Howdy! This week, I want to talk about the MEE (the Multistate Essay Exam) and the importance of answering practice essay questions now! Read all the way to the end for info about our weekly Amazon gift card giveaways!

 All About Essays

The MEE contains 6 essays on 12 topics; essay prompts can combine multiple topics. Except for BA, Wills and Estates, Family Law, Secured Transactions, and Conflict of Laws, the topics are the same as on the MBE (Civ Pro, Evidence, Con Law, Real Property, Contracts, Torts, and Crim Law & Procedure). That means you have less law to study than did Texas examinees of yesteryear, and that’s a good thing!  The UBE grades on a 6-point scale; 4 is considered “passing.” 

Why practice writing essays? 

When you write practice essays, you are working on 2 crucial things: (1) You are perfecting the skill of writing a bar-style essay in 30 minutes and (2) you are learning/reinforcing/filling in gaps in your knowledge of the law—building your “cognitive schema.” Let’s break those 2 things down.

The skill of writing a bar-exam essay

Barbri/Themis will teach you the ideal format for a bar-exam essay. It’s important to master that format. It’s what your bar grader is expecting, and meeting the grader’s expectation is likely to result in a higher score. Beyond the format, the ability to crank out a good answer in 30 minutes (and to do that 6 times in a row in 3 hours!) is vital. To master the format and timing, you have to write practice essays—and write them out all the way; outlining is not enough. After you’ve written enough essays to know you can crank out an essay in the optimal format in 30 minutes, you can and should start outlining most of the essays you review. Until then, you should fully write out most of the answers.

Learning the law by writing essays

As I’ve written before (and will write again . . . and again!), self-testing is the best way to learn what you need to know for the bar exam, make it stick, and be able to recall it on exam day. Every time you try to answer an essay question and have to look up the law in an outline, you fill in a gap in your knowledge. Further, MEE questions tend to be somewhat repetitive. There are only so many ways to test Secured Transactions. Thus, the more practice questions you answer during prep, the more likely you are to see something familiar on exam day.

When and how to practice essays

Start practicing essays now. Pick topics that you have either covered in Barbri or that you studied in law school. Don’t wait until you have “mastered” a topic; practice is how you attain mastery. As Barbri covers more topics, add them to your essay mix. Do not focus on one topic; in every essay-practice session, answer questions from a variety of topics (this harnesses the power of “interleaving” or mixed practice as well as spaced repetition). Practice every day; “essay practice” should be on your daily study schedule.

Write vs. Outline

At first, write out every answer. When you have mastered the format (and Barbri or Themis confirms this on one or more graded essays), start outlining 2 or 3 essays for every one you write out (you should continue to fully write out some essays to keep that skill sharp).

When you attempt to answer a question and do not know (or cannot recall) the law, don’t panic;  that’s why you’re practicing! Write down as much of the law as you can (even if you are making it up; you might draw a blank on exam day, and a good guess will always score higher than no answer). Then apply the law that you wrote down and reach a conclusion. Then look at the sample answer to see what you missed, and review the relevant portion of the relevant outline to contextualize the law (where does this rule fit into the larger picture of, say, family law?) and review the subtopics in the same section of the outline. This is where the “deep” learning happens.

Essay-rule Flashcards

When you attempt an essay and realize you do not have a good grasp of the rule, copy the rule verbatim from a sample answer (or an outline) onto a flashcard. Work your essay flashcards at least once per day (you don’t have to go through the entire deck).

When you go through the flashcards and get the answer to a flashcard right, move that card to the back of the stack. If you get the answer wrong, put that card about three cards back so that it comes up again almost immediately. This is the easiest way to leverage the power of spaced repetition.

If you prefer electronic flashcards, brainscape.com is free if you create your own decks, uses adaptive learning/spaced repetition (pretty much what I described in the prior paragraph), has apps for Android and iPhone, and is easy to use. (I do not recommend Quizlet because it has no spaced-repetition feature). 

Graded practice

Submit your essay answers when Barbri (or Themis) assigns them to you; you’ll get a response from the grader quicker if you submit the essay when the grader is expecting it. Barbri and Themis will grade unlimited essays for you. Learning to assess your own work is important (and faster), but a second set of eyes and objective feedback can be very helpful.

"Extra" graded practice

Both Barbri and Themis offer "extra" essay grading. The turnaround time can be long, and the feedback may be irrelevant by the time you receive it because you will likely have done many more essays in the meantime. But here's how to submit extra essays on each platform:

Barbri

Under "Assignments, click "More practice," then check the "Graded Assignments" box. You should then see about 30 "Optional Submission for Feedback MEET" assignments.

