*Source: Current subject breakdown as reported at www.NCBEX.org. 2015 breakdown was obtained from correspondence between the National Conference of Law Examiners (NCBE) and Kaplan professors.

Well, it’s official! The National Conference of Bar Examiners recently announced to law schools that the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) is going to be testing an additional subject beginning with the February 2015 administration of the examination.

As predicted last year, the MBE will include Federal Civil Procedure questions in addition to the six previously-tested subjects as depicted in the chart above.

Current first-year law students who paln to take the 2015 bar exam will be affected by this change, so you 2Ls and 3Ls can breathe a sigh of relief. However, Civil Procedure is required as part of the ABA’s core law school curriculum, so even 1Ls will be adequately prepared for the change to the MBE’s format especially if they have access to Kaplan’s 1L Resources.

The good news about this change is that it means there will be fewer questions in the other subjects, which is especially heartening if property is not one of your favorite courses of study. Now, instead of 31-33 questions in every subject, you will only be faced with 27-28, with ten remaining within the experimental realm.

Despite the fact that no questions have yet been released to the public, there are things you can do now to prepare yourself for the addition of this new subject matter. CALI is a great resource for preparing for law school exams and the bar exam alike. Many of these online exercises are presented in a multiple choice format, so you will be able to get an idea of how the MBE will test Civil Procedure .

We will be closely tracking the changes and will update our MBE test change site as soon as we know more, so check back frequently for the latest news.

For most law school exams, your essay outline will be organized in IRAC fashion: Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion.

Determining what the issue is can be difficult, so one way to figure it out is simply to rephrase the call of the question.  So, for example, if the question asks “What, if any crime was committed?” then your issue statement would read, “The issue here is whether X committed a crime.”

You should already have identified facts that satisfy the elements of one crime or another, so now your task is to articulate the applicable rule of law.  The rule is simply the black letter law that applies to any given fact pattern.  Rules are derived from the caselaw you’ve studied, statutes, and even fictitious laws that your professor has created.  Whatever the case, you are to apply the law presented in the fact pattern or the law your professor has instructed you to use.

Your rule statement should be articulated as precisely as possible.  This is good practice not only for law school success, but also because it’s what’s called for on the bar exam.  Precise articulation of the rule will also allow you to focus only on whether the elements of each crime or tort, etc., are satisfied.

The analysis portion is really the meat of your argument because it’s where you apply the relevant law to the facts presented.  Many students go astray in the analysis section because they are trying to tie every single fact into their argument instead of drilling down to just those facts that support the argument they are trying to make.  Professors are notorious for adding distracting facts to their questions to lead students down a fruitless path.  This is why organization is so critical to your ultimate success, as it will help you quickly eliminate any facts that are simply irrelevant.

Now, before you conclude this portion of your answer, take some time to address any counterarguments your professor has craftily woven into the fact pattern.  Each fact pattern will include some “bad facts” that go directly against your position.  A successful essay acknowledges those facts, but then goes on to counter with reasons why those facts are irrelevant or why they don’t ultimately change the outcome of the case.

The conclusion is actually the simplest part of the entire essay.  All you are doing here is resolving the issues presented in the question.  For example, a conclusion could be as basic as, “Based upon the facts as presented above, X committed the crime of larceny.”  Remember, when crafting your conclusion that you take care to answer the question the professor is asking.  It’s no good to conclude that X is liable for a given tort if the question is whether or not X committed a crime.

For more great tips on how to ace your essay exams, watch the video above!

One of the most challenging aspects of the first year of law school is learning how to master the 1L essay exam.  Students enter law school believing they have great writing skills, only to be disappointed in their performance when first semester grades are posted.

The chief reason that students don’t excel on their first round of exams is that they spend too much time writing and not enough time thinking critically about the material presented in the essay question.  Though this might seem counterintuitive, it is analogous to the famous carpenter’s maxim “measure twice, cut once.”  Blindly rushing into writing without carefully considering the facts presented will inevitably lead to poor organization, increased anxiety, and overlooking facts that could change  your entire argument.

To construct a polished, thoughtful essay, you should budget between a quarter and a third of the time allotted to critically examining the fact pattern and organizing your answer in outline form.

The first thing you should do during your critical thinking phase is to read the call of the question.  The call of the question is simply the task at hand, for example, “Is X liable for negligence?”  Knowing what the professor is asking will guide you as you read through the fact pattern and enable you to more easily identify the most relevant facts.

Once you know what’s being asked, quickly read through the question to familiarize yourself with the key parties and important facts.  Next, read carefully and critically so you can identify the issues and the applicable rules of law.  Now, stop for a moment and consider carefully how the relevant law applies to this set of facts.  Once you have a good handle on what’s happening, you can determine what your conclusion will be—though, don’t get hung up on arriving at the “right” answer, as these questions are crafted so that you can take either side and craft a solid argument.

Watch the video above for more great tips on organizing a winning essay!

