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Our essay study guides are designed to provide you with the short and simple rule statements you need to know to pass your essay on the Florida law portion of the Florida bar exam.

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• Part A Florida

Part A – Consists of 3 Florida Essays and 100 Florida Multiple Choice Questions

***If you are working with a Bar Provider (Kaplan, Barbri, Themis), I will coordinate our sessions and the order of topics we study and practice with your Bar Provider’s schedule.

• Explanation of the most effective organization and presentation for Florida Bar essay answer and why it really matters.

If you have failed the FL Part A, we will review your essay scores and discuss your essay preparation and essay experience while you were at the Florida Bar exam.

• Guidance creating frameworks for the Florida Bar essays. I will provide clear directions on how to write a framework and why you need them. In addition, I will provide detailed feedback on frameworks that you write.
• Practice writing out Florida Bar essay answers, for which I provide detailed written feedback, as well as a grading grid for formative assessment of your performance.
• Discuss your performance on each essay and help with strategies to improve your Florida Bar essay scores.
• I will share my essay attack outlines, as well as my essay issue lists for each topic, which will help you know how to approach each essay topic and memorize the rules.

Essays – The following topics are commonly tested (listed in order of frequency tested)

• Florida Constitutional Law
• Professional Conduct (included with another of the topics listed)
• Real Property
• Federal Constitutional Law
• Criminal Law & Procedure

Florida Multiple Choice Questions

• Explanation of the best way to approach multiple choice questions.
• We will work on the most heavily tested questions first.
• I will share my mini memorization outlines with you.
• I will assign you many questions to practice and I will monitor your Florida Bar multiple choice scores.
• For each topic, we will review a significant number of questions together.
• You will do at least 2 practice tests on the Florida multiple choice questions before the exam.
• We will review your results and strengthen any weaknesses.
• Enable you to go to the Bar Exam with confidence that you will pass!
• Florida Civil & Criminal Procedure and Judicial Administration (Always 1/3 of the questions)
• Florida Evidence
• Business Entities + Secured Transactions / Commercial Paper
• Wills + Trusts

• Jacksonville University
• Swisher Library
• College of Law

Bar Exam Information

• Florida Bar Exam
• State Filing Requirements
• Bar Prep Classes

Test Specifications, Florida-Prepared Portion of the General Bar Examination

• Business Entities
• Chapters 4 & 5 of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar
• Criminal Law and Constitutional Criminal Procedure
• Federal Constitutional Law
• Florida Constitutional Law
• Florida Rules of Civil Procedure
• Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure
• Florida Rules of Judicial Administration
• Professionalism
• Real Property
• Uniform Commercial Code, Articles 3 and 9
• Wills and Administration of Estates

Florida Bar

The Florida Bar Exam is a two-day exam administered by the Florida Board of Bar Examiners.

Day one of the exam consists of the Florida essays and Florida multiple choice. The essay session is made up of three essay questions to be answered in a three-hour block. The multiple choice section is three hours long and consists of 100 Florida-specific multiple choice questions.

Day two of the exam consists of the MBE, two hundred multiple choice questions administered over two three-hour blocks.

In addition, a student seeking admission to the Florida Bar must take and pass the MPRE as well as pass the Board's character and fitness review.

Past Florida Exams

The Florida Bar Examination Study Guide is updated with the essay questions from the last examination twice annually. The sample multiple-choice questions included in the guide are updated periodically.  

Florida Board of Bar Examiners - Study Guides

First and Second Year

Register as a First or Second Year Student

File the Student Registration by the earliest deadline under  rule 2-23.1(a)  to qualify for the lowest fee; students filing for the first time in the second year of law school must pay the full registration fee of $400. Special Note: Student Registration provides both the Certified LegaI Internship (CLI) clearance requirement, and preliminary processing for admission to The Florida Bar.

2-23.1 Student Registrant Fee . Except as provided below, every law student filing a Registrant Bar Application with the board must file with the completed Registrant Bar Application the fee of $400. For any law student who files a Registrant Bar Application by the deadlines established, discounted early registration fees are available as follows:

a. $100. For those students who commence the study of law in:

• August or September and who file a Registrant Bar Application by the following January 15;
• January or February and who file a Registrant Bar Application by the following June 15;
• May or June and who file a Registrant Bar Application by the following October 15.

b. $350.  For those students who commence the study of law in:

• August or September and who file a Registrant Bar Application by the following March 15;
• January or February and who file a Registrant Bar Application by the following August 15; or
• May or June and who file a Registrant Bar Application by the following December 15.
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Introduction

This page is here to help you find all of the resources available to help you study for the bar exam. Here you will find links to bar prep classes, books, digital apps, the Multi-State Bar Exam, and Florida bar specific essay questions going back to 1985.

In addition to these resources, the Ave Maria Faculty and Librarians are here to help you in any possible way that we can to prepare for and be successful on whichever bar you decide to take.

ABA's Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admission Requirements

The most recent Study Guide for the Florida Bar Examination, which has the essays and model answers used in March and August 2019, has been published.  It, along with study guides for the past 15 years of bar examinations, can be found at the following link:

Florida Bar Exam Study Guide

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Top 5 Ways to Prepare for the Florida Bar Exam Essays

May 26, 2015 By Ileana Azcunaga Leave a Comment

The Florida portion is on Day 1 of the exam and consists of three essays in the morning in which you have a total of three hours to complete. The essays can be selected from approximately 19 subjects and each essay will include no more than three subjects. The essays will test general principles of law as well as Florida distinctions or Florida specific laws.

