Figuring out how to prepare for the UBE can be just as challenging as mastering the material itself.

There’s a huge amount of substantive law to review, and depending on what electives you took in law school, you might be encountering some subject areas for the first time. You’ll also want to hone some practical test-taking skills so you can translate your knowledge into correct answers on the exam. For the MBE, that means understanding how the bar examiners write multiple-choice questions and how they want you to apply the law to their fact patterns. For the MEE and the MPT, you’ll need to dust off some legal writing and reasoning skills and get used to performing the required tasks in the limited time you’ll have on test day.

Integrating all of these elements into a study plan can be tough, and no plan will be right for everybody’s learning style. But there are some goals and strategies to keep in mind as you design your schedule.

Three Goals

The ideal study plan will do three things. It will allocate your time wisely so that you emphasize what really matters, it will make the exam format feel like second nature, and it will ensure that your knowledge and skills peak at just the right time to maximize your score.

General Strategies

How Long to Study

The first big decision you need to make is how much time you should devote to UBE prep. Most people study 35-40 hours per week for 9-10 weeks—a total of about 300-400 hours. That’s a rough estimate of the average, not necessarily a goal to shoot for. If you are juggling bar prep with a job or child care or other time constraints, you might not have 300 hours to work with, and that’s okay. On the other hand, if you don’t remember anything from your first-year courses and feel like you’re starting from scratch, you might need more than 400 hours to get back up to speed. For simplicity, though, we’ll assume the average: a test-taker who can dedicate nine weeks to full-time study.

Organize by Component

The next dilemma is how to allocate those nine weeks so that you get the most out of your prep. There are two schools of thought on this issue: some people prefer a subject-based approach, and others argue you should focus on one test component at a time. We agree with the second group, and here’s why.

With a subject-based study plan, you’d learn the torts curriculum and then complete all of the MBE practice questions and MEE practice essays before moving on to contracts or evidence. This approach might be a great way to process all the torts material, but it ignores a central fact: mastering the law will only take you so far if you haven’t also mastered the test.

Substantive knowledge is only half the battle on the UBE. For every component, you also have to acquire a unique set of test-taking skills that will translate your knowledge into right answers. The best way to gain those skills is to immerse yourself in each component, one at a time. If you are focused solely on learning torts and not on learning how to approach MBE questions, you’re neglecting a key part of your bar prep.

We recommend organizing your study plan by component so you can build your practical skills alongside your knowledge base. Start with the MBE, then move on to the MEE, and finish with the MPT, leaving plenty of time at the end to review and practice all three. This strategy will ensure that you learn the law and become an expert in applying it during every phase of the test.

Learn, Then Apply

For the two portions of the UBE that require substantive knowledge—the MBE and the MEE—most test-takers will use three study tools: live or audio lectures, subject-area outlines, and practice questions and essays. You can combine these tools multiple ways to get the results you’re looking for, but the basic rule to keep in mind is to learn first and then apply your knowledge. Start with lectures and outlines to memorize the doctrine in a subject area. Then use practice questions to go a step further and apply the doctrine to concrete fact patterns. This approach will reinforce the legal principles, teach you how the bar examiners test them, and make your study time as efficient as possible.

Does that mean you shouldn’t attempt practice questions or practice tests before you start listening to lectures? The answer depends on your learning style. Some people like to preface studying with a practice “diagnostic” test to assess what they know and what they don’t. A diagnostic test can provide motivation, and it can help identify problem areas to focus on going forward. If that strategy has worked well for you in the past, go for it!

But diagnostic tests aren’t for everyone, especially in the bar prep context. For some people, a poor performance on a diagnostic is a source of anxiety, not motivation. Keep in mind that many of the MBE and MEE subjects date back to your 1L year. Most test-takers have probably forgotten almost as much as they remember—that’s why you’re spending hundreds of hours preparing for the UBE! So the value of an initial assessment may be minimal, and the last thing you want is to feel discouraged at the start of a long, intensive process. Also, remember that your time is limited. Nine weeks might sound like a lot, but it’ll fly by. Consider whether you want to devote an entire day to a diagnostic test or whether it’s time better spent on practice and review once you’ve relearned the underlying doctrine.

Creating Your Study Plan

Now that you have some basic principles in mind, how do you convert them into a detailed plan you can actually implement? One option is to find a blank calendar and plot it out by hand. Another option is to use an online tool, like 7Sage’s study planner, that allows you to experiment with different time frames and approaches. (You can try out the 7Sage planner here: https://7sage.com/bar/study-schedule/.)

