How confident do you feel? Forum

[yankeeman86]

Disclaimer, I've been lawyering transactionally for 3 years and my trial experience is limited to 1983 pro bono cases and clerking; however, this was the epitome of a procedural shit show. A trillion subtle exceptions that, in practice, you know only through one unicorn client.

yeah, i have a theory that they have been trying to artificially limit the flow of new attorneys, i just refuse to believe that after 2009 all the people trying to become lawyers are some how less intelligent than in years past. the passage rates in some of these states are just mind blowing. the ABA says we are just dumb. but i'll tell you what, i review some of those old bar exam essays...and they are a joke. my MEE had 2 out of 6 traditional topics. (contracts and real property) the rest were corporations, family law, wills/trust, and agency. these are not "common law" subjects, how they can even test on these without basing it on a specific jurisdictions law kinda boggles my mind.

also, making 25 questions as no longer counting makes each question that does count much more important...now i don't know about you but it's a struggle for me to complete the 100 questions in the allotted time, and this is just going to make it even more difficult for people to pass this exam.

The 25 experimental questions are also part of their grand scheme to reduce the passage rate. They are obviously designed to bog you down and disrupt your flow and focus. But having 25, instead of 10 allows them to be master manipulators of the scoring scale. I think the "experimental" questions can be included as a graded question. They are not deemed "experimental" before the admin of the exam. The NCBE describes them as pretest questions....WTF does that mean?

I believe the experimentals naturally come from a group of questions that are new and super difficult. Assuming each experimental has a correct answer (valid/existing rule covered under the 7 MBE subjects), depending on how the guinea pigs react, they will COUNT/GRADE the experimentals that are least correctly answered and then take the most correctly answered non-experimental questions and put them into the bucket of 25 ungraded questions.

I'd like to think that many of the difficult questions that you came across earlier today will count towards your final MBE graded score and that a good number of the easy questions you came across will be disregarded and become "experimental".

I thought the experimental ones were supposed to be the more "difficult/nuanced/obscure" questions, not the easy ones? Also I thought they were already determined prior to the exam-- and I've also heard if a lot of people get a Q wrong they sometimes throw it out...

What I'm saying is that the 25 most difficult questions (questions that were least correctly answered) will be graded, whether they were "experimental" or not. I don't believe they determine which questions are "experimental" prior to the exam. The top 25 questions that yield the most correct responses will NOT be graded. They will be determined as "experimental". I think the people who say that a difficult question will be thrown out believe the same thing I do. The experimentals are determined AFTER the exam is administered. However, the NCBE wants to reduce the passage rate. Their goal is to weed out many of us and only admit the top performers. They want to rehabilitate the legal profession.

Depending on the trend of mean scores, pass rates, LSAT score averages, law school enrollment numbers, number of practicing lawyers, the legal unemployment rate, legal income avg, etc they now have even wider discretion to control passage.

[Impishee]

Hopefully scaling is still like by 15 points at least? Not sure what a good bare min score would be now with the 175 questions. 60 percent would be 105/175, but who knows what counted.

[pdwannabe]

for me, i think more experimentals or "distractors" appeared in the PM session. there were a couple that either had two right answers or no right answer at all. btw, as a hypothetical

jack wants to act bad ass and tries to scare off some high school jocks, approaches a group of them one day on the football field, takes out a glock from his backpack and shoots one in the sky. a cheerleader nearby hears it, gets scared and pissed off but does not suffer any physical harm from it. between assault and IIED, what's the best way the cheerleader can get back at jack for being a jack ass?

a few people have said assault so they are probably right. but hypothetically, was the cheerleader ever actually in apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact? was she ever actually in fear? she was startled, but by the time she was aware of it, the bullet and threat was gone. is that enough apprehension to qualify as assault?

[pdwannabe]

or would that not even matter, since the jocks were definitely in reasonable apprehension and it transfers? does it transfer? not sure if that would go to intent or impact. this hypothetical is driving me crazy

[cnk1220]

.

[happyhour1122]

Defamation always gets me, any ideas?

We had defamation?

