Please note that the updated Combined MBE outline is not available until late-May for July exams or late-December for February exams. If you subscribe prior to the release of the updated edition, an older version of the Combined MBE outline (intended for the immediately preceding exam) is available. Thus, you should avoid marking up/editing the older edition because it will be replaced with an updated version about two months before the exam. 

The Seperac Combined MBE Outline subscription consists of everything contained in the MBE Rules module and the MBE Outlines module, plus the Seperac Combined MBE Outline (which essentially merges the prioritized MBE rules with the proportionalized MBE Outline). Accordingly, on the Seperac Combined MBE Outline subscription site, you are able to download the Seperac Combined MBE Outline, the Seperac MBE Outline, the Seperac MBE Rules Outline (All 1,827 NCBE MBE Rules), the Seperac MBE Rules Outline (860 OPE MBE Rules only), the MP3s of the NCBE MBE Rules (all 1,827 NCBE MBE rules) and the MP3s of the OPE MBE Rules (860 OPE MBE Rules only). Please look at and listen to all the samples before you purchase. For example, to prevent copying/sharing, each page is watermarked and I do not identify which MBE rule is associated with which question (although I do state which source each rule is from). In addition, while many examinees love the MP3 voice, others hate it, so please do your due diligence prior to subscribing since I do not offer refunds due to the open nature of my work.

The MBE tests both new topics (based on their current MBE questions) and past topics (based on their released MBE questions). This outline is intended to help you with both by merging my MBE Black Letter Law Outline with my MBE NCBE Rules Outline. This SEPERAC COMBINED MBE OUTLINE is keyed to the current NCBE Subject Matter outlines and broken down into 176 MBE categories that represent the ABC level items in the NCBE Subject Matter outlines. For each of the 176 categories, this outline contains the black letter law expected to be tested on the upcoming MBE along with rules for every past tested NCBE MBE question (1,827 rule synopses). In addition, the expected number of MBE questions on the upcoming MBE is reported for each of the 176 categories. Generally, there are 25 pages of black letter law for each MBE subject and I regard each page of black letter law as representing one expected MBE question. There are an additional 115 pages of MBE rules built into this outline. There is no outline of similar size which will better represent the upcoming MBE – the black letter law sections of the SEPERAC COMBINED MBE OUTLINE efficiently tell you what to expect on the current MBE while the built-in MBE rules concisely categorize what was previously tested.

The majority of my time is spent trying to understand the bar exam and make outlines reflective of the exam in such a way that the content is proportioned based on how much it will contribute to your score. For example, the new areas the MBE currently tests are proportionally and contentually covered in this outline. Accordingly, the black letter law portions of this MBE outline only contain the content I expect to be tested to the upcoming MBE (meaning you are somewhat taking calculated risks using my materials). For example, some sections of my outline are much smaller than any similarly sized bar outline. Meanwhile, other sections are much larger than similarly sized outlines. However, subscribers should treat this outline as their MBE study bible because I regard it as more contentually on-point than similarly sized outlines. For example, I strongly believe you can pick up extra MBE points simply from this outline’s coverage of the new MBE areas which most other outlines fail to cover appropriately. In contrast, if something is not significantly covered in the black letter law sections of this outline, I do not regard it as important for the upcoming MBE.

The past MBE topics are reflected in the 1,800+ built-in MBE rules. This outline contains synopses of the law for each of the 1,800+ released NCBE MBE questions (these are the same questions in Adaptibar/Strategies & Tactics, Barmax, etc. and includes rules for the recently released 2019 MBE Study Aid questions and 2020 MBE3 Civil Procedure questions). This outline distills the 1,800+ MBE questions into rule statements so examinees can get the gist of what was tested on the released MBE questions without having to go through the questions. This means you will see every legal concept that NCBE has tested (and released as a practice question) from 1991 to present. If you answer the released NCBE questions, this serves as a great second perspective, and if you don’t answer all the released NCBE questions, this serves as an excellent hedge. More so, these rules are organized by category so you can see the different ways each MBE category has been tested. Furthermore, since knowledge is constructed, seeing the rules associated with the black letter law will make it easier for you to understand the law. Put simply, the better you understand the law in this outline, the better you will score on the upcoming MBE and the more likely you will pass the exam.

The UBE Essays subscription is discounted by $75 if you buy these two modules together, but it must be done at the same time (through the Combined MBE Outline + UBE Essays Modules).

