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Is there any benefit to practicing MBEs without timing yourself in the beginning? How soon do people start working under timed conditions?

Absolutely. Studying for the MBE really is a multiple-step process. And step 1 should be to work through questions without timing yourself to ensure that you know the law well enough to answer questions without the stress of being timed. Of course, ultimately, you need to be able to answer the questions in the time allotted, but you should shift over to timing yourself once you have been through questions in each subject and you are feeling comfortable with the material.

The one caveat to the above is that you do need to ensure that you make that shift over with enough time to practice under timed conditions. Preparing for the MBE is like learning to play a musical instrument, learning to play chess, etc. You need to know the musical notes, the rules of the game, etc., but if you don't practice you'll never get all that good at it. To pass you don't have to be an expert, but you have to be quite competent. And practice means working through questions exactly as you'll be required to do so the day of the test. Give yourself at least a month to practice.

--Sean

I didn't find that I had to practice speed. I just always took the time it required to read the question and answer thoughtfully. It's just that with practice I got naturally faster.

More important was getting my stamina to maintain focus for sets of 50-100 questions. I found that fresh I was a ton faster and sharper than dazed from 70 questions. With practice I maintained more consistent attention.

ellewoods123 wrote:Is there any benefit to practicing MBEs without timing yourself in the beginning? How soon do people start working under timed conditions?

You need to first study the law and get it down pretty well. Otherwise you just waste a bunch of questions knowing that you're probably going to get them wrong. Once you've reviewed the black letter law and mastered it to some degree, do everything under timed condition. There's not that much time not to. TImed vs not timed is a game changer