[wlp0001]

I ran out of time on the MPT MEE ill digest it tonight and wine about everything, like everyone else tomorrow

Don't worry, I did the mpts out of order on exam soft, so both my answers prob won't count... Still deciding whether I should show up tomorrow.

Someone did this on my exam today. Overheard her conversation with the proctor. They both didn't seem too concerned, and it seems that the graders have encountered this problem before.

Called NYS, no issue at all. They say it happens all the time.

[DueProcessDoWheelies]

Disclaimer, I've been lawyering transactionally for 3 years and my trial experience is limited to 1983 pro bono cases and clerking; however, this was the epitome of a procedural shit show. A trillion subtle exceptions that, in practice, you know only through one unicorn client.

yeah, i have a theory that they have been trying to artificially limit the flow of new attorneys, i just refuse to believe that after 2009 all the people trying to become lawyers are some how less intelligent than in years past. the passage rates in some of these states are just mind blowing. the ABA says we are just dumb. but i'll tell you what, i review some of those old bar exam essays...and they are a joke. my MEE had 2 out of 6 traditional topics. (contracts and real property) the rest were corporations, family law, wills/trust, and agency. these are not "common law" subjects, how they can even test on these without basing it on a specific jurisdictions law kinda boggles my mind.

also, making 25 questions as no longer counting makes each question that does count much more important...now i don't know about you but it's a struggle for me to complete the 100 questions in the allotted time, and this is just going to make it even more difficult for people to pass this exam.

The 25 experimental questions are also part of their grand scheme to reduce the passage rate. They are obviously designed to bog you down and disrupt your flow and focus. But having 25, instead of 10 allows them to be master manipulators of the scoring scale. I think the "experimental" questions can be included as a graded question. They are not deemed "experimental" before the admin of the exam. The NCBE describes them as pretest questions....WTF does that mean?

I believe the experimentals naturally come from a group of questions that are new and super difficult. Assuming each experimental has a correct answer (valid/existing rule covered under the 7 MBE subjects), depending on how the guinea pigs react, they will COUNT/GRADE the experimentals that are least correctly answered and then take the most correctly answered non-experimental questions and put them into the bucket of 25 ungraded questions.

I'd like to think that many of the difficult questions that you came across earlier today will count towards your final MBE graded score and that a good number of the easy questions you came across will be disregarded and become "experimental".

I thought the experimental ones were supposed to be the more "difficult/nuanced/obscure" questions, not the easy ones? Also I thought they were already determined prior to the exam-- and I've also heard if a lot of people get a Q wrong they sometimes throw it out...

What I'm saying is that the 25 most difficult questions (questions that were least correctly answered) will be graded, whether they were "experimental" or not. I don't believe they determine which questions are "experimental" prior to the exam. The top 25 questions that yield the most correct responses will NOT be graded. They will be determined as "experimental". I think the people who say that a difficult question will be thrown out believe the same thing I do. The experimentals are determined AFTER the exam is administered. However, the NCBE wants to reduce the passage rate. Their goal is to weed out many of us and only admit the top performers. They want to rehabilitate the legal profession.

Depending on the trend of mean scores, pass rates, LSAT score averages, law school enrollment numbers, number of practicing lawyers, the legal unemployment rate, legal income avg, etc they now have even wider discretion to control passage.

I'm pretty sure the experimental questions are determined before the exam. Otherwise the examiners would be tweaking the test after the fact in a deliberate attempt to lower pass rates. Also defeats the purpose of pretesting questions

[cnk1220]

.

[YalteseFalcon]

^ I agree. It would be largely unfair just to throw out easy Qs-- although I think I got every con law "easy Q" wrong because I thought this couldn't possibly be the answer..

I know the feeling. It would be one thing if i didn't already have the suspicion that the test is trying to throw you off with red herrings and distractors. But occasionally, there is a very basic, straightforward question with no catch.

I also fell into the trap of second-guessing answer choices I believed to be correct because the fell into a long string of the same letter answers. E.g. If I chose "C" answers to questions 10-14, question 15 also looks like a C. I see that there hasn't been an "A" in a very long time, but that answer doesn't quite look right. I guess I'll pick C again. Question 16. C AGAIN! Ugh. Now I must be doing something wrong.

