crazylaw

What are bar examiners looking for?

phonelaw

know basic black letter law and state them when the issues are brought up

How to write a good answer that will pass the bar exam? What are bar examiners/graders looking for?

The "sample passing answers" often have misstatements of law, i.e., are NOT "Model" answers. I will add that often, if not always, the two sample answers for any given question come to the OPPOSITE conclusions on at least one discussable issue (except, perhaps, in Community Property).

The reason for this lies in the PURPOSE of the Bar Exam. The Examiners expect lawyers to know basic Black Letter Law, but they recognize that no lawyer knows every fine point. That, after all, is what libraries are for. Their purpose is not to test applicants' memorization skills.

Rather, they want to diligently ensure that every person licensed to practice Law in CA has the knowledge and analytical ability to apply whatever Law exists at that time (i.e., the Law will be different a decade from now than it is today) to the FACTS of any given case, in order to competently represent EITHER SIDE in that case. It is your ability to show that you can recognize BOTH sides' potentially valid arguments, analyze the strengths and weaknesses EACH of those arguments, and come to some intelligent conclusion on each issue, that the Bar cares about.

Think about this: Each "arguable" issue in each case is "arguable" because there are FACTS that, under the applicable Law, could reasonably support BOTH sides! That's how an "arguable" issue is defined! So, it stands to reason that, depending on the strength of the alternative arguments, EITHER side could potentially prevail.

For this reason, it is IMPERATIVE that if you see an arguable issue, you discuss it FULLY, presenting BOTH sides' potential approaches, WHETHER OR NOT YOU REMEMBER THE APPLICABLE RULE! IF you don't remember the "correct" rule, THEN MAKE UP A SENSIBLE RULE and have fun applying the facts to it, to show how each side would argue, and then come to some sensible conclusion!

The Bar has, in effect, TOLD you that this is what you must to pass, in their intentional, voluntary act of posting, as "passing answers," applicant work-product which asserts incorrect rules of law.

Finally, as has been implied in prior posts, the Bar wants you to use ALL the facts in each essay fact pattern. In MCQs, they throw in all sorts of extraneous irrelevant facts to distract you from the correct answer. But, in Essays, every fact is there for a reason -- and the reason is so that YOU can use the FACTS to create a beautiful tapestry of rich analysis.
Comment:
I have found that the model answers are not so great either. There are incorrect rules of law in some of the model essays, and the Bar still calls that a passing answer.

I had been wondering the same thing, and ten days before the last exam I realized that the message the bar is trying to send by using "model answers" with incorrect statements of law is that they don't care as much about correct statements of law as they do about the analysis portion of the essay. If you go back and look at the model essays, you will see that they all have HUGE analysis sections. Because they do want to see some kind of rule that makes sense, I strongly advise that you practice making up rules well BEFORE exam time. It's a lot harder to do than it sounds, and next to impossible to do on the fly at exam time if you haven't already practiced doing so in advance.

Source: ina bendis