15 MEE Tips to Increase Your Essay Score

You can use our Free MEE Frequency Analysis to prioritize your studying – it shows how often and the percentage each subject and topic was tested.  Our MEE Essay Priority Outline also contains High, Medium, Low priority designations for each rule, model rule statements, and a listing of the specific exams where each rule was tested.

When the issue can go either way, the bar examiners will normally award full credit for a conclusion that is well-reasoned. For example, on the July 2016 MEE concerning a contract assignability issue, the bar examiners stated: “Some examinees might argue against assignability of the contract because there are inevitable differences between the paint jobs, such as the relative ease of dealing with the homeowners. If well-reasoned, such analysis should receive credit.” (See July 2016 MEE, Essay 5, Point One).

So, don’t worry if it’s a close or undetermined issue – just pick a side, and plug-in your IRAC analysis for it.

Using headings and structuring your essay using IRAC format is key, as you don’t want graders to get lost or miss anything. By the end of your practice, you should be able to write essays in a clear, organized fashion. For more information on how to structure and draft your essay answer, please see Chapter 3 of this guide.

The end goal is to plug-in each of the parts of your IRAC analysis as quickly as possible to draft a complete answer that hits all of the issues tested. By taking more practice exams, will get you in the mode of writing essays quickly. It will also give you practice with structuring your answer in a complete succinct manner.

As such, you should follow these guidelines when drafting your answer:

• Only address the issues in the fact pattern that pertain to the question. The key for doing well on an essay is determining the exact issues the examiners want you to discuss. The majority of the time the call of the question – the question prompts at the end – specifically tell you what to discuss.
• Similarly, only state the rule(s) of law that are applicable to the analysis of the issues. For example, you will receive no points for stating an exception to a legal rule that is completely irrelevant to the fact pattern or issues.

If you do this, you must make sure you still spend only 30-minutes per question. Each jurisdiction controls the laptop software for the exam, so just make sure that you are able to easily skip to writing different essays during the exam.

For example, on the July 2013 MEE (Essay 6), the rule for piercing the veil of an LLC was tested. This was the first time such rule was tested (for an LLC and not a corporation), and as such, almost no one knew the exact rule. In this instance, you could have used the rule for piercing a corporation (which is very similar). In the above-average examinee answers released by states, this is exactly what many examinees did.

This is a perfect example of how you can move forward even when the exam throws you a curveball. It may not be the full points (as the rule statement will be wrong), but at least you may get some points for the issue, analysis, and conclusion – and more points equals a higher score.

For a 3-hour MEE session, you can use the following intervals as your guide:

It’s easy to forget or lose track of every item when drafting your answer. This outline will keep you on track, and guide you on the order in which to discuss the issues in your answer. This may seem like common sense, but we have repeatedly heard of examinees recalling after the exam was finished that they forgot to include issues they spotted.

The MEE instructions are freely available on the NCBE website, so make sure you review them prior to the exam. The current “Instructions for Taking the MEE” can be found here or here.

To illustrate, whenever a specific issue comes up, you would run through the different concepts in your head and note down which to apply in your IRAC analyses. For example, when an Agency-Authority issue comes up, you would note the following: agency relationship, actual authority, apparent authority, inherent agency power.

You can base these “mental checklists” off of your outlines or the topics listed in the MEE Subject Matter Outline released by NCBE found here or here.

The better option is to copy-and-paste the rule again into each part used, so that you make it as essay as possible for the reader to grade your essay. For examinees who handwrite the exam, we understand that this isn’t possible, so you should just refer the grader back to the other part of your essay answer.

The bar examiners have even endorsed both methods. Specifically, the NCBE has stated:

“Some examinees may discuss the elements of enforceability of a possessory security interest in the answer to [issue 1] and refer back to that discussion in their answer to this [issue]. Such examinees should get credit for that analysis as part of their answer to [issue 2]. Examinees may organize their answers either way and receive full credit.” (See, Feb. 2019 MEE Analysis, Essay 2, Point Two, note section).

This time saving tip should only be used when writing a rule statement multiple times within a single essay question. NEVER refer to something contained in another essay question because you will not receive any points for the same.