember that it was always going to be impossible to know everything, and so some issues might have been personal trouble spots for you.  That’s okay!  You do not have to score perfectly, or even all that highly, to pass the Michigan Bar Exam. In fact, on recent exams, if you get the equivalent of (about) a 6.7 out of 10 you will pass!

February 2022 Michigan Bar Exam Recap

Here is our recap of the February 2022 Michigan bar exam!

The Subjects Tested

The subjects tested on the February 2022 Michigan bar exam followed a pretty predictable formula.  Pretty much all of the usual suspects were covered, including the MBE subjects and the essay-only subjects that tend to turn up on every exam.  Perhaps the one exception to this was the omission of Corporations, while both Agency and Partnership were tested as individual essays. This marked the first appearance of Partnership since February 2017, while Agency has appeared on six of the last 13 bar exams. Although Corporations is a popular subject, it is certainly not unheard of for it to be replaced by Partnership and/or Agency.

Similar to Agency, Conflict of Laws showed up, making its seventh appearance in the last 13 exams. Trusts was also tested as opposed to Wills.  While the Examiners do tend to favor Wills (and rarely do they both appear), we don’t tend to go too long without seeing Trusts, and so this substitution was not unexpected.

The absence of the more rarely tested Secured Transactions and No-Fault continued again.  Neither of these subjects have appeared since July of 2017, and so we would think that there’s a chance one or both of those could make a reappearance on what should be the final Michigan essay exam this coming July.  Lastly, we noted in both of our 2021 recaps that Workers’ Compensation could be returning to its previous status as being a regular on the Michigan bar.  It was tested again in February 2022, making this its fifth consecutive appearance.  Workers’ Compensation should likely be considered a favorite again.

As always, just because the subject selection was unsurprising as a whole, that doesn’t mean the questions themselves were easy!  But if you studied smart and divided your time efficiently across the subjects based on their testing frequency, you were in decent shape!

The Issues Tested

For the most part, the February 2022 Michigan Bar Exam seemed to follow the recent trend of more direct calls of the question.  This means that for many of the questions, the burden was off of examinees to identify the topics and the number of issues to discuss. We appreciated the direct approach to the Contracts question, as this is a subject that traditionally has a very vague call, making it more difficult!

Another interesting (positive?) change of pace was the Constitutional Law question testing an issue that is more commonly classified as Criminal Procedure. Since some of the most unexpected issues often appear in the Constitutional Law question, it was probably comforting for examinees to see a very highly tested issue appear instead of something mystifying. Although the regular Criminal Procedure question did test an issue we hadn’t seen on the essays before, hopefully you learned it in your prep for the MBE.

However, some of the subjects deviated from tradition in a less favorable way!  Personal Property is historically one of the most straightforward questions.  There are few issues they test and the questions themselves are rarely that hard.  While this question did test one of the traditional issues, we found it much more difficult than usual!  The Partnership issues were surprising as well, among others that weren’t frequent essay topics.

Lastly, we wanted to highlight the current events twist in the Workers’ Compensation question!  Many of us can relate to the thought of tripping over children’s toys (or pets, or your partner’s belongings, etc.) while “at work” during the pandemic. The Examiners brought creativity with this question, and while the law to be applied was very basic, it likely led to many thoughtful arguments from examinees!

If you struggled with this exam – whether you struggled with timing, or didn’t write what your classmates wrote – you are not alone! Many examinees have these challenges.  Also remember that if you struggled with a question, others probably did too. You will be graded in that light. Even if you got an answer “wrong” you will not get a 0 for the question as long as you wrote something.

Finally, know that it’s over.  There’s nothing you can do about it now, and you can’t change anything that you wrote.  Please don’t dwell on your responses!  Do your best to put the bar exam out of your mind for a little longer– you deserve a break!

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