Hard Essay Questions Aren’t Such a Bad Thing

Here’s my hot take of the day: When it comes to bar exam essays, you actually want hard questions.

Yes, you read that correctly.

For example, let’s say there’s a Rule Against Perpetuities essay question on the bar exam. Sound familiar, July 2022 examinees?

Few people really, truly understand the Rule Against Perpetuities, and bar review providers often suggest spending more time reviewing more commonly and easier tested areas of the law rather than RAP. I wholeheartedly agree, too.

But why is a hard RAP essay question not necessarily a bad thing to see on the bar exam, even if you decided not to focus on RAP during your studies and instead spent much more time reviewing negligence? (By the way, this prioritization is completely justifiable because you know that one-half of the Torts MBE questions will cover negligence and, historically, 12 of the last 13 Torts MEE questions covered negligence.)

It’s best to look at an example. Let’s say out of 60 examinees who answered that RAP question—for ease of math—10 examinees scored 60% based on the allocation of points on a hypothetical rubric, 10 examinees scored 50%, 10 examinees scored 40%, 10 examinees scored 30%, 10 examinees scored 20%, and 10 examinees scored 10%. Based on these 60 scores, the examinees averaged a score of 35% on this question. On face value, that’s not good, considering that the range of scores is 0% to 100%.

But, in jurisdictions that utilize the uniform distribution method of grading—where the examiners try to give an equal number of 6s, 5s, 4s, 3s, 2s, and 1s—that means one-sixth of the highest percentage scores would be assigned a score of 6, the second-highest one-sixth of scores would be assigned a score of 5, and so on and so on. That ultimately means that the lowest one-sixth of scores would receive a score of 1. Examiners justify adoption of this kind of uniform method of grading as a reasonable way to ensure a good spread in grades.

Here's what the conversion in the above example would look like:

Number of Examinees (60 total)	Percentage Score (0% to 100%)	Raw Essay Score (1-to-6)
10	60%	6
10	50%	5
10	40%	4
10	30%	3
10	20%	2
10	10%	1
Average	35%	3.50

In other words, examinees, in this example, who earned only 60% of the points on the hypothetical rubric would have, in fact, received the highest raw essay score.

Now, compare that to another example. Let’s say there’s a much easier Agency question on the bar. And instead of the scores being skewed on the low end—like the Rule Against Perpetuities example—most of the examinees nailed this question.

Out of 60 examinees who answered this Agency question—again, for ease of math—let’s assume that 10 examinees scored 100%, 10 examinees scored 90%, 10 examinees scored 80%, 10 examinees scored 70%, 10 examinees scored 60%, and 10 examinees scored 50%. Based on these 60 scores, the examinees fared much better, averaging a score of 75% on this question.

However, the raw 1-to-6 raw essay scores tell a much different story. And it’s the raw 1-to-6 score that is much more important for calculating your scaled written scores. (That’ll be the topic of another post.)

Again, assuming that one-sixth of the highest scores are assigned a score of 6, the next highest one-sixth of scores are assigned a score of 5, and so on and so on, the conversion would look like this:

Number of Examinees (60 total)	Percentage Score (0% to 100%)	Raw Essay Score (1-to-6)
10	100%	6
10	90%	5
10	80%	4
10	70%	3
10	60%	2
10	50%	1
Average	75%	3.50

When you compare the uniform distribution of the raw essay scores between the so-called “harder” Rule Against Perpetuities question and the so-called “easier” Agency question, you’ll see that a percentage score of 50% on the RAP question would earn the applicant a raw essay score of 5, which is almost as good as it gets on a 1-to-6 scale.

However, on the Agency question, an applicant who also earned the same percentage score—a 50%—would only be assigned a raw essay score of 1 on a 1-to-6 scale.

Same percentage score. But a four-point raw score difference!

To say this another way, when confronted with an “easier” essay question, examinees have to write a much stronger response just to earn a decent score because most examinees will likely nail that question—or, at least, enough of the question to earn a large percentage of points. When the examiners assign each of the six raw scores (1 to 6) in equal proportion and quantity, that necessarily means that not all the strong responses will actually receive correspondingly strong scores.

On the other hand, examinees are still able to earn a good score on a “harder” essay question because the universe of examinee responses, as a whole, are likely going to be much weaker. Since there will likely be more “weaker” responses than “stronger” responses, then you can assume that some of the top “weaker” responses may still actually receive high raw essay scores.

Here’s the moral of this post:

1. If you think an essay question is “hard,” everyone else will probably think that same essay question is hard, too, which means the scoring could be more forgiving.

2. If the essay question is “hard” (or the group of examinees taking the exam isn’t as good at, say, the Rule Against Perpetuities), you can still earn a decent score on the essay question with a not-so-strong response.

3. Never, ever leave an essay response blank, even if you think you know absolutely nothing about what’s being asked in the essay question. A blank response will automatically receive a zero (on a 1-to-6 scale!). Instead, write something. Writing something may get you one point, which, on a 1-to-6 scale, is a significant bump from a zero.