[cnk1220]

.

[YalteseFalcon]

Also, on the same issue as the assault/IIED question discussed above, I agree that it was assault. But of course I chose IIED after having narrowed it down to the two answers (which I did for approximately 50-55% of the test). I chose IIED because they were hitting us over the head with the IIED elements. I remembered the doctrine of transferred intent with respect to assault...thought about it some more...and was persuaded by the fact that the facts were really hammering intentional/reckless conduct that was extreme and outrageous in firing the gun with the intent of causing apprehension (of course, assault), but the result in the woman was emotional distress. So, yep. I'm pretty sure assault via transferred intent.

Oh well.

[puremorning]

^ I agree. It would be largely unfair just to throw out easy Qs-- although I think I got every con law "easy Q" wrong because I thought this couldn't possibly be the answer..

I know the feeling. It would be one thing if i didn't already have the suspicion that the test is trying to throw you off with red herrings and distractors. But occasionally, there is a very basic, straightforward question with no catch.

I also fell into the trap of second-guessing answer choices I believed to be correct because the fell into a long string of the same letter answers. E.g. If I chose "C" answers to questions 10-14, question 15 also looks like a C. I see that there hasn't been an "A" in a very long time, but that answer doesn't quite look right. I guess I'll pick C again. Question 16. C AGAIN! Ugh. Now I must be doing something wrong.

I remember having 15 D's in a row in the AM section- last column- and thinking this cannot possibly be happening right now...but I didn't want to change my answer just because of that long string of D's. In fact I only changed my answer once on the entire test just b/c in practice my instinct was always right and I told myself I'd keep it that way on the test and not second guess myself. Not to worry- I'm now home & second-guessing all my answers lol.

Ok good, I'm glad because I had lots of D's the AM section too! And then I'd be like well it can't be D because I have so many D's, and then I'd tell myself that I can't eliminate an answer solely because I think I have too many D's on my sheet already.

Also, wtf, Examsoft just sent me an email inviting me to an Examsoft conference? Um, no. No, no, no.

[cnk1220]

.

[YalteseFalcon]

^ I agree. It would be largely unfair just to throw out easy Qs-- although I think I got every con law "easy Q" wrong because I thought this couldn't possibly be the answer..

I know the feeling. It would be one thing if i didn't already have the suspicion that the test is trying to throw you off with red herrings and distractors. But occasionally, there is a very basic, straightforward question with no catch.

I also fell into the trap of second-guessing answer choices I believed to be correct because the fell into a long string of the same letter answers. E.g. If I chose "C" answers to questions 10-14, question 15 also looks like a C. I see that there hasn't been an "A" in a very long time, but that answer doesn't quite look right. I guess I'll pick C again. Question 16. C AGAIN! Ugh. Now I must be doing something wrong.

I remember having 15 D's in a row in the AM section- last column- and thinking this cannot possibly be happening right now...but I didn't want to change my answer just because of that long string of D's. In fact I only changed my answer once on the entire test just b/c in practice my instinct was always right and I told myself I'd keep it that way on the test and not second guess myself. Not to worry- I'm now home & second-guessing all my answers lol.

Ok good, I'm glad because I had lots of D's the AM section too! And then I'd be like well it can't be D because I have so many D's, and then I'd tell myself that I can't eliminate an answer solely because I think I have too many D's on my sheet already.

Also, wtf, Examsoft just sent me an email inviting me to an Examsoft conference? Um, no. No, no, no.

I can't imagine it's anything terrible. All of your Examsoft information is encrypted and stored locally. Maybe the upload wasn't successful.

[puremorning]

^ I agree. It would be largely unfair just to throw out easy Qs-- although I think I got every con law "easy Q" wrong because I thought this couldn't possibly be the answer..

I know the feeling. It would be one thing if i didn't already have the suspicion that the test is trying to throw you off with red herrings and distractors. But occasionally, there is a very basic, straightforward question with no catch.

