MI Bar common mistakes
MI Bar · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering tort questions with a bare conclusion (e.g., "negligence, because he was careless") without walking through duty, breach, causation, and damages in that order.
Bar graders award points element by element, and candidates who learned torts as a single story rather than a checklist skip elements under time pressure, especially causation and actual damages.
What to do instead
Before writing, jot the element checklist for the claim in the margin (duty-breach-causation-damages; duty-breach-injury for strict products liability) and write one labeled sentence per element, even when the answer seems obvious.
Discussing every possible issue the fact pattern raises instead of the ones the call of the question asks about, burying the graded issues in paragraphs about irrelevant doctrines.
Fact patterns are seeded with distractors, and candidates fear losing points for omission, so they dump doctrine broadly rather than following the call of the question.
What to do instead
Underline the call before reading the facts, and before writing, list the issues it actually invokes; for each extra issue you are tempted to add, ask whether the call names it, and if not, cut it or reduce it to one sentence only if it changes the outcome.
Applying the correct rule without stating it, jumping straight from facts to conclusion, so the grader cannot tell whether the rule was known or guessed.
Experienced test-takers internalize rules and treat recitation as wasted words, forgetting that the rubric gives points for accurate rule statements independent of the outcome.
What to do instead
Use a fixed three-part paragraph shape for every issue: state the rule in one or two sentences, apply the specific facts, then conclude; practice until the rule sentence comes automatically and costs under thirty seconds.
Ignoring the burden of proof and the standard of proof when analyzing evidentiary and procedural questions, treating admissibility as a matter of pure relevance.
Candidates memorize the relevance rule and the hearsay exceptions as lists but do not attach them to who must persuade whom and to what degree, so they miss questions turning on proponent versus opponent burdens.
What to do instead
For every evidence question, write two labels before analyzing: who is the proponent, and who bears the burden; then run relevance, then the specific exclusion, then any exception, and state the standard explicitly in the answer.
Missing the statute of limitations or filing-deadline issue in a civil procedure question because the facts mention dates only in passing.
Candidates read dates as background chronology rather than as triggers, and the deadline rules are spread across several doctrines so they are not recalled as a single reflex.
What to do instead
Scan every fact pattern once purely for dates, numbers, and procedural posture before substantive reading, and keep a one-page timeline of filing, service, and motion deadlines that you rewrite from memory weekly.
On constitutional questions, analyzing the government action without first identifying the state action and the level of scrutiny, then arguing policy rather than doctrine.
Constitutional law invites normative argument, and candidates who feel strongly about an outcome substitute their view of fairness for the tiered scrutiny framework the grader expects.
What to do instead
Force the sequence: identify the government actor, classify the right as fundamental, quasi-fundamental, or economic, name the tier, then apply the fit between means and end; delete any sentence that asserts fairness without a doctrinal hook.
Answering contracts questions with a single rule when the facts present competing formulations, such as common law versus UCC, without stating which governs and why.
Candidates learn both regimes but do not build the habit of classifying the transaction first, so they apply the wrong default rule or blend the two.
What to do instead
Open every contracts answer with a one-line classification: goods or services, merchant or consumer, and therefore UCC Article 2 or common law; if the classification is genuinely ambiguous, say so and analyze both in sequence.
Citing a case name as the entire analysis, assuming the grader will infer the rule and its application from the citation.
Case names are the easiest thing to memorize and give a false sense of completeness, and candidates under time pressure use them as shorthand for the reasoning they did not write out.
What to do instead
Treat a case name as at most a parenthetical illustration after the rule statement, never as a substitute for it; if you cannot state the rule in plain words without the case name, you do not yet know the rule well enough to use it.
Running out of time because the candidate writes a full essay on the first issue and leaves later issues with one sentence or blank space.
Early issues feel easiest and most familiar, and without a time budget candidates over-invest there, while graders score each issue independently so partial coverage across all issues beats depth on one.
What to do instead
Before writing, count the issues and divide the remaining minutes by that count, write to the allotment, and leave a blank line and a bracketed placeholder for any issue you must return to; practice with a timer until the pacing is automatic.
Failing to answer in the alternative when the facts are deliberately ambiguous, committing to one outcome and ignoring the plausible competing analysis.
Candidates believe a confident single answer reads better, and they fear that hedging signals uncertainty, when in fact the ambiguity is planted to reward recognizing both branches.
What to do instead
When a fact is genuinely unresolved, write the primary analysis, then a short paragraph beginning "If, however, the facts showed X, then..." and run the same rule to the opposite conclusion; reserve this for true ambiguity, not for every issue.