Click here to view a sample of the Combined Seperac MBE outline before you purchase. For example, the outline is in a protected PDF format to prevent copying/sharing and each page is watermarked. Thus, while you can print it or search it, you cannot copy from it or edit it. To purchase a subscription, click here

Once it becomes available, the Combined MBE and Essay module is a one-time subscription fee and expires after that exam administration (March 1 for February exams or August 1 for July exams), meaning you can access it up through the exam along with a few days after (in case you want to make sure you downloaded everything such as the MP3s). Accessing the site after you sign up is very simple – you will receive an email and then you simply go to your Registered Member Page and login using the credentials you entered during the payment process. You will have access to two different modules (UBE Essays and the Combined MBE module) and can toggle between them through the Registered Member Page (or just add the links to your Favorites/Bookmarks). On the pages for each subscription, the materials and be downloaded immediately (you can even use a download manager to download all the contents automatically).

I find it difficult to tell a non-tutee specifically what materials will benefit them the most since what seemingly works for one examinee doesn’t work for another. Some examinees benefit greatly from certain materials, while other do not. For example, a subscriber to the Combined MBE subscription who just passed J19 with an MBE of 133 after failing F19 with an MBE of 113 told me: “Want to begin by saying thank you for all your materials. I received my passing email, finally! Your MBE rules were absolute GOLD. I saw many questions that went hand in hand with your rules. I have also told my buddies who are graduating to 1000% purchase your materials.” When I asked him what aspect of the subscriptions he found most useful/helpful on the exam, he told me “The MBE rules by far were the most helpful.“

Meanwhile, another subscriber to the Combined MBE subscription who passed with a J19 MBE of 149 told me: “If I was to recommend just one product, it would be your 175 page MBE Outline Module. I had the Barbri convisor but I used the MBE outline exclusively. It was the one supplement that gave me all the information I needed without any fluff. I also felt like it followed the test very well. I remember reading the exam and thinking wow yeah that was in the outline the rule is xyz.  A close second recommend would be the OPE rules. I got it in July so I didn’t have much time to use it but I think it’s brilliant and a must buy combined with the MBE outline. If I were to offer advice, I would recommend that for the OPE rules to have a table of contents. I ended up tagging each section using my PDF creator.  Thank you for all the work you put into your materials and statistics. I will always recommend your products!”

Another subscriber to the Combined MBE subscription who just passed J19 told me: “I passed the BAR with flying colors! Score: July 2018: 249 (MBE Score: 119.6) February 2019: 255 (MBE Score: 123.9) July 2019: 293 (MBE Score 153.7) What an improvement! I knew I had the capability within me to take this exam. I just needed someone to point me in the right direction and give me a step-by-step approach to taking the exam.  Surely, you did it!  Your content is absolutely astounding and I would dare to say a guaranteed means of passing the BAR exam if one puts the time and effort. From the bottom of my heart, I would like to sincerely thank you for your time on the phone and the email exchanges.  I will say that following the failure of the BAR in February, I was extremely down.  I flew to Israel to clear my mind and hopefully find the drive to attempt the exam again. I laid in my bed one evening in Jerusalem and decided to go on forums and search for folks who failed the BAR repeatedly.  Luckily, I came across a thread of a subscriber of the forum who highly recommended you.  Lo and behold, I found Joe Seperac, a fellow Croatian.  I immediately purchased a part of your course and added AdaptiBAR too it as well.   Truly, thank you.  If you would like me to write a more detailed review of your course, I’d be happy to do so without hesitation.  I also would like to meet you one day, perhaps at the infamous Croatian church one Sunday in Manhattan or anywhere else that works for you. You deserve to have your curriculum used nationwide because it truly is that much better than what the market offers.   Thank you, kind sir and I hope to hear from you soon!”

One repeater (MBE of 117 on first attempt) passed J19 with an MBE of 139.4 and MEE/MPT of 140 after subscribing to the Combined MBE Outline + UBE Essays Modules. The examinee told me the following: “Just wanted to let you know that I passed the Washington UBE with a score of 279. You had predicted that I would score a 290, so not far off! This was my second attempt (sat for Florida first time). Please let me know what I need to fill out for you so that you can use my statistics for others in the future. I relied heavily on your program and did not take a traditional bar course. I am quite certain that I would not have passed without your MEE/MPT materials. What was especially useful was the top 50 rules outline that you sent to us weeks before the exam. … Honestly, I thought my MBE would be a little higher because I focused heavily on MBE and practiced over 1,500 questions with Adaptibar and Emmanual Books. However, the first time I took the MBE I scored a 117 so I cannot complain. That time I took Themis and was nowhere near as intentional/methodical with my approach as this time.”

