Multistate Essay Examination (MEE): Six 30-Minute Essays Across 12 Subjects
The MEE consists of six 30-minute essays. It covers the seven MBE subjects plus Business Associations, Conflict of Laws, Family Law, Secured Transactions, and Trusts and Estates. Each essay tests issue spotting, accurate rule statements, fact application, and organization under time pressure. Because questions often combine subjects, the first task is to identify which body of law governs each party and claim.
How to earn points
- Answer the precise call; an essay on 'enforceability' is not an essay on 'damages.'
- State the rule and its elements before applying facts.
- Analyze every party, claim, and defense the facts raise; use conditional conclusions when facts are ambiguous.
- For Business Associations, trace liability from actor to entity to owner.
- For Secured Transactions, run attachment, perfection, priority, and enforcement in sequence.
- For Conflict of Laws, identify the choice-of-law issue and the forum's approach before applying a rule.
Worked example
Debtor borrows from Bank to buy inventory, and Bank files a financing statement. Debtor later sells one unit to a retail customer. Under UCC § 9-320(a), a buyer in ordinary course of business takes free of Bank's security interest, even if perfected. The buyer must buy in good faith, without knowledge that the sale violates another person's rights in the goods, and in the ordinary course from a seller in that business. If the buyer knew the sale violated the security agreement, the buyer would not qualify, and Bank's perfected interest would continue. The analysis therefore turns on the buyer's knowledge, not merely on Bank's filing.
Traps
- Writing a general survey instead of answering each sub-question.
- Missing a hidden subject, such as a family-law issue inside a trusts fact pattern.
- Stating a rule without applying it to named facts.
- Finding liability but forgetting remedies or damages.
- Ignoring majority/minority splits when they change the outcome.
- In trusts, confusing mandatory and discretionary distributions.