ca bar essay subjects

• Jan 22, 2023

Passing the Essay Portion of the California Bar Exam: Insider Tips and Strategies

Understand the format of the exam: The essay portion of the California bar exam consists of five essay questions that are based on the subjects tested on the exam. These questions are designed to test your ability to analyze legal issues, apply the law to given facts, and communicate your analysis effectively .

Study the relevant law : The essay portion of the California bar exam is based on the law that is tested on the exam. Therefore, it is essential that you have a thorough understanding of the relevant law before you take the exam. Unfortunately, memorization alone will not suffice in passing the essay portion of the California bar exam. It's important that you understand how the rule applies. This includes studying past essay exams to see how a certain legal rule was used with a unique set of facts. You have to understand how one legal rule can be used in multiple ways.

Practice writing essays: One of the best ways to prepare for the essay portion of the California bar exam is to practice writing essays. This will help you develop your writing skills and become more comfortable with the format of the exam. You can find sample essay questions and model answers on the California State Bar website. Pro tip: there is a 99% chance that PR is going to be tested so it's wise to study and take a look at most, if not all, past PR exams that were administered. Scoring high enough on PR will offset other lower scoring essays.

Use IRAC/CREAC method: IRAC is an acronym for Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion. CREAC is an acronym for Conclusion, Rule, Explanation, Application, Conclusion. Using this method can help you organize your thoughts and present a clear and logical analysis of the legal issues in the essay question.

Time management: The essay portion of the California bar exam is timed, so it is essential that you manage your time effectively. Make sure to read through all of the essay questions before you begin writing, and plan out how much time you will spend on each portion of the essay. We recommend not spending more than one allotted hour per essay subject. You should have a pre-planned approach for each essay. Here is what you should be thinking about: how much time do I spend outlining? How much time should I spend writing? How many times should I read the fact pattern? The more practice essay exams you do, the better prepared you will be on exam day!

Proofreading : Always proofreading your essay before submitting, it could be a game changer in terms of points. Make sure to take the time to proofread your essays and correct any errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling (if you have the time)!

Get feedback : If possible, have a mentor, attorney, professor or someone who has taken the bar exam before to review your essays. Getting feedback on your writing can help you improve your skills and identify areas where you need to focus your study efforts.

These tips should help you to prepare effectively for the essay portion of the California bar exam. Remember to study the relevant law, practice writing essays, use the IRAC/CREAC method, manage your time well, proofread your work and get feedback from an expert.

Understanding the Internal Scoring System: A breakdown of how essays are graded on the California Bar Exam:

See below for a guide to the components and percentage weight assigned for each component on the California Bar Exam. You will be graded on the following components: Organization/format; issue spotting; rule statements; analysis; and conclusion.

Analysis: 40%

Issue Spotting: 25%

Rule Statements: 20%

Organization/format: 10%

Conclusion: 5%

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The Smart Guide to the California Bar Exam

A guide to mastering the ca bar exam, ca bar exam format.

Multistate Bar Exam (MBE)

California essays, california performance test, ca bar exam dates.

 Feb. 2024 exam: Feb. 27-28, 2024  July 2024 exam: July 30-31, 2024

*The California Bar Exam takes place on the last Tuesday & Wednesday of February and July.

Frequency Charts

(FREE Charts & Statistics)

MBE Frequency Analysis

CA Essay Frequency Analysis

CA PT Frequency Analysis

Click the links above for FREE Frequency Charts covering each section of the California bar exam.

Contact Info

State Bar of California Office of Admissions 180 Howard Street 254 Washington Avenue Extension San Francisco, CA 94105

Website:       https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Admissions Phone:         (415) 538-2376 Fax:              (415) 538-2304

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Part 1: Smart Guide to MBE

Part 2: Smart Guide to CA Essays ( coming July 2024 )

Part 3: Smart Guide to CA Performance Test ( coming July 2024 )

Click the links above for FREE study guides covering each section of the California bar exam.

Subjects Tested on CA Bar Exam

California essay subjects.

• Business Associations (Agency, Partnerships, Corporations, LLC’s, Sole Proprietorships, Joint Ventures)
• Civil Procedure
• Community Property
• Constitutional Law
• Criminal Law & Procedure
• Professional Responsibility
• Real Property
• Wills & Succession

MBE Subjects

• Criminal Law & Procedure
• Real property

Minimum Passing Score

Jurisdiction-drafted exam, ca bar exam schedule.

( for February 2024 In-Person Exam )

California administers its 2-day bar exam twice per year on the last Tuesday and Wednesday of February and July.  

On Tuesday , the California written components are administered, which includes 5 essays and 1 performance test.  

On Wednesday , the MBE multiple choice questions are administered.  

Pass Rate – CA Bar Exam

*Results for the February California bar exam are usually released in mid-May, and results for the July exam are released in mid-November.

