How To Improve Your Timing On The MEE

How To Improve Your Timing On The MEE

Many students frequently report running out of time and not being able to finish the essays on the Multistate Essay Exam (MEE) portion of the Bar Exam.  In this post, we discuss some tips for improving your timing on the MEE!

How To Improve Your Timing On The MEE

1. Memorize the law!

The better you have the law memorized, the quicker you can write it down!  You won’t have to spend time wracking your brain trying to think of the rules or, worse, spend time trying to make up a rule because you are drawing a complete blank as to what the rule should be!  Having the rules memorized will also make it much easier to spot the issues and you will spend less time reading and re-reading the fact pattern trying to figure out what you should be writing about!  Be sure to check out JD Advising’s Bar Exam Memorization Tips!

2. Utilize the IRAC structure

Your answer to an MEE essay does not have to be Pulitzer Prize-worthy.  You don’t need to worry about paragraph structure, transition sentences, or whether or not you should utilize the oxford comma.  You just need to get the main ideas down on paper (or laptop screen) in the most efficient manner possible.  This is where IRAC comes in!

First of all, you don’t need a fancy issue statement.  A brief heading identifying the rule being tested is a sufficient issue statement!  You should succinctly state the relevant rule in a separate paragraph.  If you really want to show off your writing skills, the analysis is the place to do it.  This is where you should tie the facts from the fact pattern to the rule you just stated.  Try to incorporate as many facts as possible!  Finally, a very brief one-sentence conclusion that answers the call of the question can end the IRAC.

Another good thing about the IRAC is that it serves as a handy checklist.  You can ensure that you have all the necessary pieces of the answer (issue, rule, analysis, conclusion) by clearly separating these different pieces of the IRAC.  You can read more about Using IRAC on the Bar Exam!

3. NEVER go over the recommended time!

Under normal timed circumstances, you will have approximately 30 minutes to answer each essay on the MEE.  Students commonly ask if they should adjust this time according to their strengths and weaknesses.  For instance, if the first question is on Wills, and that happens to the be the student’s strength, should they spend 35 minutes on that essay and cut 5 minutes off an essay that they don’t know as much about?  The short answer is no!

It is never a good idea to cut time from one essay and allocate it to another essay.  Each essay is worth the same number of points!  Even if you think you know a ton of information about a particular topic, you might only get a minimal amount of additional credit (if any) for going above and beyond.  Whereas, you might get little to no credit on the essay that you skimp on because you run out of time!  You might as well give yourself a fighting chance on each and every essay, even if you feel like you don’t know a ton of information about a particular topic!  If an essay is especially difficult, it is likely difficult for everyone, so spending the time to write an answer increases your chances of doing better than other examinees!

You should, therefore, watch the clock carefully as you are taking the exam and cut yourself off once the allotted time for each essay has expired.  If you happen to have some time left over at the end, you can come back to an essay and fill in anything you were not previously able to write.  However, you should not risk falling behind on timing to keep writing any one essay!

4. Practice!

It is somewhat surprising how many students practice little to no actual MEEs under real timed conditions prior to the bar exam.  They feel like they know how to write an essay exam based on their experience from law school and, therefore, they don’t complete full practice essays.  Although timed practice essays can be time-consuming, there are many benefits to writing full practice exams!

First, it will give you a sense of what the time really feels like. If you are taking the test under normal timed circumstances, you have approximately 30 minutes to answer each essay.  The 30 minutes will absolutely fly by as you are taking the exam!  Practicing will give you an idea of how long you can work on structuring your answer before you have to start writing in order to be able to finish the essay in the allotted time!

Second, issue-spotting and thinking that you know what you would discuss in an essay and actually trying to write the essay are two different things. Issue-spotting essays, while a helpful method of studying for the bar exam, needs to be combined with actual practice exams.  You will be surprised how difficult can be to actually come up with full sentences and know exactly what to write!

Third, practice will help alleviate any anxiety you feel about the timing of the exam. If you have done plenty of practice exams under timed circumstances, the essays on the actual exam should not pose any real difficulties with timing as you will have practiced many times!

We hope these tips help improve your timing on the MEE.

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