The TBLE’s “Suggestions for Answering Essay Questions”
The Tennessee Board of Law Examiners provides a document with “Suggestions for Answering Essay Questions.” It lists 12 different “suggestions” for examinees to take into consideration when preparing for the Multistate Essay Examination portion of the Uniform Bar Exam.
Below are the 12 suggestions along with some of my thoughts about those suggestions:
TBLE Suggestion No. 1: The essays are designed to assess the following skills or abilities:
Recognition, characterization and articulation of the issues;
Analysis and evaluation of the facts presented in the light of those issues;
Recognition and statement of the rules, standards or principles of law pertinent to those issues, including qualifications and limitations;
Application of the law to the facts and reasoning to a sound conclusion; and
Coherent communication of such analysis and reasoning.
Comments: Okay, it’s odd that the examiners list this entry as the first “suggestion for answering essay questions” because it’s not actually a suggestion—at least not directly. The “suggestion” basically identifies the skills that the questions test. But if you know the skills that the examiners are assessing in the six MEE essays, then you know what you need to pay particular attention to as you answer the questions. Here are just a couple of things to keep in mind:
“ … articulation of the issues …”: Consider adding narrow issue statements to identify the outcome-dispositive legal question that ultimately needs to be examined to reach your conclusion. Don’t simply copy the call of the questions, consider that to be your issue statement, and then call it a day. You’re not impressing anyone simply by articulating an issue that the examiners have already given to you in the call of the questions. Rather, incorporate the narrower issue that needs to be examined. For example, if the call of the questions asks, “Did the officer's warrantless seizure of the man and warrantless seizure of the purse in the man's home violate the man's Fourth Amendment rights?” (Question 4 from the July 2021 Multistate Essay Exam), your issue statement should NOT be “At issue is whether the officer's warrantless seizure of the man and warrantless seizure of the purse in the man's home violated the man's Fourth Amendment rights.” Rather, the better narrow issue might be, depending on the facts and ultimately your analysis, something like: “At issue is whether the man had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the purse?” or “At issue is whether the plain view exception exceptions?”
“ … evaluation of the facts presented …”: Make sure you examine all of the facts given to you in the test question. And don’t just copy the facts into your response. “Evaluate” those facts. In other words, make sure you explain the significance of those facts. Don’t assume that the examiners will connect the dots for you. It's not their job to do so.
TBLE Suggestion No. 2: Read the facts and questions completely. Answer the question asked. The question itself directs the nature of the response expected. For example,
“You are retained to advise Mr. Jones. What advice will you give and why?”
“You represent the Plaintiff, Mr. Jones. What relief will you seek on his behalf? What results do you anticipate and why?”
“What should the Court decide? Why?”
Comments: This is a reminder to draft your response from the perspective of the appropriate party. If you’re representing the plaintiff, you generally will want to arrive at a conclusion that is beneficial to your client, while identifying and explaining the weaknesses in your client’s position and the potential counterarguments that can be asserted by the other party.
TBLE Suggestion No. 3: Almost all essay questions will raise more than one issue. Usually three to five issues will be raised. The fewer issues you discuss, the lower your score on the question. Also, your score will be lower if you do not adequately discuss each issue. Remember that questions are not necessarily confined to a single subject.
Comments: Remember—even though an essay question may only include two or three specific calls of the question, you might need to examine several different subissues to reach the ultimate conclusions for each call of the question. But remember this, too—the more issues you’re expected to examine in an essay question, the less likely your discussion of the rules and analyses has to be lengthy. Regardless of the length of the fact pattern or the number of issues being tested, each MEE question is still designed to take 30 minutes to complete. (Conversely, an MEE question with fewer issues to address will likely require you to have a more complete, detailed, longer response.)
TBLE Suggestion No. 4: There is no particular virtue in either brevity or length. Follow your natural writing style in the context of the direction given. For example, if you are asked to argue, then argue as if you are trying to convince a Judge of your position. There is no one form of answer which is preferable for all questions. Avoid tangents that are not germane to the issues being argued in an attempt to convince the grader that you know the law; tangents are rarely construed as knowledge of the law being tested.
Comments: “There is no one form of answer which is preferable for all questions” suggests that the examiners don’t care whether you use CRAC, IRAC, CIRAC, CREAC, or whatever similar structure you use. And that’s accurate. But good legal writing is good legal writing, and a structured response like CIRAC will help you make logically flowing arguments and reach conclusions supported by law and facts.
As far as tangents go, what this means is that you shouldn’t discuss issues or rules of law that aren’t necessary to the discussion. Doing so is simply a waste of time. Plus, it raises a red flag that you might not know exactly how to examine the issue.
