California Bar Exam Performance Test Preparation

Now that I’ve wrote the two posts below about how to prepare for the MBE and Essay portions of the bar, I’m writing my next post about preparing for the ever-challenging California Bar Performance Test.

What is a the Performance Test in California? 

Brief rundown for those who don’t know: the PT in California is a three hour portion of the the exam given on the first and third afternoon of the test.  You will be required to draft some type of legal document (typically a memorandum, but can be a closing argument, letter to opposing counsel, etc) based on a given set of facts (found in the “file”) and a given set of law (found in the “library”). For the purposes of the performance test, you do not need to have law memorized since they give you all the law necessary for your answer. However, your knowledge of legal application does come into play. It’s a pretty challenging aspect of the test since it requires a lot of sound organization, analysis and law to fact application. In my opinion, the best thing you can do is think of the performance test as a competence exam where you are showing the examiner your badass writing skills without the burden of worrying whether or not you memorized the law correctly.

While the PT does not require substantive knowledge, this doesn’t meant the PT should be ignored in studying. The PT is sometimes overlooked, and that’s a shame! Stating the obvious: scoring well on the PT can make the difference between passing and failing. Plus, one theory I have is that the PT curve can be slightly more lenient than the essay curve. Therefore, if you are a strong PT taker, you may be able to make up more ground on points vs someone who is a decent essay taker. But, that being said, all six essays count do more than the two PTs.

(I may give a breakdown of how much the PT is worth in a later post). Moving on…

How do I start preparing? 

When preparing for the performance test, I think the first thing to do is to give yourself a diagnostic exam. You can find the past performance tests here with selected answers. Print one out, and give it to yourself. Obviously, PTs can range in difficulty from easy to medium to hard. I think starting out with an easier one is probably a good idea, and the PT I would recommend starting out with is PTA- Pannine v. Dreslin from the February 2009 bar exam. I’d rank this PT as easy to medium difficulty.

If you’re looking for a difficult PT, check out PTA- In re Clef from the July 2012 bar exam.   And for an even more challenging PT (in my opinion), check out In re Clef’s evil twin PTA- In re Sia from the July 2013 bar exam.

On initial diagnostics, stay within the 3 hour time limit. Generally on a PT, you want to give yourself 1.5 for reading the file and library and outlining an answer and 1.5 hours for actual writing.

Once you’re done with the PT, compare your answer to the model answer checking off whether you issue spotted correctly and stated the rules correctly. Don’t worry if you draw differing conclusions since this doesn’t really matter too much. If the PT went really well– then good for you! You can probably feel good about your baseline PT-taking abilities. If it was difficult– then you know you need to focus on the PT portion more. Remember, PTs range in level of difficulty, so it’s best to take a few in order to get a good feel for the PT.

Then what? How do I improve?

After you’ve gotten a good idea of where you stand in performance test-taking ability, I think the next step is to start refining your approach. Decide whether it’s worth your time to maybe brief every case? Or perhaps you think it would be a better strategy to read the library first, then the file. You may want to try giving yourself more than 3 hours to see where you would stack up if the PT was 5 hours long. If you write an amazing PT in 5 hours that hits all the issues, then you know you’re doing something right, you just need to work on better time management. If it’s more of an understanding/comprehension issue, then perhaps your time is best focused there.

What if I’m not improving?

Honestly, I think the best thing to do if the PT seems like an unsurmountable challenge is to hire a tutor to provide further assistance (or perhaps find a kind, patient faculty member at your university that you feel you can trust with this challenge). Tutors can provide a specific approach to the PT, which can be very helpful. I think too many examinees are tempted to just sweep the PT under the rug and pretend like it doesn’t exist, but that’s really not going to benefit you at all on the exam. Trust me, a poor PT performance on day one is going to haunt you through the rest of the exam, even if you feel like you killed all three day one essays. Trust me. You want to feel good about your performance going out of day one.

My general PT tips

First and foremost, identify the call of the question. Seems simple, but sometimes it’s actually not that simple. I tend to speed through the file and take my time in the library. But, I stop and spend as much time as I need identifying and fully understanding the call before moving forward. It’s that important.

Make sure you are organizing your PT answer based strictly on the call. If the call is asking you to talk about three things, organize your PT in three parts in the exact order they give you. If the call is asking you to talk about 9 things, make sure you talk about all 9.

Be aware of any embedded specific requests. The PT will tell you if it wants you to write a statement of facts. It’ll tell you whether it’s objective or argumentative. It’ll let you know if it’s looking for a specific style of headings (long and argumentative, or short and to the point). Be on the look out for this stuff, and following the instructions can be a very easy way to pick up points, and not following them tells the grader you don’t know how to follow instructions.

Play around will approaches. Maybe on one practice PT, try and see if you are more comfortable reading the library first. Try and see if briefing cases help.

My specific PT tips — take these with a grain of salt since I do NOT profess do be an expert 

Ok, I don’t want to get into too many specifics since I think the PT can be different for everyone, but one thing that worked well for me (I think) is inputting the law and some of the facts directly into the organized structure I put on my screen right away after reading the call, instead of taking notes on paper or highlighting in the file, etc. When I took notes on paper or highlighted in the file, I tended to lose track of the law and facts once I reached the end of the both the file and library because of the sheer amount of information. The more PTs I took, the more obvious it became what certain facts and certain cases were triggering which issues in the call. So, to stay on top of all the information better, I started inputting more directly in order to keep the massive amount of information better organized. This worked for me. Keep in mind, it may not be what works for you.

Final thoughts

I wish I could write a blog post telling you exactly how to take a PT and be successful each and every time, but I don’t feel capable of that since I don’t have experience as a grader or tutor. However, I do feel that if you a struggling, a tutor may be able to provide you with their approach to taking a PT, which could result in being successful each and every time.

All in all, the PT is really about practice and it’s one part of the exam I think you can start practicing well-before the exam without the danger of forgetting information as time passes.

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.

 

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