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BARESSAYS.COM SERVICES FOR THE CALIFORNIA BAR EXAM

For more information about why BarEssays.com is an essential study supplement for the California Bar Exam essays, read our FAQ: -- CLICK HERE TO READ THE BARESSAYS FAQ

BarEssays.com provides a database of more than 3,000 REAL examples of REAL essays and performance exams by REAL students that were actually taken during the California Bar Exam and graded by the California Bar Examiners. On BarEssays.com, you can search for any essay tested in the past decade and view REAL high and low scoring examples of that essay. BarEssays is recommended by law schools, tutors, and review courses as an essential supplement for the essay portion of the California Bar Exam and is successfully used by thousands of students annually.

BarEssays.com Standard Membership ($175)

A standard membership to BarEssays.com includes access to the essay database, featuring 3000+ real graded essays and performance exams returned from past California Bar Exams that includes a range of high and low scoring examples to every essay tested since 2005. All memberships (standard and premium) expire after the next bar exam.

The BarEssays essay database is the only service of its kind. No other review course or study program will provide you with a range of real graded high and low scoring examples for every California Bar Exam essay tested in the last decade. Typically, review courses will only provide model answers, written and heavily edited by professionals on staff. However, model answers are of limited help because they are far different from the average real high scoring essay. For this reason, review courses, tutors, and law schools recommend BarEssays as an essential supplement for any study program

BarEssays recommends that you write at least one essay each and every day . That is, print out an essay, time yourself for one hour, and write it out. After simulating your essay, search our database to look at high and low scoring essays to compare your essay to our graded examples. Learn from the mistakes on the low scoring essays. Emulate the positive aspects of the high scoring essays.

The more essays you practice, the more essays you review, the better you will become at essay writing! Through the process of self critique and examination, you will become adept at how to improve your scores. BarEssays members often report of an “aha!” moment where they understand what they need to do to write a high scoring essay.

-- CLICK HERE FOR A SCREEN SHOT OF OUR SEARCH ENGINE

-- CLICK HERE FOR A VARIETY OF SAMPLE GRADED ESSAYS

BarEssays.com Premium Membership ($225)

A premium membership includes all of the advantages of a standard membership, plus a lot of additional material:

• Model answers for every past essay question tested on the California Bar Exam since 2005, written by a professional bar grader.
• Professional Bar Grader Reviews - Over 300 reviews of California Bar Exam essays in the database, all written by professional bar graders, detailing in line by line “pop up” commentary why essays received specific scores and how the essay could have improved.

Note: You must install the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the commentary.

Over 40 Essay Attack Templates (detailed roadmaps) for Commonly Tested Subjects

-- CLICK HERE FOR A SAMPLE ESSAY ATTACK TEMPLATE

Essay Submission Program ($99 and up) Practice Essay Grading

All members of BarEssays.com are eligible to participate in our Essay Submission Program, whereby you are able to submit your own practice essays and performance exams for detailed critique and grading by a bar exam professional at negotiated low prices.

As part of the Essay Submission Program, you can submit any essay tested on the California Bar Exam from 2002 to the present, to be graded within 48-72 hours. We receive tremendous reviews about our Essay Submission Program. The Essay Submission Program is only available to current members of BarEssays.com.

-- CLICK HERE FOR A SAMPLE GRADED PRACTICE CALIFORNIA BAR EXAM ESSAY

Live Essay Workshops Video Package of 14 Workshops Available for $249

Beginning with the October 2020 California Bar Exam, BarEssays has been conducting live essay workshops, taking students through specific essay questions and teaching how to deconstruct and answer questions in detail to receive maximum points.

The workshops are conducted by a former official grader of the California Bar Exam and long term bar exam instructor. The workshops became extremely popular and well received.

We are making available a package of 14 of the previous workshops videos and handouts for $249. This includes reviews of 24 previously tested questions and two performance exams.

**You can find detailed information about each workshop video at this link (click here).

**You may view a free sample community property workshop at this link (click here).

If you are a BarEssays member, click on this link to purchase access to the workshop videos. If you are not a BarEssays member, email us to purchase access to the previous essay workshops.

Future Live Essay Workshops

In addition to the videos of previous workshops videos, we will be conducting live workshops for each new examination. Announcements of these workshops will be sent to all BarEssays members and in the most popular California Bar Exam Facebook group.

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Chapter 3: California Bar Exam Essay Frequency Chart

California bar exam essay frequency chart.

Here, we provide you with a California Bar Exam essay frequency chart that shows the frequency subjects have been tested on the California Bar Exam.

