California Bar Exam Essay Books

My last post talked about where to find real MBE questions, and specifically about the books you can buy to study for the MBE. In this post, I want to talk about the two books I have experience with using to prepare for the bar. The first book I will talk about is Jeff Adachi’s book called  Bar Breaker. The second book I want to talk about is Essay Exam Writing for the California Bar Exam. These are two very different books on the same topic, and I think both have a lot to offer.

1. Bar Breaker by Jeff Adachi

Bar Breaker was highly recommended to me by a law school professor. In his book, Jeff Adachi provides a lot of insights into attacking each essay (he talks about visualizing the fact pattern), then takes some time to break down the subject into how you can think about it for the purpose of crafting an essay. Then, for some essays, especially at the beginning, he will walk you through the whole process from start to finish. It all culminates with a “model” answer written by Jeff Adachi and a self-scoring assessment sheet.

I think this book has a really great introduction for someone who has never taken the bar exam and has no idea how it is graded. This will provide a lot of insights into the grading process that I don’t think you will find in another book, or from your commercial prep course for that matter. Because Jeff Adachi provides model answers that are not straight off of the Cal Bar website, I think this gives the reader perhaps a clearer picture of what is expected in a well-written answer. Unlike some of the model answers selected by the examiners (these should be given weight, too, keep in mind), Jeff Adachi’s model answers are much shorter and to the point. He is a big proponent of keeping things brief, and I think there is a lot to be said of this writing style.

I like this book because I like how much Jeff Adachi has done to explain the actual process behind writing an essay. Where I think this book falls short is that it doesn’t provide as much in the way of actual substantive rules (it keeps referring you to another book in the Bar Breaker series) and the book needs to be edited for typos– there are lot. In terms of actual helpfulness though, I think this book is worthwhile. But, I think this book should be supplemented with another source for examples of essays written in a different style in order to stay aware of all the styles that are appropriate for the bar exam.

I also like this book because Jeff Adachi just seems like such a badass. And you can’t argue with that.

2.Essay Exam Writing for the California Bar Exam by Mary Basick

This book is so different from Jeff Adachi’s book, and I think could work as a good foil to Bar Breaker if used together. The introduction is short and to the point. Then, the book moves onto short attack outlines, longer outlines, subject testing charts, and sample essays for every subject. I really appreciate that unlike Jeff Adachi’s book, you get substantive review. I think the short attack memorization outlines are very helpful in organizing the information in a way that is capable of being memorized. However, I do feel that the outlines leave out some important substantive rules and keep others too abbreviated. If a more obscure issue gets tested on the bar, these outlines are still going to leave you scratching your head to some extent. While Barbri and Kaplan overload you with information, I think this book might have edited a little too much.

Where I think the book really falls short is in its lack of recent subject matter. Many of the sample essays are from the 90s. While this is helpful in that essays from the 90s are no longer on the Cal Bar website, it also feels slightly outdated. I also don’t like that there are only model answers for one to two essays per subject and then charted answers for the rest. I just don’t think this is necessarily as helpful as it could be. I do like that the charts bold the rule statements and fact analysis the author believes would be necessary to include in a passing score. That way, you don’t feel like you wouldn’t receive a passing score just because you happened to miss out on the obscure judicial notice issue, for example.

I used this book predominantly for the substantive content and less for the charts and practice essays. Of the two, for the purpose of studying for the essays, I think Jeff Adachi’s book has the slight edge. But, if you can afford it, I would definitely recommend purchasing both, especially if you are looking for short memorization attack outlines specifically for the essays.

Hope this helps!

Calbarista

Disclosure: The above links are linked with the amazon.com affiliate program, so should you purchase an item using the link above, Calbarista does receive a small percentage. The goal of the Calbarista blog is not to generate income, but instead to provide meaningful advice regarding the California Bar Exam. Proceeds obtained through the affiliate program will help Calbarista pay for a .com domain hopefully in the near future. Thank you for your support. 

Real MBE questions and where to find them

In my last post I talked about how I felt Themis (and Kaplan and Barbri) was lacking because it does not offer real MBE questions as part of the course. In this post, I want to talk about the various places that real MBE questions can be found.

As most people recommend, you should be completing approximately 1000 MBE questions in prep. Luckily enough, I’d estimate there are probably about 1000 real released MBE questions written by NCBE! Maybe even closer to 1300.

I do recommend using a mixture of the following sources listed below, but if you do choose to use a mixture of these sources to study, prepare to see the questions repeat amongst sources. This isn’t a bad thing. See my note below under the NCBE portion.

If you are taking a commercial bar prep course that is not BarMax, then you should definitely plan to supplement it with at least one of the following five things:

1. Strategies & Tactics for the MBE, Fifth Edition (Emanuel Bar Review)

Hands down, this is my favorite resource on the MBE. This book stands out above the rest because of it’s amazing Strategies and Tactics section for each subject area tested on the MBE. These sections clue you in to common pitfalls of other MBE takers and on how to approach the test thinking like an NCBE test writer. I also believe this book stands out because of the quality of the answer explanations. They are truly the best.

