2008 Woodie Awards
Down with the MPRE
Raffi Melkonian
Issue date: 11/18/04 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 2 next >
Many 3Ls, myself included, took the Multi-State Professional Responsibility Exam last Friday - the MPRE, for short. For all of you who haven't yet had the pleasure of jumping through this particular law school hoop, it consists of 50 multiple choice questions covering a range of topics in legal ethics. The grading is curved and the passing score differs by state - in other words, it's hard to know how well you need to do. What isn't hard to know, however, is that there are lots of things wrong with the MPRE, and some easy things the average student can do to make the whole sordid experience a little less unpleasant.
First, I think it's important to be very clear about one thing - whatever anyone else might tell you, the MPRE is a deeply unpleasant test. It's not hard as such. I don't mean to say that the concepts are difficult to understand, or that you'll be confused by the doctrine. The chief problem, really, is that most of the multiple choices are pretty plausible; anyone waiting for lurid tales of judges taking bribes and lawyers embezzling money to go on benders in Vegas is going to be waiting a long time. What all this adds up to is that the conventional wisdom around school that you only need to study for a few hours is not all that useful. We may all have passed, as people keep reassuring me, but it won't be because we knew the material - if I pass, at least, I'll owe my success to long-honed standardized test instincts. Closely connected to all this is that like most commercial test preparation classes, the Bar/Bri five-hour Saturday course isn't all that helpful - sure, it's nice psychologically to have someone boil down legal ethics to a single whirlwind class, but the short outline that you're meant to fill out mad-lib style in class is grossly inadequate to the test. I don't mean to be completely cynical about test preparation companies, and I'm sure the Bar/Bri people globally know what they're doing. But I'd much rather feel comfortable taking the test, and I get the feeling a quick flip through the model rules, my old professional responsibility notes, and a single practice exam would have done a lot more than even twice as much lecturing.
First, I think it's important to be very clear about one thing - whatever anyone else might tell you, the MPRE is a deeply unpleasant test. It's not hard as such. I don't mean to say that the concepts are difficult to understand, or that you'll be confused by the doctrine. The chief problem, really, is that most of the multiple choices are pretty plausible; anyone waiting for lurid tales of judges taking bribes and lawyers embezzling money to go on benders in Vegas is going to be waiting a long time. What all this adds up to is that the conventional wisdom around school that you only need to study for a few hours is not all that useful. We may all have passed, as people keep reassuring me, but it won't be because we knew the material - if I pass, at least, I'll owe my success to long-honed standardized test instincts. Closely connected to all this is that like most commercial test preparation classes, the Bar/Bri five-hour Saturday course isn't all that helpful - sure, it's nice psychologically to have someone boil down legal ethics to a single whirlwind class, but the short outline that you're meant to fill out mad-lib style in class is grossly inadequate to the test. I don't mean to be completely cynical about test preparation companies, and I'm sure the Bar/Bri people globally know what they're doing. But I'd much rather feel comfortable taking the test, and I get the feeling a quick flip through the model rules, my old professional responsibility notes, and a single practice exam would have done a lot more than even twice as much lecturing.