I also fell into the trap of second-guessing answer choices I believed to be correct because the fell into a long string of the same letter answers. E.g. If I chose "C" answers to questions 10-14, question 15 also looks like a C. I see that there hasn't been an "A" in a very long time, but that answer doesn't quite look right. I guess I'll pick C again. Question 16. C AGAIN! Ugh. Now I must be doing something wrong.

I remember having 15 D's in a row in the AM section- last column- and thinking this cannot possibly be happening right now...but I didn't want to change my answer just because of that long string of D's. In fact I only changed my answer once on the entire test just b/c in practice my instinct was always right and I told myself I'd keep it that way on the test and not second guess myself. Not to worry- I'm now home & second-guessing all my answers lol.

Ok good, I'm glad because I had lots of D's the AM section too! And then I'd be like well it can't be D because I have so many D's, and then I'd tell myself that I can't eliminate an answer solely because I think I have too many D's on my sheet already.

Also, wtf, Examsoft just sent me an email inviting me to an Examsoft conference? Um, no. No, no, no.

I can't imagine it's anything terrible. All of your Examsoft information is encrypted and stored locally. Maybe the upload wasn't successful.

Oh yeah no, it wasn't about the exam at all, my upload went fine (although I almost forgot to do it when I got home that night, now that would have been bad), it was for the "Examsoft Assessment Conference." I must have ended up on some mailing list of theirs somehow.

[cnk1220]

I'm just upset my memory will not let me forget all the Qs I was unsure of. Where was this stellar memory of mine during the exam? -_-

[yankeeman86]

Hopefully scaling is still like by 15 points at least? Not sure what a good bare min score would be now with the 175 questions. 60 percent would be 105/175, but who knows what counted.

you need 65% to pass provided your essays are okay, not good, not bad, but just meh.

[yankeeman86]

Disclaimer, I've been lawyering transactionally for 3 years and my trial experience is limited to 1983 pro bono cases and clerking; however, this was the epitome of a procedural shit show. A trillion subtle exceptions that, in practice, you know only through one unicorn client.

yeah, i have a theory that they have been trying to artificially limit the flow of new attorneys, i just refuse to believe that after 2009 all the people trying to become lawyers are some how less intelligent than in years past. the passage rates in some of these states are just mind blowing. the ABA says we are just dumb. but i'll tell you what, i review some of those old bar exam essays...and they are a joke. my MEE had 2 out of 6 traditional topics. (contracts and real property) the rest were corporations, family law, wills/trust, and agency. these are not "common law" subjects, how they can even test on these without basing it on a specific jurisdictions law kinda boggles my mind.

also, making 25 questions as no longer counting makes each question that does count much more important...now i don't know about you but it's a struggle for me to complete the 100 questions in the allotted time, and this is just going to make it even more difficult for people to pass this exam.

The 25 experimental questions are also part of their grand scheme to reduce the passage rate. They are obviously designed to bog you down and disrupt your flow and focus. But having 25, instead of 10 allows them to be master manipulators of the scoring scale. I think the "experimental" questions can be included as a graded question. They are not deemed "experimental" before the admin of the exam. The NCBE describes them as pretest questions....WTF does that mean?

I believe the experimentals naturally come from a group of questions that are new and super difficult. Assuming each experimental has a correct answer (valid/existing rule covered under the 7 MBE subjects), depending on how the guinea pigs react, they will COUNT/GRADE the experimentals that are least correctly answered and then take the most correctly answered non-experimental questions and put them into the bucket of 25 ungraded questions.

I'd like to think that many of the difficult questions that you came across earlier today will count towards your final MBE graded score and that a good number of the easy questions you came across will be disregarded and become "experimental".

I thought the experimental ones were supposed to be the more "difficult/nuanced/obscure" questions, not the easy ones? Also I thought they were already determined prior to the exam-- and I've also heard if a lot of people get a Q wrong they sometimes throw it out...

What I'm saying is that the 25 most difficult questions (questions that were least correctly answered) will be graded, whether they were "experimental" or not. I don't believe they determine which questions are "experimental" prior to the exam. The top 25 questions that yield the most correct responses will NOT be graded. They will be determined as "experimental". I think the people who say that a difficult question will be thrown out believe the same thing I do. The experimentals are determined AFTER the exam is administered. However, the NCBE wants to reduce the passage rate. Their goal is to weed out many of us and only admit the top performers. They want to rehabilitate the legal profession.

