Topic 4: Multistate Essay Exam Frequency Chart (MEE Frequency Chart)

Multistate Essay Exam Frequency Chart

Multistate Essay Exam Frequency Chart

As you can see from our Multistate Essay Exam frequency chart, there are six questions that appear on each MEE. You have three hours to answer these six questions (so, you should plan on dedicating about 30 minutes per question in order to finish the exam on time).

The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) 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 [LLC])
• Civil Procedure
• Conflict of Laws
• Constitutional Law
• Contracts
• Criminal Law and Procedure
• Evidence
• Family Law
• Real Property
• Torts
• Trusts and Estates (Decedents’ Estates and Trusts and Future Interests)
• Uniform Commercial Code (Secured Transactions)

Note that in the past, the NCBE released between seven and nine questions for jurisdictions that administered the Multistate Essay Exam to choose from. So, for example, the NCBE would often release a Wills and a Trusts question just in case a state had a preference on whether to test Wills or Trusts. However, beginning in February 2014, the NCBE began only releasing six questions. Thus, at that point, jurisdictions that administered the MEE no longer had a choice over which subjects to test. Since the NCBE is in charge of administering the Multistate Essay Exam, we think the absolute best gauge of what will appear on the Multistate Essay Exam is what has appeared on the past UBE administered by the NCBE. (However, if you really want to see all of the seven to nine questions that used to be administered on the MEE, you can check out our full Multistate Essay Exam frequency chart here.) We think it is wiser to look at this chart though!

As you can see from the chart above, the single most highly tested subject on the essay portion of the UBE is Civil Procedure. We’ve also divided up the subjects so you can see the most highly tested to least-tested subjects. Please click on the chart to open it in a new tab in a larger format!

[Note: the data below comes from the February 2011 bar exam to the most recent exam.]

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

• Civil Procedure (17 full essays plus 1 combined with another subject)
• Agency and Partnership (12 full essays plus 3 combined with another subject)
• Contracts (14 full essays)
• Secured Transactions (12 full essays)
• Real Property (11 full essays)
• Corporations and LLCs (10 full essays plus 3 combined with another subject)
• Evidence (8 full essays plus 3 combined with another subject)

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

• Trusts and Future Interests (9 full essays plus 2 combined with another subject)
• Decedents’ Estates (Wills) (8 full essays plus 3 combined with another subject)
• Constitutional Law (8 full essays plus 2 combined with another subject)
• Torts (7 full essays plus 3 combined with another subject)
• Family Law (9 full essays)

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

• Criminal Procedure (5 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 NCBE labels a subject “Criminal Law and Procedure” when really it is just one or the other being tested. Above, we listed the true amount of times NCBE tested those subjects.
• We started collecting data from 2011 on because that is when the first UBE was administered.
• Wondering how the July and February essay exams differ? Check out this post to see the differences!

Feel free to download the UBE chart (or email us at info@jdadvising.com if you have difficulty downloading it!). If you repost it somewhere else on the internet, we would greatly appreciate a link to this site :) ) Thank you!

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 Multistate Essay Exam, check out our MEE One-Sheets. These give you an overview of the highly tested areas of the Multistate Essay Exam in one sheet, front and back. We sell them in our online store.

Go to the next topic, Topic 5: Highly Tested MEE Topics.

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