Either way, you might find the sample schedules we’ve created useful as a guide. They incorporate much of our advice about how to structure your time to accomplish the three study-plan goals: emphasizing what matters; mastering the exam itself, as well as the information; and ensuring you peak when test day arrives.

The sample schedules assume nine weeks of study at 35-40 hours per week. One of our strongest recommendations is that you take regular breaks from bar prep to recharge and regroup, so each schedule includes time away. The first one is based on a six-day study week and the second one allows for full weekends off.

Both versions of the schedule recommend that you divide up the nine weeks in the same way: five weeks for dedicated MBE prep, two weeks for the MEE, two days for MPT practice, and approximately two weeks to review and practice for all three components. The final 72 hours before the exam should be reserved for targeted triage of concepts that you consider either high-yield or challenging.

Let’s dive deeper into these scheduling suggestions and the strategies behind them.

Weeks 1 through 5: MBE

Why Start Here?

We recommend that you devote the first five weeks of a nine-week study period to the MBE. This component accounts for 50% of the total UBE score, so it deserves a lot of your attention. In addition, there’s a ton of overlap between the MBE and the MEE in terms of substantive law. If you tackle the MBE first, you’ll also be learning seven major subject areas that are tested on the MEE. By the time you’re ready for MEE prep in Week 6, you’ll only have a handful of narrower subjects—like family law and trusts and estates—left to conquer.

It’s also essential to immerse yourself in MBE practice questions so that you get used to the way the bar examiners are going to test your knowledge. You want to get into the habit of thinking like they do, and the best way to do that is to complete MBE practice questions daily over an extended period. Five weeks of dedicated MBE prep will familiarize you with all the quirks of this format and should make analyzing the fact patterns feel routine.

Subject-by-Subject Review

The sample schedules recommend that you spend 3-4 days on each MBE subject area. That pace would allow you to cover all of the material in about four weeks, leaving Week 5 available for an integrated, all-MBE review.

Implicit in this plan is an important piece of advice. When you’re studying for the MBE, finish reviewing one subject area before you move on to the next one. If you jump from torts to contracts to crim in a single day, you’ll get whiplash. You’ll also miss out on a key benefit of continuity: conceptual threads that run through each subject area can help you remember the information long term. Examples include levels of fault in torts, levels of scrutiny in con law, and relevance in evidence. Take mens rea from crim. If you know what state of mind is required for a crime, you also know other things about that crime, like what defenses might be available. If you learn the mens rea for all the crimes together, you can use that element as an organizing principle. But if you bounce back and forth between subjects, you’ll never be able to make those kinds of connections and see the bigger picture.

As long as you attack one subject at a time, you can do it in any order. Many people find it helpful to start with something they enjoyed in law school. That way, you can get used to the process of studying for the bar while you’re on familiar ground. Beginning with a favorite subject also allows you to build your confidence on the practice questions before moving on to harder subjects. But don’t save all the hard stuff for the end! Consider challenging yourself with a subject that’s tough for you and then rewarding yourself with an easier one.

Another option to consider is alternating subjects that require different modes of learning. Maybe you’re great at memorizing more code-based areas, like evidence or civ pro. Or maybe you prefer reasoning through conceptual questions about due process or the rule against perpetuities. Switching back and forth between those kinds of subjects will ensure you’re not doing the same type of thinking every minute of every day.

A Typical Day

Once you decide what to study when, you have to decide how to go about it. We recommend dividing your days roughly in half: learning the MBE curriculum in the mornings and practicing with MBE questions in the afternoons.

Your mornings can involve listening to lectures, reviewing or making outlines, taking notes, drawing charts, or doing whatever else made you successful in your law school classes. You don’t have to stay tied to your chair the whole time. If you have access to a bar prep course with audio lectures (like the ones 7Sage and several other companies offer), put in your ear buds and go for a run. But whatever method you use, focus this time on understanding and memorizing the legal doctrine in the subject you’re working on that day.

Then, devote your afternoons to completing practice questions and reviewing the explanations of the right and wrong answer choices. Start doing practice questions on Day 1, even if you haven’t covered a huge hunk of substantive material. You want to get familiar with the format as soon as possible and get in the habit of reinforcing what you’re learning on a daily basis. If you’re just getting started, search through your question bank for questions in your subject area and select the ones that cover the concepts you’ve just reviewed.

As you get more substantive learning under your belt, broaden the range of practice questions you attempt each day. Do questions that cover topics you learned the day before and the day before that. By Week 2 at the latest, you also want to be circling back to questions for other subject areas you’ve already covered. That’s because bar prep shouldn’t be a linear process; it should loop back on itself and consolidate your knowledge by testing it again and again. The practice questions are the perfect vehicle for this kind of spaced repetition.