Depending on the trend of mean scores, pass rates, LSAT score averages, law school enrollment numbers, number of practicing lawyers, the legal unemployment rate, legal income avg, etc they now have even wider discretion to control passage.

I'm pretty sure the experimental questions are determined before the exam. Otherwise the examiners would be tweaking the test after the fact in a deliberate attempt to lower pass rates. Also defeats the purpose of pretesting questions

that is what we are saying, they are DELIBERATELY trying to lower the passage rate.

[yankeeman86]

Also, on the same issue as the assault/IIED question discussed above, I agree that it was assault. But of course I chose IIED after having narrowed it down to the two answers (which I did for approximately 50-55% of the test). I chose IIED because they were hitting us over the head with the IIED elements. I remembered the doctrine of transferred intent with respect to assault...thought about it some more...and was persuaded by the fact that the facts were really hammering intentional/reckless conduct that was extreme and outrageous in firing the gun with the intent of causing apprehension (of course, assault), but the result in the woman was emotional distress. So, yep. I'm pretty sure assault via transferred intent.

Oh well.

were you on adderall or something? sorry not being critical but how did you not choose assault if you knew the doctrine of transferred intent? i did not study this and had no idea this could be applied to assault/attempt. doesn't excuse why i got it wrong but had i known about the doctrine of transferred intent it would have been an easy pick.

[yankeeman86]

generally does the media have a right to view a state prison execution? i think no, thus no compelling reason needed from a state actor.

[happyhour1122]

generally does the media have a right to view a state prison execution? i think no, thus no compelling reason needed from a state actor.

I know I chose A for that. Don't remeber the question....fully tho

[YalteseFalcon]

were you on adderall or something? sorry not being critical but how did you not choose assault if you knew the doctrine of transferred intent? i did not study this and had no idea this could be applied to assault/attempt. doesn't excuse why i got it wrong but had i known about the doctrine of transferred intent it would have been an easy pick.

Well, first of all, yes. And I'm really impressed that you were able to divine that from the above. What gave it away?

Second, the reason I chose it was because the IIED elements were all conspicuously there. And I've become sensitive to the fact that some of these questions plant distractors, but sometimes they plant obvious facts that are intended to point you to the correct answer. For example, it was entirely possible (in my mind) that it could be a situation where IIED was appropriate because all of the elements were met, and maybe some subtle exception or exception to exception that I didn't pick up on. So I rolled the dice, chose IIED over assault, and...I rolled a 1 instead of a 6.

So, you chose IIED, but that was based on not knowing that assault could be transferred?

[yankeeman86]

generally does the media have a right to view a state prison execution? i think no, thus no compelling reason needed from a state actor.

I know I chose A for that. Don't remeber the question....fully tho

hypothetically, if someone drops a vase onto someone's foot and injures that person and says "it's my fault, don't worry i'll pay for it" - is that a party admission or statement against interest. assume we don't know if he is or isn't at court.

[yankeeman86]

were you on adderall or something? sorry not being critical but how did you not choose assault if you knew the doctrine of transferred intent? i did not study this and had no idea this could be applied to assault/attempt. doesn't excuse why i got it wrong but had i known about the doctrine of transferred intent it would have been an easy pick.

Well, first of all, yes. And I'm really impressed that you were able to divine that from the above. What gave it away?

Second, the reason I chose it was because the IIED elements were all conspicuously there. And I've become sensitive to the fact that some of these questions plant distractors, but sometimes they plant obvious facts that are intended to point you to the correct answer. For example, it was entirely possible (in my mind) that it could be a situation where IIED was appropriate because all of the elements were met, and maybe some subtle exception or exception to exception that I didn't pick up on. So I rolled the dice, chose IIED over assault, and...I rolled a 1 instead of a 6.

So, you chose IIED, but that was based on not knowing that assault could be transferred?

yea, didn't think transferred intent applied to assault. so i ruled out assault.

my friends have said that taking adderall makes u feel stubborn and determined to make sense of an answer choice that is wrong.