Top 5 Uniform Bar Exam Essay Tips

Top 5 Uniform Bar Exam Essay Tips

If you are looking for Uniform Bar Exam essay tips to help you boost your essay score, look no further. Here, we give you tips that will help you score the highest you can on each Uniform Bar Exam essay. These are tips that have helped students improve their scores significantly and provide something additional to what your commercial course may tell you, which will give you a leg up on the bar exam! 

Top 5 Uniform Bar Exam Essay Tips

1. Study smart.

While you don’t want to ignore any subject, it is helpful to focus on the highly tested topics within each subject. You cannot learn every single nuance of 14 different subjects. So you may as well start by focusing on what the most tested areas are. The free way is to check out this post for a free PDF/youtube video (or you can spend some money and purchase MEE one-sheets here!). Either way, focusing on the highly tested areas of law – and memorizing these highly tested rule statements – will go a long way toward boosting your uniform bar exam essay score!

2. Use the right format.

The format we recommend you use is:

For each issue that is tested:

• Use an issue heading. (Note: this does not have to be a full sentence. It can be something like “Battery” or “Assault. We know this is contrary to what commercial courses teach. However, we recommend this for two reasons. First, issue statements are often not worth many, if any, points, since many uniform bar exam essays will tell you what the issues are. Second, we often find if students spend too long trying to craft an issue statement, they write inadequate analyses of the issues or don’t write very good rule statements. Identifying the issue is simply not as important and any facts you would write in your issue statement should be facts you develop in your analysis. So focus on the analysis instead!)
• State the rule. (This is why you want the highly tested rules above, memorized! If you know the highly tested rules, this will be easy for you on most essays!)
• Write a detailed analysis. (Incorporate a lot of facts into your analysis! It is often not necessary to argue both sides but sometimes you will be expected to state a majority and minority rule.)
• Conclude. Arrive at a clear conclusion for the issue. Sometimes the uniform bar exam essay answer will recommend that there is more than one “right” conclusion. But, you still want to arrive at a clear conclusion for each issue.

Following this modified “IRAC” format for each issue presented will help you pick up the most points!

3. Address arguments the parties make.

If a party makes an argument in the fact pattern – even if it is a dumb one – circle it as you read the facts to remind yourself to address it in your analysis! (We saw a good number of examinees miss out on easy points for failing to do this, including on recent exams, such as the February 2018 uniform bar exam).

For example, if a party argues no consideration is present to support a contract (even if there obviously is consideration) or that a witness is biased so they can’t testify (which is not a credible argument!) bring it up in your analysis, even if it is only to dismiss it.

Not only are the graders looking for this, and you could easily pick up credit for noting it, but it also shows a detailed reading of the facts, which is certainly a lawyerly skill that you want to put on display!

4. Make your answer easy to read.

We have seen so many answers that are not clearly organized. Imagine reading this blog and instead of seeing paragraph breaks and numbered headings, you just saw one long stream-of-consciousness post with tips mixed in. You probably would not bother reading it!

To make your essay grader want to read your answer and to make them like you, make your essay answer easy to read! To make your uniform bar exam essay answer easy to read, do the following:

• Use headings (in bolded font if you type, otherwise use underlining)
• Use paragraph breaks frequently! You can even put the rule, analysis, and conclusion in their own separate paragraphs
• Bold key words to draw attention to them. (Make it easy for the grader to give you points!)
• If you are handwriting, focus on writing legibly and in large enough font

These small tips will go a long way toward improving your score.

5. Practice in a timed setting.

One of the most overlooked uniform bar exam essay tips is to practice some essays in a timed setting. Take three hours to practice six essay questions. (You can pick them from random or you can check out the bar exam essay feedback options on our website.)

Taking six essays in a timed setting will do two things:

• It will give you exposure to uniform bar exam subjects and topics
• It will alert you to if you have any timing issues that need to be addressed before the exam
• It will boost your confidence going into the exam knowing you have already completed a timed exam!

We hope you enjoyed these uniform bar exam essay tips! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us or post below!

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