To see all of these day-to-day recommendations in action, check out the sample schedules we’ve provided for Week 4. These samples split the week between two subject areas: con law and crim.

For the morning “learning” sessions, we’ve used the bar examiners’ subject-area outlines to determine the topics for the day. (You can find the MBE subject-matter outlines here: https://www.ncbex.org/dmsdocument/201.) The content is split into three parts based on what the bar examiners say they plan to emphasize. About one-third of the con law questions should come from Monday’s curriculum, another third from Tuesday’s, and the rest from Wednesday’s.

For each afternoon, the schedules recommend 40-50 practice questions. Some of those questions should be drawn from the subject area you learned in the morning; others should come from a different subject area that you covered in a previous week. Our test-taker would have covered the other five MBE subjects in Weeks 1-3, so all of them are fair game for afternoon questions in Week 4.

More on Practice Questions (Hint: They’re Really Important!)

Working through MBE practice questions will be the most valuable thing you do to prepare for the bar exam. So let’s discuss what you can do to capitalize on this essential resource. Here are three rules to keep in mind.

Rule 1: Do as many MBE practice questions as you possibly can.

Test-takers should do as many practice questions as they can get their hands on!

We learn much more effectively by example than we do by rote memorization. Every time you answer a practice question and review the explanation, you’re reinforcing the legal concepts from your lectures and outlines and committing them to long-term memory.

More importantly, practice questions help you think about legal concepts in the same way you’ll be asked to on the real exam. All components of the UBE require you to apply the law to the facts you’re given, not just to recite a legal rule. So every time you walk through a fact pattern and see a rule in action, you’re cultivating the key skill you need to earn a high score. The MBE practice questions are your primary tool for flexing these test-taking muscles. The more reps you do, the better the results you can expect.

Rule 2: Embrace the explanations.

Your work with an MBE practice question doesn’t end when you click on an answer. In fact, it’s just getting started. For every question you answer, you should take time to circle back and review the explanation that accompanies it. Of course, if you got the question wrong, you need to know why you missed it. But even if you got the question right, the “why” part is important. Sometimes your intuition about a question is different from what the bar examiners were thinking. Knowing the reason an answer is right gives you insight into their perspective that you can apply to future questions.

Remember that MBE questions often turn on tiny details: the wording of a legal test or a single, small fact in the stimulus. The explanations will train you to read for those details and figure out what to do with them. They’ll walk you through the subtle differences between answer choices and show you how closely related concepts apply in slightly different situations. When those same concepts show up on the MBE attached to a similar fact pattern, you’ll know exactly what the bar examiners are getting at.

Rule 3: Pace is not important—until it is.

The MBE is relentless and fast-paced, with just 108 seconds allotted for each of its 200 questions. On test day, speed will be important, but don’t let the clock dictate your practice sessions for the first few weeks of your review.

Take your time with the MBE questions in the beginning. It’s more important to learn how to approach the questions than it is to do them quickly. In the first week, try to do 20-25 each day. As you practice, you’ll get better and faster, so try to build up to 40-50 questions a day by the third week. Depending on how large a question bank you’re working with, you may finish all of your questions at some point in the process. If that’s the case, loop back and start over. Doing the same questions a second time is just further reinforcement of key concepts.

Of course, at some point, you do have to start worrying about the clock. In our view, the best time to do that is in the final week of your MBE-only study extravaganza.

Week 5

Our sample schedules recommend that you complete your review of the MBE topics around the start of Week 5 and dedicate the remainder of that week to all-MBE review. To the extent there are still holes in your substantive knowledge, use the mornings to fill them. Maybe you want to read back over your outlines. Maybe you need to revisit certain lectures you didn’t fully grasp the first time. By this point in the process, you’ll know what learning methods are working best for you.

Then, turn to the practice questions and explanations. This is a good time to make two changes to your approach. First, start timing yourself. Get a sense of your pace, and if you need to be faster, work on speeding up. Second, start doing randomly sorted questions rather than concentrating on particular subject areas. On the real MBE, you’ll have to switch gears quickly from torts to property to civ pro and back again. Now that you know the doctrine and you know how the questions work, start challenging yourself to make those fast mental transitions.

Weeks 6 & 7: the MEE

Once you’re comfortable with the MBE content and format, the MEE is the next logical step in your study plan. It’s worth 30% of your total UBE score.

