Taking the MS Bar in July and trying to figure out how much weight to put on the MBE subjects versus the MEE and MPT. I've heard from a few people that Mississippi's graders are fairly lenient on the written components, but I don't want to gamble on that. My Barbri diagnostic put me at 141 MBE raw, which I know needs to come up to somewhere around 150-155 to feel safe.
The MEE topics I'm least confident in are Conflict of Laws and Secured Transactions. I can't stand the UCC and I've been avoiding it, which is obviously the wrong approach. My plan is to do 40 MBE questions every morning, spend the afternoon on essay outlines, and then review at night. That's about 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, for the next 9 weeks.
Mississippi also tests state-specific law on the essays and I haven't found great prep materials for that piece. The MSBA has some older outlines but they haven't been updated since 2022. Does anyone have a current state law supplement they'd recommend?
Also curious what people's experience is with the graders — if you organized your essay well and hit the issues but got some doctrine wrong, did that still pass? I've been told issue-spotting matters more than perfect rule statements in Mississippi.
141 MBE diagnostic is low but absolutely recoverable in 9 weeks. I started at 138 and finished with 162 on the actual exam. The jump comes from drilling the same subjects repeatedly, not spreading thin. Pick your 3 weakest MBE subjects and do 20 questions each per day until you're above 65% on them.
Secured Transactions is one of those subjects where you just have to commit to learning the attachment and perfection rules cold. Make a one-page flowchart. Once you have that diagram memorized, the questions become much more mechanical and you can pick up easy points.
Mississippi essays: issue-spotting absolutely matters more than perfect rules. If you spot the issue, write a decent rule, and give a reasonable analysis, you're usually getting passing credit even if your rule statement isn't textbook. Blank space or missing an issue entirely is what kills you.
For state-specific prep, the Mississippi Attorney General's website has summary materials on state procedure and evidence rules. Not a full outline but it fills some gaps. The MSBA 2022 outlines are still mostly accurate for the tested topics — the law hasn't changed that dramatically.