Florida Bar Advice Needed! Forum

[Lawworld19]

Hello,

I just took and passed the Ohio bar exam. I am from Florida but went to law school up here. I want to take Florida this Feb. I ended up getting a 144.50 on the MBE. You can waive your MBE into Florida now. Should I waive in my 144.50 or retake the MBE. In simple terms, is a 144.50 enough to pass Florida? Or will I have to ace essays to slide in with that score?

[LLAW2018]

You can use your 136+ score to test out of the MBE, but you still have to pass the Florida portion of the exam separately. That is, they won't combine your MBE score with your Florida essay/MCQ score. I am thinking about doing the same thing this February (I just passed the NY Bar but my family lives in FL), but unfortunately our MBE scores will only help us avoid re-taking the MBE.

Looking for some guidance on how to study for the Florida portion of the exam, if anyone knows. Is there any way to avoid paying for a bar prep course?

[fltoca]

My advice would be to re-take the MBE and pass the FL bar using the Overall Method. You knew enough just a few months ago to get a 144. If you continue to focus on the MBE until the Feb exam you can certainly pass the 150 threshold, if not 160. With a 150 score on the MBE you would only need a 122 to pass the FL portion. Not difficult at all, especially considering that at least 1 essay should be an MBE subject.

That's what worked for me. I took the CA bar in 2016 and scored a 148 on the MBE. I took the FL bar this past July and decided to focus only on the MBE (maybe 20% of my studying went to FL subjects and that was geared at watching the lectures to get a very basic knowledge of each subject and doing multiple choice questions for the FL MC subjects). I scored a 161 on the MBE. I remembered a ton from studying in 2016 and was able to increase my score. Fortunately, there was a Contracts essay on the FL portion so I was able to not completely bomb the FL portion.

MBE: 161
FL: 135

[SilvermanBarPrep]

My general advice for Florida is to only take the part of the exam that you're required to take. There are exceptions though and you may be one of them. A 144 indicates a certain comfort level with the MBE, and those extra points above 136 do carry over to Part A of the exam since all is averaged at the end. If you think you've got a good shot at scoring another 144 or above 144 I'd consider taking the MBE again so that you can use it to cushion a potentially lower score on part A.

Sean (Silverman Bar Exam Tutoring)