Themis

New this summer: Themis has an AI essay-feedback tool. It's called UGrader, and the link is in the Themis sidebar menu, just above the "Access UWorld MBE QBank" link. UGrader has (or will have) three extra practice essays per topic. The feedback is AI, but if your AI score is unusually high or low, a human will regrade it. I demo'd this about a month ago, and it worked pretty well.

The TAMU Law MEE Bank

The Texas BLE has a now-useless bank of hundreds of essays and answers from the old-school Texas bar exam. Texas has no similar bank of MEE questions. So we made one ourselves. Here’s the link to the Google Drive folder. You must be logged into your @tamu.edu Google account to access the folder (if you do not have an @tamu.edu address, email me, and I will set up access for you with a different email address). The folder contains a spreadsheet listing all the questions by topic and date (make a copy to check off essays as you do them), plus the questions and answers organized in folders by topic and date.

The bank also contains a spreadsheet that lists all the essays by date and topic. I suggest making a copy of the spreadsheet so you can keep track of which essays you've done. Note: The sheet's second column--"W, O, or R"--is where you can note whether you completely wrote out your answer ("W"), outlined it ("O"), or used the "Read-Think-Review" method ("R") that I will describe later in bar prep.

A good way to randomize your essay practice and mix all the topics is to download all six essays from a past exam (say, July '23) and answer them.

Question of the Week: Interim percent-correct targets in Adaptibar (or QBank)

Q: I have a question about Adaptibar—specifically, about "percent correct" targets. I know we should be aiming for 62.5% correct or better by exam day. Right now, I'm in the low 50s. Are there interim, weekly percent-correct targets we should aim for?

A: No, not really—for two reasons: First, once you've answered around 300 questions in Adaptibar, the "Adapt" part kicks in, and Adaptibar starts forcing you to work on your weaknesses by sending you more questions on topics where you are underperforming and fewer questions on topics where you are doing well. (That, by the way, is why Adaptibar is worth every penny it costs and why, in my opinion, it is superior to Themis's "UWorld QBank" product.) Because Adaptibar forces you to confront your weaknesses, your percent-correct will plateau and maybe even decline—until early July, when most preppers turn the corner and their scores start rising again. Frankly, this can be a little soul-crushing. But it works, so keep plugging away in Adaptibar. If you don't have Adaptibar, get it!

Second, you are learning the law mostly by answering practice questions. Watching lectures and reading outlines contribute just 20% to your learning; they merely provide the scaffolding. The real learning—the other 80%—comes from answering practice questions (both multiple-choice and essays). Crushing a set of multiple-choice questions gives you the warm fuzzies, and that's great. But getting the answer wrong is actually more valuable at this stage because it identifies a gap in your knowledge and gives you the opportunity to fill that gap by learning the rule that would have allowed you to get the answer right. So though your Adaptibar score will languish, that's not a bad thing (as long as you are making the effort to fill those gaps).

In summary: There are no interim Adaptibar targets. Your score will plateau before it goes up. But that's not a bad thing; that's Adaptibar working its magic.

Have a question of your own? Email me anytime at john.murphy@tamu.edu, ask on GroupMe, or text me at 817-717-6629.

A good night's sleep before a day of studying is also important. "Sleep before learning also appears to be critical for brain functioning. Specifically, one night of sleep deprivation markedly impairs hippocampal function, imposing a deficit in the ability to commit new experiences to memory." Id.

So not getting a good night's sleep is a double whammy: We less likely to remember what we studied the day before, and the next day's learning will be less effective.

So improve your learning and retention the easy way: Get a good night's sleep tonight and every night!

Sources:

• https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/sleeps-crucial-role-in-preserving-memory/

• Walker, Matthew, Cognitive Consequences of Sleep and Sleep Loss, 9 Sleep Medicine Supp. 1 S29 (2008).

• Mander, Bryce A., et al. “Wake Deterioration and Sleep Restoration of Human Learning.” Current Biology, vol. 21, no. 5, 2011, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.01.019.

• Walker, Matthew, The role of slow wave sleep in memory processing, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine 5 (2 Suppl), S20–S26 (2009).

• Walker, Matthew. Why We Sleep. Scribner, 2017.

• https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180815-why-sleep-should-be-every-students-priority

• EZ-read version: https://www.livemomentous.com/blogs/all/the-four-pillars-of-sleep

Week 2 incentive targets

I set the week 1 targets a bit too high. The week 2 (and later) targets are more realistic. If you hit these weekly targets, you will complete at least 90% Barbri/85% of Themis/1600 MCQs in Adaptibar/QBank by exam day—and that's what I recommend doing!

So here are the week 2 targets: 

By 10pm on May 18, complete 8.5% of Barbri or 8% of Themis AND 160 questions in Adaptibar or QBank.