MPRE Law or MPRE Culture

Every once in awhile I have a "aha" moment.  I stumbled into this one, and I'm not the same because of it.  

As background, a student reached after having failed the MPRE on multiple tries despite having watched commercial bar review lectures, creating personal study tools, and working lots and lots of practice questions.  

I was so impressed with the student's preparatory efforts.  The student had created spectacular blackletter study tools.  The student knew the law backwards and forwards and could retrieve rules in a flash.  And yet, the student missed question after question despite lots of practice in working through and analyzing problems.

That's when it came to me.  

My student had learned the law - cold - but was still missing questions because the student had not learned the culture of how the law was tested.  Based on my student's prior experiences as an attorney, I asked how my student had learned to solve legal problems as an attorney.  My student explained that the key was in learning the culture of how the law applied to client problems.  

Likewise, I suggested that perhaps the key to success on the MPRE lies in learning the legal culture of the MPRE. With this thought in mind, my student focused preparation efforts anew on learning MPRE culture rather than MPRE law.  And guess what?   The student passed the MPRE with flying colors!  

Based on this admittedly anecdotal experience, my sense is that many students do not pass the MPRE because they focus on learning the wrong thing.  They try to learn the law without learning the socio-legal context of how the law applies - the culture of the law.  

With this thought in mind, I now suggest to students that they work through practice problems as armchair legal sociologists to learn the culture of what is being tested. In short, in my opinion, the MPRE doesn't really test the law as much as it tests the legal culture of the law.  (Scott Johns).