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How to Pass the Uniform Bar Exam – an In-Depth Guide to Studying Smart for the UBE!

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How to Pass the Uniform Bar Exam – an In-Depth Guide to Studying Smart for the UBE!

How to Pass the Uniform Bar Exam – an In-Depth Guide to Studying Smart for the UBE!: The Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) has three different components – the multistate bar exam (MBE), the multistate essay exam (MEE), and the multistate performance test (MPT). If you want to conquer the UBE, then it is necessary to study smart for all three portions. Here, we tell you how to do just that.

How to Pass the Uniform Bar Exam
An In-Depth Guide to Studying Smart for the UBE!

Multistate Bar Exam (MBE):

Memorize the highly-tested areas of law. So many students go to lecture, fill in the blanks during their lecture, and then answer multiple-choice or essay problems. They get low scores. They freak out. Then they do more problems. Their scores don’t improve. So they start to do, say, 100 questions per day. Then they get caught in this vicious cycle and do not improve.

What is the root of this problem? The root of the problem is that they are trying to answer problems without knowing the law. So, after lecture, instead of answering questions, take a step back and dedicate time to memorize the law. (Here are some tips on how to memorize your bar exam outlines.) If you don’t have time to memorize everything (e.g. if you are reading this with a month of bar study to go!), focus on the highly-tested MBE topics – negligence, hearsay, etc. See this chart for all of the highly-tested MBE topics.

Practicing using real MBE questions.

Most commercial courses give out questions that they make up. The best questions that will prepare you most for the test are released questions! When you studied for the LSAT, you did not use made-up questions (hopefully). Instead, you used actual official LSAT questions. It should be the same approach with the MBE!

So get released MBE questions. This means Strategies and Tactics 6th Edition for about $80 on amazon if you are just getting them now. (Adaptibar is good too but is $400.)

Slow down. 

Stop answering 100 questions a day and wondering why you are not improving! If you do this, you are not being efficient with your time. There is nothing wrong with answering a high quantity of questions – unless it detracts from quality. Read this post on how to slow down and improve your MBE score. That post will teach you a systematic method to efficiently answer questions!

Multistate Essay Exam (MEE) Portion

Memorize the highly tested areas of law.

People wonder how to memorize everything they need to know for the essay portion. The answer is: you don’t need to memorize everything!

You need to focus specifically on the highly-tested areas of law first. This is how you study smart and maximize your study time! You can find the most highly-tested areas of law by purchasing our MEE one-sheets (the expensive way) or by bullet-pointing several past MEE’s (the free way).

While you should not ignore your course outlines, you should also study smart by dedicating the most time to what you are most likely to see on the MEE!

After you determine this, practice writing some MEE’s!

You don’t have to go crazy with this but you should bullet point some and write out full answers to others every week. This will make sure you not only know the law but know how to apply it.

Students often focus on the MBE and forget that the MEE is worth 30% of your score – or the same as 105 MBE questions!!! So, you can capture a lot of points on the MEE!

We have had students in our MEE essay course or attend our Multistate Essay Exam seminar who score in the bottom percentile (e.g. they do not do very well…) on the multiple-choice, but score extremely high on the essay portion of the bar exam.

If writing is your strength, don’t ignore the MEE portion (or MPT portion…as we discuss next). Instead, capitalize upon your strength!

Multistate Performance Test (MPT) Portion

Practice MPTs!

Keep in mind, while you are obsessing over how to get 10 or 20 more MBE questions right out of 200, there is a much easier way to improve your score if you are in a UBE jurisdiction. And that is, practice MPTs!

The MPT portion is worth 20% of your overall score if you are in a Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) state. What does that mean? That means that it is worth the same as 70 multiple-choice questions! Think about how much easier it will be to capture points on the MPT versus improving your MBE score. Also, remember in the vast majority of states it does not matter how you reach that score of, say, 270 to pass. You just need to reach it!

So while all of your classmates are obsessing over the MBE, take a few hours a week to practice a couple MPTs and you will have a huge advantage.

Focus on the highly-tested MPTs, but don’t ignore anything!

Check out our MPT study schedule here to see which MPTs we recommend you complete. You’ll note that persuasive briefs and objective memoranda are tested the most (as you can see by our MPT frequency chart, which breaks down how often different tasks are tested.) We begin with the most highly tested tasks, to make sure you are as familiar with them as possible.However, you do not want to ignore any specific task — you should attempt answering at least one of all of them — so that you do not freak out if you see it tested on your MPT!

Remind yourself how important the MPT is so you prioritize this task!

Want more reasons to take the MPT portion seriously? Read this post on five reasons to take the MPT portion seriously.

We hope our in-depth guide on how to pass the Uniform Bar Exam was helpful!

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