The multiple bar exam (MBE) consists of 200 multiple choice questions in six areas: contracts, types, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, evidence, and real estate. The exam is held twice a year and is incorporated into most US state bar exams. The MBE assesses practical ability and requires a strategy for dissecting patterns of facts. The National Conference of Bar Examiners oversees the administration and scoring of the MBE.
There are six different types of questions on the multiple bar exam, or MBE: contracts, types, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, evidence, and real estate. All MBE questions are structured as short patterns of facts with multiple choice answers. In many ways, the MBE is a reading comprehension exam. Participants are asked to read short excerpts, apply certain fundamental laws and legal principles to these facts, and answer a series of questions about this application.
Each MBE is made up of 200 questions. The exam is usually held over an entire day, with the first hundred questions being administered in the morning, the second after a short lunch break. Every student who takes the MBE on a given date is given the exact same exam, with the same MBE questions. The MBE is only offered twice a year, typically the last Wednesday in February and the last Wednesday in July. These dates are related to the bar exams of most US states.
The vast majority of US states incorporate the MBE questions into their required bar exams. Passing a bar exam is required to begin practicing law in most jurisdictions. The MBE, like most standardized tests, is scored but also scaled. A student’s raw score, based on the number of correct answers, is converted to a scaled score, reflecting the performance of all examinees on that particular exam. Different states have different requirements for how high a score must be considered approved.
Most students practice answering MBE questions as part of preparing for the bar exam. Much of the test material is based on general rather than specific knowledge. For this reason, specific legal codes and rules learned in law school may not be helpful. Most MBE questions provide students with the law they must apply. The real test is how students treat the facts of the questions in light of this law, however hypothetical.
The MBE is not designed to test how much law a person knows. Rather, its purpose is to assess a person’s competence to practice law, which is in many ways a much softer and grayer assessment. The MBE questions attempt to assess practical ability by asking students to choose the best legal reasoning, identify the strongest arguments, analyze legal relationships and choose positions, among other things.
Although the six areas of the MBE questions are familiar to most test takers, the way the questions are structured takes a lot of practice. Of course, fundamental legal principles are important, and a firm understanding of how the law works is imperative. More important is an understanding of how to look for what the question is really asking and a strategy for dissecting the pattern of facts provided to get the best answer – not necessarily merely the correct one.
The MBE questions are all written by lawyers and attorneys who are members of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, or NCBE. The NCBE oversees the administration and scoring of the MBE. Prior to each exam, the NCBE releases subject summaries for each of the six MBE question types. It also publishes MBE study material and practice questions in all six subjects, which are available for purchase.
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