Part A – The Florida Law Portion

Part A of the Florida bar exam tests an applicant’s knowledge of Florida law. It is administered on the first day of the Florida bar exam and consists of 6 hours of testing, split evenly as 3 hours of testing in the morning followed by a lunch break and 3 hours of testing in the afternoon.

The subjects that may be tested on Part A of the Florida bar exam are:

• Florida Rules of Civil Procedure
• Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure
• Florida Rules of Judicial Administration
• Florida Constitutional Law;
• Federal Constitutional Law;
• Business Entities;
• Wills and Administration of Estates;
• Trusts;
• Real Property;
• Evidence;
• Torts;
• Florida Criminal Law and Constitutional Criminal Procedure;
• Contracts;
• Articles 3 and 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code;
• Family Law;
• Chapter 4, Rules of Professional Conduct of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar;
• Chapter 5, Rules Regulating Trust Accounts of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar; and
• Professionalism

While these subjects may be tested, not all of them will. However, we do know one important fact about the Florida bar exam.

By rule of the bar examiners, the subjects of Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, and Florida Rules of Judicial Administration must be tested on every bar exam. The Florida Board of Bar Examiners selects the other subjects for each bar exam.

Part B – The Multistate Bar Exam (MBE)

The Multistate Bar Exam, or MBE, is a 200-question multiple-choice exam drafted by the National Conference of Bar Examiners. It is administered on the second day of the Florida bar exam, also known as Part B of the exam. While the MBE has 200 questions on it, only 175 of those questions are actually scored. The other 25 are test questions that are being evaluated for future use. Unfortunately, since all the questions are formatted the same, you will be unable to determine which question is a test question and which question is being scored. You must treat every question as though it is a real, scored question.

Virtually every jurisdiction in the country uses the MBE as part of its exam, either as an additional component to a state law exam, such as Florida, or as part of the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE).

The MBE tests an applicant on 7 subjects of law. These subjects are:

• Federal Civil Procedure;
• Constitutional Law;
• Contracts;
• Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure;
• Federal Evidence;
• Real Property; and,
• Torts

The subjects of Federal Civil Procedure and Federal Evidence specifically and respectively cover the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Evidence. The other subjects cover general common law principles associated with each the subject.

The MBE uses a process of scaling and equating to convert your raw score, i.e. the number of questions you marked correctly, to a scaled score. This process can result in your raw score being increased or decreased, unfortunately.

On the Florida bar exam, a passing scaled score on the MBE is a score of 136 points.