I should say that my only criticism of this book is that the questions can be a bit longer than what the “modern” MBE questions look like. That being said, I saw plenty of questions that looked just like the ones in this book on the actual MBE.

2. Strategies & Tactics for the MBE 2, Second Edition (Emanuel Bar Review Series)

Steven Emanuel’s follow up to Strategies & Tactics for the MBE is also worth a buy if you are looking for more questions. The format of this book is completely different. There is no Strategies and Tactics sections prior to each subject. Instead, the book is arranged by subject, then broken down into the subtopics within each. This means that if you are noticing that you are struggling specifically with mortgages, then you can go directly to the mortgages questions and work from there. Typically there is more than one question within a subtopic, with each question testing a different area of the same subtopic or showing you the different approaches the examiners may take to the same area of law. This is so helpful. When I took the bar, I read comments online that said that the practice MBEs from Kaplan and Barbri looked nothing like what was on the actual test. I can honestly say that many of the MBEs looked just like the questions in Strategies and Tactics. More importantly, the answer explanations helped me tackle the question with know-how.

My criticism of this book is that the answers are listed right below the questions. This makes it difficult not to see the answer before doing the question and have your practice tainted. It does make it easier since you don’t need to flip to the back of the book constantly like you do in the first book. My advice would be to go through a section and put sticky notes over any of the answers you don’t want to see ahead of time.

3. NCBE Practice Exams

You can also buy 100 question practice tests from NCBE. They currently have four priced at $50 each. I would recommend purchasing all of them. These tests will have repeat questions* from Strategies and Tactics, but there will be some new questions. The reason I recommend purchasing these practice exams in addition to Strategies and Tactics is that the exams are arranged just like a morning or afternoon section of the MBE. After completing the 100 questions, you can generate a score report for yourself which will give you an exact look at your overall scaled score. It will also show you whether you are scoring above average, at average, or below average for each subject area on that particular test. To me, this is the best indicator of how you will perform on test day.

The NCBE practice tests also provide annotated score reports which will give you an explanation on the answer you selected (only the answer you selected). These explanations are not nearly as thorough and thought provoking at Steven Emanuel’s, but they are sufficient for the purpose of reviewing that particular test.

The NCBE website has a surprising amount of features that allow you to take the exam times or un-timed, pause the exam, take only one subject area, or take only the questions you got wrong. You can take the exams as many times as you’d like, and you will have access for 1 year after the purchase date.

*My recommendation: take the first three tests while you are studying but save test 4 until the week before the exam. Test 4 was released in late 2013 and has new questions that are unlikely to be present in Strategies and Tactics. This way, you will have a truly “fresh” set of questions to test yourself on, and really gauge your progress. 

4. BarMax

BarMax is a “commercial” prep course that has only real MBE questions. They have answer explanations for each question telling you what you got right and why (or what you got wrong and why), and also gives explanations as to why the other answers are wrong (this is great!). But, BarMax only gives you answer explanations for the first 300 questions you take. Why? Their philosophy is that by then, you should be able to go and look for the correct answer yourself and take time to figure out why you got it on your own. Hmm… in theory, I get it. But, I can’t say I agree with this logic. I think as a busy bar examinee, you’re going to benefit more from having great answer explanations at your fingertips than to be left to search for the right answer.

I think BarMax is a total win for being a commercial course offering real MBE questions. This helps out on cost for sure. The major flaw is only offering explanations for 300 questions.

BarMax allows you to take questions in study mode (answer will generate right after you complete the question) or test mode. You can also take as many questions at a time as you’d like. It lets you pick what subject you want to work in or mixes them up.

5. Adaptibar

Adaptibar is the only MBE prep on this list with which I have no personal experience. On this blog, my goal is to not share too much about things I don’t know about because I think there are far too many people talking online about Bar prep who haven’t actually prepped for the bar recently. For that reason, I won’t say much, just this…

The reason I am including Adaptibar is because they profess to have only real MBE questions. I’ve also heard that the course tailors itself to give you the most questions in your weakest subject areas based on your practice sessions. That sounds really cool! Adaptibar also seems pretty affordable in the grand scheme of expensive bar study. If not for Strategies and Tactics, I would probably have considered purchasing this service. I think Adaptibar would be best for examinees who feel that the MBE is a considerably weak area and need the personalized service.

I did read a post in a forum in which the poster did say that the actual MBE was harder than the questions that he saw on Adaptibar. But, I wouldn’t read too much into that. The real MBE can be harder than practice for a number of reasons. I will say that the questions I saw were most similar to the ones on the NCBE website and Strategies and Tactics 2.

 

Disclosure: The above links are linked with the amazon.com affiliate program, so should you purchase an item using the link above, Calbarista does receive a small percentage. The goal of the Calbarista blog is not to generate income, but instead to provide meaningful advice regarding the California Bar Exam. Proceeds obtained through the affiliate program will help Calbarista pay for a .com domain hopefully in the near future 🙂