We recommend devoting two weeks to the MEE. This relatively short time frame reflects that you’ve already learned most of the substantive law that the MEE tests—the same seven subjects that appear on the MBE. Two weeks is plenty of time to learn the MEE-specific subjects and practice working with MEE essay prompts.

As you can see from our sample schedules for Week 6, we recommend the same learn-then-apply strategy for the MEE that we suggest for the MBE.

There are five MEE-specific subject areas you’ll need to tackle: business associations, secured transactions, family law, trusts and estates, and conflict of laws. (You can find the MEE subject-matter outlines here: https://www.ncbex.org/pdfviewer/?file=%2Fdmsdocument%2F227.) Fortunately, these areas are much narrower in scope than the MBE topics, so you should be able to cover each of them in 1-2 days. For each MEE subject, start with lectures, outlines, note-taking, and any other didactic strategies you find helpful. Then, practice writing essays that apply the legal concepts to concrete fact patterns. You should also incorporate practice essays on the MEE topics that overlap with the MBE, both to reinforce your memory of those concepts and to get used to discussing them in an open-ended format.

When you practice for the MEE, do timed essays from the start. There’s no point in spending two hours writing a perfect, law-school-style essay when you’re preparing for the bar. That’s not going to be an option on the MEE, and one main reason to practice is to conform your writing process to the time limit. Give yourself 30 minutes for each essay so that you can feel what the time pressure is like and develop your own strategies for overcoming it. Practice reading the prompt quickly to isolate key facts and issues. Construct brief outlines of your ideas. Then, get a sense of how much you’ll actually be able to write in the time remaining. Through repetition, you’ll learn how to prioritize the points you want to make so that you don’t run out of time on test day.

The best resource for MEE practice materials is probably the bar examiners’ website. It offers the MEE prompts from 10 prior bar exams, along with explanations, at no cost (https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mee/preparing/). You can also purchase MEE prompts and analyses from more recent exams (https://store.ncbex.org/mee-bar-exam-value-pack/).

Week 8 (Two Days): MPT

The MPT accounts for 20% of your final score, so it’s the least valuable component. That doesn’t mean you should ignore it, but it does mean you should be smart about how you study for it. You want to be ready for the MPT without letting it get in the way of your preparation for the other 80% of the test.

For a lot of test-takers, the MPT is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a relief not to have any new substantive law to learn for this section. But because the MPT involves artificial, “closed-universe” tasks, the format takes some getting used to. Fortunately, there are good resources available, and you should be able to get up to speed quickly. We recommend devoting two days to the MPT at the beginning of Week 8, with preparation consisting of two parts: learning the format and practicing the tasks.

Learning the MPT Format

Start your MPT prep by reading the bar examiners’ rules and expectations here: https://www.ncbex.org/pdfviewer/?file=%2Fdmsdocument%2F53. It’s a pretty thorough summary of what to do and what not to do when completing your tasks. You’ll have access to these rules on test day as well, but you don’t want to be learning them for the first time while the clock is ticking.

Then, review prior MPT materials to familiarize yourself with the format. You can access free tasks and scoring sheets from 10 previous bar exams here: https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt/preparing/. That link will also take you to summaries of the MPT tasks from more recent bar exams. Those can give you a sense of the tasks that were assigned and the analyses the bar examiners expected. You can also purchase more recent MPTs and practice tasks in the NCBE “store” (https://store.ncbex.org/mpt/).

When you review old MPTs, your main objective should be to understand how to use the materials provided to complete the assigned tasks. You want to read enough task memos from “supervising attorneys” to know what the tasks entail and how they’ll be explained to you. You also want to get a sense of the kinds of factual sources that show up in the client files and the legal authorities that comprise the “library.” The goal is to have no surprises when you open your own MPT materials on test day. You should feel at home with the various components and be able to extract the key ingredients from each one to accomplish your task.

MPT Practice

Once you know what you’re supposed to do, it’s time to practice doing it. During your two-day MPT immersion, complete several tasks from prior exams and review the scoring sheets to assess your performance.

You’ll see from the old MPTs and summaries that most tasks ask you to write a memo, a brief, or a letter; only a few tests have included a drafting task, like writing a will or a contract provision. Remember this trend when you get ready to choose tasks for practice. You’ll want to select tasks that involve more written analysis, since that’s what you’re likely to get on your own MPT. Try a drafting task or two, but focus primarily on the memos and briefs.

When you start working through the tasks, you’ll realize that the MEE practice essays have already honed many of the skills you need for the MPT. You’ve spent the previous weeks applying legal rules to fact patterns, organizing your thoughts, and communicating them in a logical, cohesive way. The MPT asks you to dust off a couple of additional skills that you should concentrate on when you practice.