Typically an essay will have an overall primary subject. However, secondary or tertiary subjects can also appear throughout the essay. Therefore, theoretically, you have to be prepared to competently and accurately write on at least 3 primary subjects and up to six secondary subjects for the Florida essay portion of the bar exam!

This sounds impossible! What can I do?

Here are the top five ways to prepare yourself for success on the Florida essay portion of the exam:

• Make a calendar /schedule of essays for yourself
• Try to write one essay per day
• Practice the highly tested essays
• Focus on the “must-haves”

Make a Calendar / Schedule of Essays for Yourself

It is easy to go online and make yourself a schedule.  For instance you can try Calendar Labs .

Map out how many days you have left until the bar exam. Decide how many essays you want to write per week. For instance, three days a week? Five days a week? Try to write for each subject at least once. Initially you can take about an hour and 15 or 30 minutes to write each essay and the closer you get to the bar exam, you want to stick with the one hour for each essay.

Need help with this? Don’t really know where to even begin? We can help you with a personal approach to essay writing and a customized essay schedule that will fit specifically YOUR needs.

Try to write one essay per day during the weekdays

Finished with final exams? Graduation over and commercial prep hasn’t begun yet? Got extra time? Then start training yourself to write one essay per day during Monday through Friday. Get up in the morning, write an essay and review it before you start your day. Make it a great habit that you will never regret!

If you do this right after you are finished with your semester, you could potentially write up to 50 or 60 essays by the time the bar exam date  comes around! Even if you just wrote three essays per week, you still would complete approximately 35 essays before the bar exam. Nothing to shy away from!

Practice the Highly Tested Essays

As you know, the essays can be from approximately 19 subjects and each essay will include no more than three subjects. When selecting your essays you may want to be sure to include writing essays on highly tested subjects.

Subjects that have been frequently tested include (*not including the new subjects added in 2013):

• Florida Constitution Law
• Real Property

However, that does not mean you simply ignore the other subjects. When creating your calendar, take everything into account and be sure to include all subjects at some point; with a special emphasis on the frequently tested subjects.

IRAC stands for Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion. When writing bar essays, focus on the IRAC format . The Florida Board of Bar Examiners even indicate that you may want to write in IRAC format given their essay examination instructions in their study guide .

In the study guide, published every year, it outlines what an acceptable essay answer should include and indicates the following:

• Analysis of the problem
• Knowledge of the law
• Application and reasoning

If you write in IRAC format, you set yourself up for success and will write an acceptable essay answer scoring as many points as possible.

Focus on the “Must-Haves”

The bar examiners grade essays in a “positive” manner, so to speak. An essay grader will grant points for all the issues , analysis, knowledge of law, etc., that you spot or write about in each essay. The grader does not “deduct” points. Therefore, in essence, I like to think that the grader is “looking” for points to just give away!

So how do you use that to your advantage?

Focus on the must-haves in each essay. The examiners grade on a curve, so you have a very good idea of what a “must-have” looks like. What is everyone else in that room with you likely to write about?

Is it a contracts essay? What is the first thing that comes to mind in a contracts essay? Formation, right? Do the facts of the essay and call of the question lead you to discuss formation? If so, then you better do it!

What about a torts essay? Negligence should come to mind. Of course, not all torts essays include negligence, but you get the picture!

Focus on the big-ticket items and not the small, obscure rule of law that you just know is going to score you those 10 points! Unfortunately, you would likely be wrong — since the exam is graded on a curve, knowing obscure, “random” exception-to-the-exception rules of law will likely not gain you the big points that you desire.

Want more useful bar exam advice? Sign up for our  free mailing list  now!

Did you find this post helpful? Check out some other great articles:

• Top 4 Reasons Students Don’t Pass the Florida Bar Exam
• What You Can Do Now to Prepare for the Bar Exam
• State Dependent Learning and the Bar Exam
• The Ins and Outs of Studying for the Bar Exam

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About Ileana Azcunaga

Ileana Azcunaga earned her Juris Doctor in 2007 and graduated cum laude from Barry University School of Law. She also served as managing editor of Law Review Journal in 2006-2007. In 2008, she passed the Florida bar exam on her first attempt. Ileana worked as an Assistant Public Defender for the Office of the Public Defender and was lead counsel in more than 40 jury trials. She also handled her own appeals and argued hundreds of motions. Ileana later opened up her own practice, focusing exclusively on criminal defense. However, Ileana’s passion has always been education and therefore began grading essays on a part-time basis for the Bar Preparation Department at Barry Law while simultaneously working as a litigator. Two years later, Ileana became the Director of Bar Preparation at Barry Law in Orlando, Florida.

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One of the best ways to study and prepare for the bar is by taking practice exams. Each essay from the Florida Bar exam for the past 10 years is included in the Florida Bar Study Guide , along with sample answers.

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Discussion of all things related to the Florida Bar Exam. Users can post questions about the exam, both substantive and procedural. Current and former takers of the Florida Bar Exam are welcome.

Organization of Florida bar essay (Fl con law)

Does anyone have advice on how to organize essays. Especially for Florida con law when are bills or ordinances with multiple sections. Is it best to just go from provision to provision and listing the rules that apply or entire list out broad rules like EQ and incorporate each provision that may give rise to that issue? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

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