One of the most important strategies for passing a bar or MPRE exam (or any type of exam) is to take lots of practice exams. In order to make taking practice exams effective, you need to have:
(1) the practice exams be as genuine as possible, and
(2) specific, detailed feedback on your practice exam from a knowledgeable person.
A new online service, Esqyr, takes care of the first need.
Esqyr
Esqyr is a new easy to use online tool which gives you access to a large collection of actual MBE, MEE and MPRE questions created by the National Council of Bar Examiners. Esqyr also gives you answers to all the questions, plus a way to evaluate your answers and create a study plan for the future to strengthen your weak areas. It works on any device and is compatible with both Android and iOS operating systems. You can choose to purchase access to all the exam materials, or only those materials for the particular exam you need. Once you sign up, you have access to the materials for one year.
Because it has such a large collection of questions and answers, Esqyr is an excellent supplement to a bar review course and can also be used with a personal tutor.
How Does Esqyr Work?
Esqyr contains three tools, each focused on a particular type of exam question. The process for practicing for each type of exam is the same. Once you sign on to Esqyr, you choose the type of exam you want, how many questions you want to answer, and then take the exam. Esqyr will then give you tools to evaluate your answers and adjust your study plans to concentrate on areas you need to improve.
RealResults-MBE
RealResults focuses on the MBE and contains 1,109 past MBE questions that were created by the National Council of Bar Examiners. Bar candidates can choose to take a complete historical MBE exam or a shorter exam. The shorter exam can generate questions at random on any MBE topic, or you can customize RealResults to focus questions in a particular substantive area.
Once you have finished taking the exam, RealResults gives explanations of the correct and incorrect answers. Most importantly, RealResults gives you statistics on how many questions you answered correctly by practice area. You can then use these statistics to create a study schedule that concentrates on improving your knowledge of the substantive law areas where your knowledge is weak.
ExactEssay-MEE
ExactEssay contains 267 actual bar exam essay questions with model answers provided by the National Council of Bar Examiners. You can choose to take between one and ten questions, and to take essay questions on all subjects, or pick a particular subject. For each essay question, ExactEssay gives you a number of “prompts”, which are a list of questions pointing toward the issues that ExactEssay wants you to focus your answer on. Once you have completed your answer, you grade your own answer by comparing it to the model answer. For each prompt, ExactEssay asks you to estimate what percentage of material in the model answer you included in your answer. After you have filled in these percentages, ExactEssay provides you with an approximate essay grade using weighting provided directly by the National Council of Bar Examiners.
Complete Conduct
Complete Conduct contains 60 actual MPRE exam questions. You choose the number of questions you want to do, anywhere between 5 and 60. Once you have taken the test, CompleteConduct shows you the correct and incorrect answers along with explanations provided by the National Council of Bar Examiners.
Can Esqyr Replace a Bar Review Course or Personal Tutor?
Esqyr is a supplement to, not a replacement for, a bar review course and a personal tutor. While Esqyr has an excellent collection of previous bar exams and MPRE exams, it lacks a comprehensive review of the substantive areas of law that you will need to know in order to answer those questions. A good bar review course will provide the substantive law review that you will need in order to succeed on bar exams. Esqyr also does not currently have any materials that address bar performance exams.
In addition, Esqyr does not have any materials explaining the best techniques to taking an essay exam or a multiple choice exam. One factor in getting high scores on essay or multiple choice bar exams is knowing the proper techniques for taking these types of exams. As explained by a repeat bar taker, working with a bar exam tutor is one of the best ways to learn these techniques.
Finally, my own experience teaching law students and bar candidates how to take law school and bar exams has shown me that students are generally unable to correct their own exams or see patterns in the mistakes they make. All students need feedback from someone who has successfully passed an exam and learned how to teach the best techniques for passing an exam.
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Did you find this post helpful? Check out some other great articles:
- Your Guide to Study for the MPRE
- Easy (and Cheap) Ways to Study for the MPRE
- 3L Tip: Get the MPRE Out of the Way
- What You Can Do Now to Prepare for the Bar Exam
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