TBLE Suggestion No. 5: Bear in mind that the examination is not designed to test only your knowledge of particular subjects. The Bar Examination is a test of those qualities or abilities which are basic to any of the many roles lawyers may be called upon to play. Thus, there will rarely, if ever, be one correct answer. You are being tested on your ability to think and express yourself as a lawyer. Your answer should be a reflection of your ability to do just that.
Comments: The examiners aren’t solely concerned about your conclusion. Rather, they are also interested in how you reached your conclusion. So even if you reached a conclusion that isn’t what the examiners anticipated, you can still earn a sufficient number of points on the essays as long as you articulate the reason why and how you reached the conclusion you reached—and this means having a well-developed analysis section based on law you identified in your rules section and legally significant facts you incorporated from the test question.
TBLE Suggestion No. 6: Don’t argue with the question - answer it. You may think the question is unfair or otherwise lacking; but it does you no good to waste your time pointing that out in your answer. If you have some complaint or suggestion about a question, write a letter to the Board after the examination.
Comments: Really, I don’t need to comment here.
TBLE Suggestion No. 7: Don’t pad your answer with abstract, unrelated statements of general legal principles. Addressing rules of law and issues that are clearly not being tested do not increase your score and waste valuable time that could be spent formulating adequate responses in a cogent manner.
Comments: See my comment to TBLE Suggestion No. 4 above regarding “tangents.” The same applies here: “ … you shouldn’t discuss issues or rules of law that aren’t necessary to the discussion. Doing so is simply a waste of time. Plus, it raises a red flag that you might not know exactly how to examine the issue.”
TBLE Suggestion No. 8: The examiner may be testing the cogency of your discussion more than your ability to recognize obvious issues. This is not a researched opinion paper. The examiner is aware that you are given a short time to review, evaluate, and respond to the question.
Comments: Again, each MEE question is designed to take you 30 minutes to complete. There’s only so much information that the examiners can reasonably ask examinees to write in 30 minutes. Although you will have a block of three hours to complete six MEE questions, you can divide your time any way you want and answer the questions in any order you want. However, you should limit yourself to 30 minutes per question.
TBLE Suggestion No. 9: Don’t guess, or speculate, or attempt to create new rules of law.
Comments: Here’s a caveat, though. If you come across a test question or issue that you completely do not know, you’ll have to do your best to develop a rule of law that you think is applicable. After all, you need to identify and incorporate a rule of law because you need legal principles on which to base your analysis. So even if you don’t know the law, do your best to draft a law that gives you the opportunity to incorporate some of the significant facts in the test question. While your rule of law might not be entirely accurate, you’ll likely get some credit for developing an analysis section. Plus, you might surprise yourself at how much of the rule you might be able to recall.
TBLE Suggestion No. 10: Attempt to answer every question by identifying parties and/or issues. Merely restating the question, however, does not constitute an answer. If an answer has multiple parts or requires discussion of multiple parties, it is helpful to organize your thoughts and may be helpful to provide headings or labels for topics.
Comments: An easy-to-read response will make a grader happy. And a happy grader is your friend. So use headings and topics to break up your response so that different discussions can easily be located by the grader. You don’t want the grader to inadvertently overlook an important discussion within your response. It might happen if you bury the discussion midway through a single paragraph that’s an entire page long.
TBLE Suggestion No. 11: While the essay examination is not an examination in grammar, spelling, or writing style, the cogency and coherence of your reasoning and discussion are being tested.
Comments: Don’t misspell names that are given to you in the test question. Don’t misspell case names of opinions given to you in the Multistate Performance Test. Pay particular attention to misuses of plurals and possessives and commonly misused words like “its” and “it’s.” While examiners will likely not deduct points for these mistakes, careless errors might cause the examiners to spend extra time reading your response to find more substantive problems throughout your response. And you never want examiners to spend more time reviewing your responses than they need to!
TBLE Suggestion No. 12: Avoid asides - cute comments, excuses and similar matters - not responsive to the question. Telling the examiner that you will research the subject or consult with an experienced lawyer will not help your grade.
Comments: Just assume examiners have no sense of humor. I’m sure they do. But I’m sure they just want to get through the hundreds and hundreds of essays as quickly as they can so that they get back to their billable work, too.
TBLE Suggestion No. 13: Avoid unusual or private abbreviations which may be misunderstood.
Comments: I recommend staying away from using abbreviations in your responses unless those same abbreviations are used in the test question.
TBLE Suggestion No. 14: If you think the question is ambiguous or incomplete, make an assumption as to the intended meaning or the omitted fact and state that assumption.
Comments: Despite this last suggestion by the TBLE, you shouldn’t have to make assumptions. Because of the rigorous process that the NCBE undertakes during the question-drafting process, essay questions are generally clear, and all the information needed to draft a complete response is provided to you in the question. According to the NCBE, it typically takes three years for an MEE question to make it into a test administration.
