Big Changes Coming To The Multistate Bar Exam In February 2017
Test-taking skills will play an even greater role in passing the bar exam.
As most bar exam test takers know, in the middle of the multiple choice Multistate Bar Exam there are 10 experimental questions (and 190 real ones). You have no idea which 10 questions are experimental or pretest — and consequently will not count towards your final grade. So you have to answer the questions assuming they’ll be counted, and maybe someday in the future they’ll grow up to be real live bar exam questions.
Now comes word from the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) that they’ll be changing this formula. No grand announcement, just a change on their website noting that as of the February 2017 bar exam there will be 175 graded questions, and 25 ungraded, pretest questions.
So what does this mean for people hoping to, you know, pass the bar exam? Christopher Fromm, executive director of bar prep programs at Kaplan Bar Review, says:
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We know that MBE scores have been declining over the past few years, and regardless of the cause, the changes are designed to norm the exam. The good news for students is that the changes don’t appear to impact the test’s content or difficulty level — this is about scoring and skill. With fewer questions being scored, it means each one carries greater weight, so answering correctly becomes that much more important. Since the changes aren’t about content, it means that test-taking skills — critical reasoning and analysis — will play a greater role in the new exam. That’s where effective bar prep becomes a distinct advantage. We also think it’s important to note that with a reduced number of scored questions, there is a natural dilution of questions per subject and topic. Property law specifically for February is being expanded in scope of coverage, yet there will be fewer scored questions. This means the chances of seeing what test takers have memorized and mastered goes down, but the importance of being a good test taker goes up.
If anything, Fromm understates how bad bar passage rates have gotten. We are in the midst of historically low bar passage rates. And there is an active war of words trying to assign blame for the failures. Erica Moeser, the head of the NCBE, believes law schools are to blame since their admissions standards have been declining in an effort to enroll more students — even if those students may not be capable of passing the bar exam. Some law school deans blame the students, and others offer suggested changes. But the stakes — and student debt loads — for wannabe lawyers just keep rising.
Best of luck to prospective lawyers hoping to pass the bar exam. May the 175 questions that count in the new exam be the 175 questions you know (or at least have a good guess for).
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Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).
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