First, you’ll have to work with a closed universe of legal authorities. The bar examiners don’t want you to draw on your own legal knowledge for the MPT! They want you to confine yourself to the law you’re given in the library. That means doing a close reading of each statute or case provided and using it to draw conclusions from your facts. Hopefully, this exercise takes you back to all those nights you prepared cases for your law school classes the next morning.

Second, you should write each task for a particular audience. On the MEE, you’re writing generic essays directed at generic readers. But on the MPT, you’re creating a fictional work product with a certain kind of reader in mind. The task memo is your source for this information. The task memo may tell you to write for your client, which means you should take a balanced approach that weighs the pros and cons of a legal position. Other tasks are meant for the judge (e.g., briefs) or the opposing party (e.g., demand letters), which means you should take a position and argue persuasively for it. Use your prep time to practice tailoring your message to the intended recipient to maximize your score on each task.

Rest of Week 8 & Week 9: Review and Practice

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the MPT, use these last two weeks to hone your memory and test-taking skills with thoughtful repetition and exam-day simulations. Time everything you do. Complete large MBE question sets (50+) in a single sitting, and follow up by reviewing the explanations. Write back-to-back MEE essays so that you get used to switching gears from one topic to the next. Practice a few more MPT tasks to keep that format fresh in your mind. Keep drilling the concepts and the skills you’ve just spent seven weeks learning.

In Week 9, simulate each of the three UBE components at least once. Do an entire 200-question MBE practice test, write six MEE essays in three hours, and complete two MPT tasks in the same time period. Each of these exercises may be exhausting, but when the next Tuesday and Wednesday come around, you’ll know you have the endurance to get through them.

The Last 72 Hours

By the Saturday before the UBE, you will know a vast amount about the law and about the test itself. You’ll also have a good sense of what you need to focus on during this last push to the finish line. Use your final three days for two purposes: consolidating your knowledge of high-yield information and troubleshooting areas in which you haven’t tested well. This is not the time to reread hundreds of pages of outlines and pack in as much substance as possible. It’s the time for last-minute details, dotting i’s and crossing t’s.

Rely on whatever study tools have worked best for you so far. For instance, refer back to lectures and notes to clarify concepts. Consider creating mini-outlines of key principles that you want to review at the last minute. Answer more MBE questions in your weakest subject. Outline MEE essays to practice reasoning through a fact pattern. Most critically, be strategic: narrow your review to the legal rules and test-taking skills you think are most important, and target a specific learning goal with everything you do.

Summary

Preparing for the UBE is a daunting task, but coming up with a smart study plan that works for you doesn’t have to be hard. Here’s a summary of our advice to guide you along the way:

• Organize by test component. Start with the MBE—the most valuable component and the one that requires the most prep—and then turn to the MEE and the MPT, in that order.
• Learn, then apply. For both the MBE and the MEE, plan to start with lectures and outlines before beginning to practice. Create the knowledge base, then apply what you know to fact patterns that reinforce it.
• Give the MBE its due. Devote five weeks out of a nine-week schedule to learning the MBE material and gaining the necessary test-taking skills to knock it out of the park.
• Love the practice questions. The MBE practice questions are your most valuable tools—especially when you use them in conjunction with the explanations. Plan to allocate approximately half of your MBE study time to working through the questions and explanations!
• Manage the clock. With MBE practice, don’t start timing yourself right away. Take a few weeks to get comfortable with how the questions are written before you introduce any time pressure. With the MEE, on the other hand, always time your essays. Learning to adjust your writing process for the time pressure is a critical part of MEE practice.
• Don’t forget the MPT. This component is worth only 20% of your score, and it doesn’t test any substantive legal knowledge. It doesn’t deserve the same emphasis as the MBE or MEE, but it is important to familiarize yourself with its unique, “closed-world” format. Read old tests, try a few tasks, and once you feel comfortable with the process, return to the higher-yield UBE components.
• Simulate test sessions. In the last week or so before the UBE, try completing each component just as you will on test day: timed, full-length sessions without any coffee or handy reference materials available.
• Cram, but cram wisely. In the last 72 hours before the test, concentrate on the final pieces of information that (1) you think are really important or (2) have eluded you thus far in your prep. Don’t try to review every outline and do every practice question again. Pick your battles, and use only your best weapons.
• Seek help where needed. If you’re still feeling flummoxed, look for online tools, like 7Sage’s study scheduler, for help assembling all the pieces of your personal study plan. You don’t have to do it all alone!