Federal Civil Procedure question from February 2011 bar exam

The National Conference of Bar Examiners released (last month) a Federal Civil Procedure question from the February 2011 administration of the Multistate Essay Examination, available at http://www.ncbex.org/multistate-tests/mee/mee-sample-questions/criminal-law-question/.

Is it just me, or is this question really easy?  I suspect that my students would dance in the streets if I gave them something that clear-cut on the final exam. 

Unlike some in the academy, I have never been opposed to considering bar preparation as a far-off, indirect goal of my class, but I’m afraid if I gave them something like this in the first year, they would give up studying.  It would be hard to impress on them the different purposes of the bar exam and the final exam (and dare I say the real-life practice of civil litigation?).

While I’m at it, the NCBE’s bare-bones outline of Federal Civil Procedure is at http://www.ncbex.org/multistate-tests/mee/subject-matter-outlines/federal-civil-procedure/.  This tidy summary surely took me down a notch.  It may be something to consider for those unfortunate souls with less than six credit hours who must make tough choices about course content.

--PHM