Scoring the Florida July 2010 Bar Examination: How Do I Pass?

Grading the Florida Bar Exam

The MBE & Florida sections are weighted equally on the Florida Bar Exam. This is called the “overall method”. (Rule 4-25(a)). A combined weighted score of 136 is required to pass the Florida Bar Exam. It doesn't matter if your score in one section or the other is below the 136 - it's the average score that matters. So basically you can fail the FL or the MBE section and still pass the FL bar exam if your overall score is at least 136.

If you fail one section of the bar and choose to re-take only that one section in the next examination, you must score the 136 points or higher on that section. The Florida Board of Bar Examiners calls this the “individual method”. (Rule 4-25(b)). Your chances of passing are slightly lower than re-taking the entire bar again.
If an applicant attains a passing scaled score on only 1 part and elects to take the overall method of the General Bar Examination as described above, the previous passing status will not be replaced by a failing status if the applicant fails to achieve a passing score on a subsequent submission effort. (Rule 4-25.1).

Each examination paper produced by an applicant on the General Bar Examination will be separately graded. The scores of each section of Part A will be converted to a common scale by a recognized statistical procedure so that each section is equally weighted. The sum of the converted section scores is the total score for Part A. All total scores attained by the applicants on Part A are converted to the same distribution as their Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) scaled scores. MBE scores (Part B) are the scaled scores on the MBE provided by the National Conference of Bar Examiners. Scaled scores are used in order to ensure that the standard of measurement of competence from examination to examination is not affected by the difficulty of the particular test or the ability of that particular group as distinguished from the general population of applicants. Rule 4-26.1

On the Florida portion of the bar, each essay is worth 100 points for a 300 point total. The multiple choice questions are worth 100 points total, so each question is approximately 1 point each. There are usually 10 experimental questions. The average essay score is around 40 points, requiring you to get your remaining points on the multiple choice questions.

Depending on the difficulty of the essay question and the average grade, the Board of Bar Examiners may adjust your score either downward or upward. There is a school of thought that a bar taker should hope for a difficult question so that the average grade is lower – thereby requiring the Bar Examiners to adjust upward. If the essay is an easy one, usually the average score is higher, thus requiring a downward adjustment. The Board does not adjust the multiple choice questions – there are what they are and the point totals do not change.