MPT: Multistate Performance Test
What the MPT tests
The Multistate Performance Test is two 90-minute tasks in three hours. It tests lawyering skills in a closed universe: a File with facts, correspondence, and pleadings, and a Library with statutes, cases, and rules. You must produce a practical document, such as an office memo, client letter, brief, contract clause, discovery request, or closing argument, using only those materials.
Core skills and concepts
- Read the task memo first: it defines the audience, format, and question. Underline the deliverable, tone, and deadline.
- Extract rules from the Library: synthesize statutes and cases; do not import outside law.
- Use the File selectively: facts must support elements; note missing facts and adverse facts.
- Organize for the reader: headings, issue statements, application, conclusion. Follow any specified format.
- Draft professionally: clear prose, accurate citations to the provided materials, no fictional authority.
- Watch ethics: conflicts, confidentiality, candor, and scope of representation can be tested.
Worked example
Task: draft a memo analyzing whether a client's noncompete is enforceable. The Library has a statute requiring a legitimate business interest and reasonable time and geography, plus a case upholding a two-year, 50-mile clause for a salesperson with client relationships. The File shows a three-year, statewide clause for a warehouse worker with no client contact. Apply: the statute's first element fails because the worker lacks access to confidential information or goodwill; even if the interest were legitimate, statewide scope is likely overbroad. Conclude unenforceable and advise renegotiation. Cite the supplied case only for its holding, not as binding outside the universe.
Traps
Writing a law-school essay instead of the requested document; summarizing the Library instead of applying it; omitting a counterargument; misstating a fact from the File; spending so long reading that the deliverable is incomplete.