You will notice a few things:

• First, the most frequently tested essay subject by far is Professional Responsibility . Professional Responsibility is tested on its own and is also frequently combined with other subjects. (Occasionally, it will appear on the performance test portion instead of the essay portion of the exam but, as you can see, that is not common.)
• Agency and Partnership is not highly tested (but when it is tested, it is very predictable). Agency and Partnership and Corporations used to be separate subjects on the California Bar Exam. Now, Agency and Partnership and Corporations are included under the subject Business Associations . However, for your benefit, we have listed when each individual subject was tested in the chart below.
• Some subjects, such as Civil Procedure, Criminal Law and Procedure, and Torts, tend  not to be combined with other subjects when they are tested. Other subjects, such as Professional Responsibility, Business Associations (Agency and Partnership plus Corporations), Remedies, Trusts, and Wills tend to be combined with other subjects on a regular basis.

Wondering which California topics are tested most frequently? 

Check out our California Bar Exam One-Sheets ! We cover the highly tested California topics within a subject in one page, front and back.

Go to the next topic, Chapter 4: Agency and Partnership .

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NCBE Announces National Mean for February 2024 MBE

MADISON, WISCONSIN, April 2, 2024— The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) announced today that the national mean scaled score for the February 2024 Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) was 131.8, an increase of more than 0.6 points compared to the February 2023 mean of 131.1. The MBE, one of three sections that make up the bar exam in most US jurisdictions, consists of 200 multiple-choice questions answered over six hours. 

19,496 examinees took the February 2024 MBE, an increase of approximately 1.4% compared to the 19,228 examinees who sat for the exam in February 2023. This increase continues a return toward pre-pandemic examinee numbers that began with last February’s administration.

Approximately 72% of February 2024 examinees were likely repeat test takers and approximately 28% were likely taking the exam for the first time, roughly the same proportion of repeat and first-time test takers as February 2023. [1] All groups of examinees saw performance increases compared to February 2023, with the greatest increase for first-time takers. 

NCBE Director of Assessment and Research Rosemary Reshetar, EdD, commented: “These numbers reflect a continuation of the trend that began last February: we are moving back toward pre-Covid numbers in terms of both the mean and the examinee count. We will likely see an increase in pass rates compared to last February, but we are also still seeing the  effects of the pandemic on examinees who were in law school in 2020, 2021, and 2022.” 

Reliability for the February 2024 exam was 0.93, slightly higher than the reliability for the February 2023 exam and consistent with the 5-year average for February administrations. (Reliability is an indicator of the consistency of a set of examination scores, with a maximum value of 1.0.)

Jurisdictions begin releasing their February 2024 results this week; bar examination pass rates  as reported by jurisdictions are available on the NCBE website. Many jurisdictions are still in the process of grading the written components of the bar exam; once this process is completed, bar exam scores will be calculated and passing decisions reported by those jurisdictions.

More information about the MBE and bar passage rates can be found in the following Bar Examiner  articles:

• The MBE Mean and Bar Passage Predictions
• When the Mean Misleads: Understanding Bar Exam Score Distributions
• Why are February Bar Exam Pass Rates Lower than July Pass Rates?

[1] The first-time and repeat MBE-based test taker information calculated by NCBE is an approximation based on the NCBE Number and biographic data, which has not been used consistently in all jurisdictions across time. Prior to 2022, approximately 10% of examinees could not be tracked with certainty by NCBE as either first-time or repeat takers due to a lack of sufficient biographic information.

About the National Conference of Bar Examiners

The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, is a not-for-profit corporation founded in 1931. NCBE promotes fairness, integrity, and best practices in bar admissions for the benefit and protection of the public, in pursuit of its vision of a competent, ethical, and diverse legal profession. Best known for developing bar exam content used by 54 US jurisdictions, NCBE serves admission authorities, courts, the legal education community, and candidates by providing high-quality assessment products, services, and research; character investigations; and informational and educational resources and programs.  In 2026, NCBE will launch the next generation of the bar examination, ensuring that the exam continues to test the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for competent entry-level legal practice in a changing profession.  For more information, visit the NCBE website at  https://www.ncbex.org .

About the Multistate Bar Examination

The Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) is a six-hour, 200-question multiple-choice examination developed by NCBE and administered by user jurisdictions as part of the bar examination, typically given twice each year. The purpose of the MBE is to assess the extent to which an examinee can apply fundamental legal principles and legal reasoning to analyze given fact patterns. The subjects tested on the MBE are Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property, and Torts. In addition to assessing examinee knowledge and skills, the MBE is used to equate the bar exam.  Equating is a statistical procedure used for most large-scale standardized tests to ensure that exam scores retain the same meaning across administrations and over time.  More information about the MBE is available on the NCBE website at  https://www.ncbex.org/exams/mbe/.

About the Uniform Bar Examination

The UBE is a two-day bar examination composed of the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), two Multistate Performance Test (MPT) tasks, and the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE). It is uniformly administered, graded, and scored and results in a portable score that can be transferred to other UBE jurisdictions. More information about the UBE is available on the NCBE website at  https://www.ncbex.org/exams/ube/ . 41 US jurisdictions currently participate in the UBE, and more than 45,000 examinees took the UBE in 2023.  

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