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in Bar Exam
What Are The Uniform Bar
Exam Topics?
The Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) is a unique bar exam
that is rapidly taking over the country. Despite its
popularity, you probably only learned this when
you were deciding what bar exam to take after you
finish law school. Now that you are ready to begin
your bar exam study journey, you need to know
the Uniform Bar Exam topics. If you are a law
student ahead of the game and want to know
what courses you should take to prepare you best
for a UBE bar exam, this post is also for you.
What Are The Uniform Bar
Exam Topics?
General Overview of the
Uniform Bar Exam
The Uniform Bar Exam is a bar exam created by
the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE)
and but it is administered, graded, and scored by
individual jurisdictions. It provides a portable
score that can be transferred to other UBE
jurisdictions if it is considered to be a passing
score by that jurisdiction.
The UBE tests general legal principles and skills,
not state-specific law. It consists of the Multistate
Bar Examination (MBE) and a written portion
made up of the Multistate Essay Examination
(MEE) and the Multistate Performance Test (MPT).
The MPT does not test specific legal topics but
rather lawyering skills. Below, we will give you an
overview of each part of the test, along with which
topics are tested in each portion.
Multistate Bar Examination
According to NCBE, the purpose of the MBE is to
test
applicants
on
their
ability
to
“apply
fundamental legal principles and legal reasoning
to analyze given fact patterns.” The MBE consists
of 200 multiple choice questions administered
over a span of six hours, which are divided into
two three-hour morning and afternoon sessions.
Out of the 200 questions, 175 are scored and 25
are unscored “pretest questions.” No points are
deducted for wrong answers, so if you find
yourself running out of time be sure fill in an
answer to as many questions as you can.
The MBE tests the following seven subjects:
Contracts and Sales
Constitutional Law
Criminal Law and Procedure
Civil Procedure
Evidence
Real Property
Torts
All subjects are equally tested for there will be 25
questions for each subject. The 25 remaining
questions are the “pretest” questions.
Multistate Essay
Examination
The MEE consists of six essays administered over
three hours. So you will want to be sure to allow
yourself only 30 minutes per essay.
The NCBE
prepares these six essay questions.
The NCBE lists the following subjects as potential
subjects covered on the MEE:
Business
Associations
(Agency
and
Partnership; Corporations and Limited Liability
Companies)
Civil Procedure
Conflict of Laws
Constitutional Law
Contracts
Criminal Law and Procedure
Evidence
Family Law
Real Property
Torts
Trusts and Estates (Decedents Estates; Trusts
and Future Interests)
Uniform
Commercial
Transactions)
Code
(Secured
In the past, the NCBE released seven to nine essay
questions that jurisdictions administering the MEE
could choose from. But as of February 2014, the
NCBE only wrote and provided six MEE essays so
jurisdictions no longer got to pick and choose what
questions to test on. If you are in a MEE
jurisdiction, please see this post about the
subjects that are frequently tested on the
Multistate
Essay
Exam.
[https://jdadvising.com/subjects-tested-on-themultistate-essay-exam/]
[https://jdadvising.com/wpcontent/uploads/2022/11/UBE-Frequency-ChartF23-5.png]
Decoding the chart above
The data below and in the above chart comes
from the bar exams from 2011 to the most recent
bar exam. The single most highly tested subject on
the essay portion of the Uniform Bar Exam is Civil
Procedure. We’ve also divided up the subjects so
you can see the most highly tested to least-tested
subjects. (You can see the most recent Multistate
Essay
Exam
frequency
chart
here
[https://jdadvising.com/multistate-essay-examsubject-frequency-chart/] .)
Tier One: Highly Tested Subjects on the
Uniform Bar Exam (In Order of Most-toLeast Tested)
Civil Procedure (20 full essays plus 1
combined with another subject)
Agency and Partnership (12 full essays plus 5
combined with another subject)
Contracts (15 full essays)
Secured Transactions (14 full essays)
Real Property (13 full essays)
Corporations and LLCs (10 full essays plus 5
combined with another subject)
Evidence (10 full essays plus 3 combined with
another subject)
Trusts and Future Interests (10 full essays
plus 3 combined with another subject)
Decedents’ Estates (Wills) (9 full essays plus 4
combined with another subject)
Constitutional Law (8 full essays plus 2
combined with another subject)
Torts (8 full essays plus 3 combined with
another subject)
Family Law (9 full essays)
Tier Two: Lesser-Tested Subjects on the
Uniform Bar Exam (In Order of Most-to-Least
Tested)
Criminal Procedure (7 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)
Some notes to keep in mind
Sometimes the NCBE labels a subject
“Criminal Law and Procedure” when it only
covers just one of those topics. We listed the
true amount of times those subjects were
tested above.
2011 is when the first Uniform Bar Exam was
administered.
Feel free to download the UBE chart (or email us at
info@jdadvising.com if you are having di"culty
downloading it!) If you repost it somewhere on the
internet, we would appreciate a link to this site.
Thank you!
Multistate Performance
Test (MPT)
The MPT is a lawyerly task. You will be expected to
complete, for example, a memorandum to a
supervising attorney, a letter to a client, a
persuasive memorandum or brief, a statement of
facts, a contract provision, a will, a settlement
proposal, a discovery plan, a witness examination
plan, a counseling plan, or a closing argument. The
MPT does not test any law! So there are really no
Uniform Bar Exam topics that you have to know
for the MPT.
Here is a brief overview of the MPT.
The MPT has two parts: (1) a file, and (2) a library.
The file contains:
A task memo: This tells you what you are
supposed to do. It is important to pay attention
to directions! Many students lose points simply
because they do not pay attention! The task
memo will reveal the kind of document you are
supposed to write, who your audience is,
the tone of the document (i.e. whether it is
supposed to be persuasive or objective), and
any specific issues that need to be addressed.
Factual
documents:
These
include
transcripts of depositions or interviews, court
pleadings, discovery documents, etc. Just like in
“real life”, not every single document will be
important. Note also, that some documents are
ambiguous, incomplete, or conflicting, just like
in real life.
The library contains: the law. This includes cases,
statutes, rules, regulations, etc. Some of the law
may be relevant; some may not be! Remember
that even if you think you know the law, they may
have changed it for the purpose of the MPT. Never
assume you know what the library says! Read
everything in the library, including the footnotes.
[https://jdadvising.com/24524-2/]
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Tags: bar exam, multistate essay exam (MEE), uniform
bar exam (UBE)
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