The Multi-State Bar Exam (MBE) is a six-hour multiple-choice exam. It is administered twice a year, once in July and once in February. The exam covers six topics: contracts, constitutional law, criminal law, property, torts, and evidence. There are 200 questions on the exam, although ten of the questions are not scored. There are 33 on contracts and torts and 31 questions on constitutional law, property, criminal law, and evidence. Questions do not overlap topics; for example, a constitutional law does not mix with a question of contracts. A good starting point for understanding the breadth of the test is to print the topic summary found on the National Conference of Bar Examiners website. The link for that schematic can be found on the nybex website.
To some extent, you can certainly use your law school’s outlines to prepare for the MBE. However, there are three points to keep in mind if you decide to go this route. First, if your law school places a heavy emphasis on state law, it might be helpful to purchase commercial schematics or simply cross out the state law sections on the schematic. Second, your law school outlines may contain discussions of individual cases. Individual cases are not important in the bar exam; you just need to extract the law from the black letter and learn to apply it. Third, it is important to look at the official study outline that I mentioned in the first paragraph. You may find that your law school schemes do not cover all the subjects tested. The type of schemas you use for the MBE isn’t really a big factor anyway. The schematics are there for reference only, not for the practical aspects of the actual learning process.
The absolute best way to study for the Multi-State Bar (MBE) exam is to answer sample questions that closely resemble the questions found on the exam and that have long explanatory answers. By studying in this way, you will learn to apply the black letter law and recognize repetitive fact patterns. However, before and while answering these sample questions, you should also get a good overview of the law so that you are comfortable with difficult fact patterns. To get this overview, I recommend any active way of studying. (An active way of studying forces you to ask and answer questions about the material, as opposed to a passive study mode, such as simply reading the outlines.) Examples of active study strategies include flashcards, either yours or commercially available, and my crossword bar exam books, such as the MBE Crossword Puzzle Book http://TheBarExamWebsite.com