Sixty-Five-Year-Old Man Takes Bar Exam

Last week thousands of recent law school graduates across the country began their bar review courses. If you’ve been reading my posts, then you know that I started my review two months ago, in March. As the bar exam is at the end of July and I started near the end of March, you might guess that I should be halfway through my review. According to its progress report, you would be right!

At this point I have completed reading outlines and viewing lectures on all but three of the fourteen subjects tested in the MBE (multiple choice) and MEE (essay) portions of the exam. I’ve done several rounds of practice questions, earning what I would consider a low passing score on all but one of them. The review course sets a goal for each and I’m almost always above that goal, and around what many reports call a passing score for the MBE. I think I’m doing pretty well on most of the essays, meaning I think that I would earn a four or more on a six-point essay score. I’ve also done pretty well on the several Multistate Performance Test exercises.

In addition to the first steps in completing the last three subjects: agency, corporations, and partnerships, I need to move more strongly into memorization exercises. These will involve drawing out mind maps and using flash cards to better commit rules to memory. In some cases I know the rule and misapply it. For those I need to review the outline again or practice more questions. While all the practice essays have been ungraded until now, not too far down the road I will be submitting essay answers for review by bar review staffers.

One thing to keep in mind is that passing the N.C. bar exam is a total points affair. The maximum possible scaled score is 400 points, with half coming from the MBE (multiple choice) and half from the written, i.e., essay and performance tests. The required total scaled score for passing is 270. Doing very well on one of the three parts can somewhat offset doing less well on another part.

So while I think I am on the way to a passing score, there is much more work ahead of me, and I shan’t slack off. It’s one of the balls I’m juggling right now, and I will be keeping all of them in the air for a few more months.