Seven MEE Tips to Improve your Score!

Seven MEE Tips to improve your score!

If you are looking for a great way to improve your MEE score, you are not alone. In this post, we give you some excellent MEE tips to improve your score. These are tips that are based on hundreds of hours of working with students and reading hundreds of actual graded MEE answers. 

Seven MEE Tips to improve your score!

1. Study smart by focusing on the highly tested areas of law.

You only have so much time and you do not need to learn every single topic that could possibly be tested in any of the MEE subjects! Instead, you should focus on the highly tested areas of law. This is key to studying efficiently and maximize your MEE score.

We have a free guide on the highly tested MEE topics here. (Or you can purchase our MEE one-sheets here if you are looking for even more information on highly tested topics!)

2. Remember to connect the dots for the grader.

For each issue, you should have a heading describing the issue (e.g., “battery”). Then you should state the rule, apply the law, and conclude.

This sounds a lot like the “IRAC” method you may have used in law school. It is similar, but not exactly the same (for example, you should not argue both sides in most essays, as you may have in a law school essay!).

If you follow IRAC, you will connect the dots for the grader and get the maximum amount of points! It may seem basic, but the grader is looking for a basic, easy-to-read answer.

3. Make it easy for the grader to give you points by bolding or underlining key words.

Remember that a bar exam grader is reading hundreds of essays. After a while, they tend to “scan” essays rather than read them in depth. They are looking for key words. To make the grader’s job as easy as possible, it is helpful to bold or underline key legal words because it will draw the grader’s attention to the fact that you know the law.

Too often a grader reads an essay and misses some critical note that the examinee makes simply because it was buried in a paragraph of writing and the examinee did not draw attention to it. Don’t risk this happening! Instead, draw attention to what you know by bolding or underlining the key words the grader is looking for!

4. Use paragraph breaks and headings.

This is a basic MEE tip that can go a long way toward improving your score. Adding headings to begin each issue and making liberal use of paragraph breaks makes your answer easy to read. It makes your answer appear longer. And it makes it more likely you will score high!

5. Make sure to use the facts!

We see some students who struggle with the MEE fail to use enough facts in their analysis. Their answers look short. Any incomplete rule statements stand out. And they score lower than those that highlight a lot of facts. So one of our MEE tips to improve your score is to use plenty of facts in your analysis. For each rule, aim to say something about the facts.

If you struggle with this, when you practice writing MEE answers, highlight facts in the fact pattern that you referred to in your answer. If the fact pattern does not have very much highlighting, it is a sign you need to work on your analysis.

6. Don’t worry about issue statements.

If you are looking for an MEE tip to improve your score, this is an underrated one. A lot of examinees waste precious time trying to draft an eloquent issue statement. The problem with this is that they often then skimp on their analysis due to lack of time. And further, not many points are awarded to issue statements since the examiners often tell you what the issues are!

Instead of writing lengthy issue statements, just write brief headings for each issue (e.g., “battery” “assault” etc.) Then, focus on your rule, analysis, and conclusion.

7. Self-grade your MEE answer when you practice.

We have written about self-grading MEE answers before. This is a great way to improve your MEE score because it gets you in the mind of a grader! Further, it will give you confidence walking into the bar exam because you will know exactly what a grader will want to see. The insight (and the confidence boost!) you gain from self-grading is invaluable. Please see this post on how to self-grade MEE answers when you practice.

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