How am I ever going to remember all of this law?

Sound familiar?  The primary reason that the bar exam is so challenging is that it requires almost Herculean feats of memorization.  Dozens of subjects, elements of law galore, exceptions to exceptions, the list goes on.

Even with only a few weeks to go before test day, most bar takers still feel as if they have barely scratched the surface and that there is just no way to master all the subjects tested.

First of all, relax.  You really have absorbed a lot more law than you realize at this point.  The key is to develop effective strategies for quickly accessing that information when the time comes.  Here are some great tips for bar exam prep:

1. Be Active!

The worst thing you can do is to treat memorization as a passive exercise.  Staring at your outlines or class notes for hours on end is not going to cut it.  Put all your senses to work to make your memorization sessions more productive.  Pace around the room while you recite elements of law or work through your flashcards.  Challenge a friend to a race to see who can name the most torts or crimes and correctly list the most elements of each.  Work with students who have different strengths and weaknesses than you and teach each other the material that the other finds challenging.  Be creative, but, above all, be active!

2. It’s a Sprint, Not a Marathon!

The most often-repeated cliché of bar prep is, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”  While this old chestnut is valid, when it comes to memorization, the opposite is true.  Long, drawn-out memorization sessions are nowhere near as effective as constant, brief sessions that are repeated throughout the day.  For example, instead of doing an hour of flashcard or outline review, begin your day with a 15-minute lightning round of flashcards or another exercise to get your brain primed for the day ahead.  After lunch, do another quick exercise, and repeat again once you’ve completed your work for the day.  Frequent bursts of active memorization will help you retain much more information than if you attempt to learn everything in one go.

3. Use Information Clusters

This is a technique that you use every day, though you might not realize it.  Phone numbers, Social Security numbers, website passwords–these are all ways that we organize information into easy-to-remember parcels.  The law is no different.  Don’t approach bar exam subjects as one big whole to remember, but, rather, umbrella subjects that encompass smaller, easier-to-retain clusters of information.  For example, instead of studying EVIDENCE, focus on clusters of hearsay exceptions that make sense together.  By bundling material into manageable chunks, you will find it is much easier to absorb, retain, and quickly recall the information.

No matter how you memorize the material, make sure to incorporate some type of memory exercise into your daily routine!

Get extra practice with our Bar Exam Questions of the Day every Tuesday and Thursday at Facebook.com/KaplanBarReview.  Visit our YouTube channel for video explanations of past Questions of the Day.  And try our free MBE Flashcards for iPhone/iPod Touch!

Progress bars.  Checklists.  Empty, un-checked boxes….

With bar preparation season in full swing, those unfinished assignments lay in wait, taunting you as the days slip by and the dreaded exam draws ever nearer.

Advances in technology have made it easier than ever before for bar takers to keep track of the work they are doing—or not.  Often, however, these innovations are at cross purposes with the goals of examinees, whose only aim is to achieve a passing score.  Now, in addition to mastering scores of difficult subjects, cracking the MBE, and learning to write a winning essay, test takers are faced with the daily challenges of just keeping up with all the work assigned by their respective bar review courses.

Listen now, and listen well: Don’t be a box-checker!

It’s just too easy to become immobilized by the sheer amount of work that must be done every day just to stay on track, so don’t make completion your priority!  The only reason to take a bar review course is to pass the bar exam, period.  There is no gold star for completing every task assigned or checking everything off your to-do list.  You don’t get extra points on the exam for having done absolutely everything your bar course recommends, and there are plenty of students who are ultimately unsuccessful on the exam even after achieving 100% completion.

How could this possibly be?  Well, typically, when a student prioritizes completion of bar review assignments over simply passing the bar, the focus becomes getting those boxes checked off or that progress bar moving forward at any cost.  Students will race through MBE questions, not bothering to carefully read through the explanations to learn from their mistakes, because they are off to complete the next task.  Box-checkers will miss issues in practice essays because they just don’t have time to carefully read the prompt—there’s just too many other things to do!

Remember, your bar course assigns a variety of tasks to ensure that students with all different types of learning styles will be able to master the material.  Some students really do need to write out endless outlines or make hundreds of flashcards.  Some students learn best by listening to lectures multiple times.  Others find that constant practice is the only thing that helps them retain the material.

What you need to do to prevent yourself from drowning in work and becoming a stressed-out, overworked box-checker is to think critically about your own personal learning style and focus on assignments that play to your strengths.

If outlining doesn’t work for you, don’t do it.  If reading and re-reading your notes is not helping you retain the material, try another memorization technique.  Remember that just because work is assigned, does not mean that it is essential to bar passage!

Get extra practice with our Bar Exam Questions of the Day every Tuesday and Thursday at Facebook.com/KaplanBarReview.  Visit our YouTube channel for video explanations of past Questions of the Day.  And try our free MBE Flashcards for iPhone/iPod Touch!