Has the bar exam changed a lot in ten years?

May 24, 2007 4:01 PM

How much has the body of material tested on the Multistate Bar Examination changed over the last ten years?

Arguing with my clever friend, as ever. She thinks it's been stable, I think that Constitutional Law, at least, has changed a whole heck of a lot: takings, affirmative action, separation of powers, individual rights (half of all con law questions). Maybe not so much property, contracts, and torts.

We passed the bar and diverged--her into her tax, me into finance, and neither of us has really kept track. So we argue blindly, thoroughly entrenched, enjoying ourselves immensely. But now I wonder: has the law changed enough to be radically different on the MBE?

/N.B.: IANA Not a recent JD trying to use really really old books for bar prep. That would be sad.

posted by Phred182 to Law & Government (2 answers total)

For what it's worth, BarBri advised me (back in 2003) that the esteemed Bar Examiners tend not to ask questions that involve areas of constitutional law that were at all in flux. At the time, they suggested (for example) that we wouldn't see affirmative action cases, given the ambiguous reasoning in Bakke and the pending Grutter v. Bollinger case (which was handed down while I was studying for the Bar). Sure enough, I don't recall any affirmative action questions on the MBE in 2003.

I took another state exam in 2006-- complete with another MBE-- and there were no affirmative action questions on that exam, either.

Who knows-- maybe by 2013 they'll be asking about it?
posted by rdn at 4:38 PM on May 24, 2007

I feel like Crawford is the newest big case you might actually have to know about.

Other than that, I think they stick to the "classic" stuff, not bleeding-edge law.

I guess I'll find out in a few months!

/is-taking-BarBri-right-now
posted by falconred at 5:06 PM on May 24, 2007