The “top 50 rules outline” he is referring to is my Top 50 MEE outline. For the upcoming exam, I provided this outline to any current UBE Essays subscriber who is willing to confirm his or her status as an examinee. Although there are 300+ released MEE essays, this outline contains the top 50 MEE essays I expect to have topics repeated in some fashion on the upcoming MEE. This outline is based on the same topic priorities as my UBE Master outline, but since I am only identifying full essays, it is not as transparent as to which topics I regard as most important or least important for the upcoming MEE. However, in my UBE Course, I strongly advise the tutees to know these 50 MEE essays better than any other MEE essays. Following details the accuracy of the priorities which the Top 50 MEE outline relies upon: https://seperac.com/analysis_ube.php

Based on past results, you can usually expect these essays to cover at least 50% of the issues in at least two MEE questions. For example, one J18 examinee who used it told me: “ … It was amazingly helpful in studying the last week of my bar prep … It really was a huge part in building my confidence and receiving almost all 4s on my MEE section.” An examinee who passed in F18 with a written of 155.2 (MBE of 158.8 and UBE of 314) told me: “in the last week I would spend 2 hour reciting the rules and checking if they were right and then reading through your top 50 essays over and over.  … I spent the last week reviewing your top 50 essays 3-4 times through with first pass taking 4 days and then skimming through all 50 each morning leading up to exam for highly tested areas.” This Top 50 MEE is generally on point with each exam. For example, a foreign examinee subscriber who passed in J17 with an MBE of 162.7 and UBE of 327 told me the following: “For the MEE, on hindsight, doing and re-doing your top 50 essays document alone would also have sufficed as they were extremely spot-on.”

To understand how passing subscribers utilize this outline, a subscriber to the Combined MBE subscription who passed F20 on his fifth and final attempt (past MBE scores of 129, 124, 124, and 114) told me:

Hope you’re doing well despite the whole global pandemic currently going on. I just wanted to update you and let you know that I passed the Kentucky state bar exam and have been licensed to practice for over a week now. I didn’t know if you wanted a testimony or something along those lines because I really really really used your outlines and I owe a lot of my passage to using them.

To refresh your memory, it was my 5th and final attempt at KY. It was also my first time using your outlines and rules. KY doesn’t release your score, but I achieved at least a 132 on the MBE. I know that when we spoke on the phone I told you that I would let you know if I passed.

My study schedule was as follows, but I’d like to add a bit of explanation before hand. I had never really slacked on studying before. I had finished all of Barbri twice, with a 90%+ completion rate. I had even switched to Kaplan for my 3rd attempt and finished it to 100%, and even hired Chris Fromm (Kaplan’s top tutor) for 15 hours of tutoring. I tried everything, and that’s what eventually led me to your outlines, which were by far the most efficient and best use of my time studying. I really do mean that sincerely, or I wouldn’t have taken the time to contact you. I think what you offer students is more than worth it’s price and I believe that once more people realize that you don’t have to use Kaplan/Barbri they will realize the MBE can be defeated without a “one size fits all” approach. Because those approaches never worked for me, and it left me with failed attempts and less money than I’d care to admit. I always had the mindset that if I wasn’t using a bar program, I wasn’t going to pass. That was beaten into my head the entire time I was at law school and when I was graduating the reps would hound me telling me it was almost too late to sign up or I’d miss some sort of bonus. 

I’m not sure when I began studying but it was after the New Year, I believe I put in roughly 6-7 full weeks of study.

Monday-Friday:
Wake up – 7:30am
Workout – 8:30am (this helped me focus and stay energized, I’d run 3-5 miles in the morning to get my body going, I read somewhere that being able to finish a goal like a workout helped your brain wrap itself around achieving a goal that felt impossible like absorbing everything for the bar exam, this felt true for me).
Outlines Study – 9:00am (this is generally when I would start, maybe at 8:30, maybe at 9:30. But I tried to stay right at 9am)
-> First I would go over the Seperac outline. I would pick one single topic and read it cover to cover. If there was anything that I wasn’t able to explain back to myself I’d break it down (programmers call this the rubber-duck method, basically you explain everything back perfectly to a rubber duck and if you don’t understand it still, you repeat it. I was basically explaining the law out loud to myself as if I was trying to teach somebody). I would then write down that black letter law, and if I still wasn’t sure, I’d make a flash card of the rule. I probably had 200ish flash cards when I finished my entire study. 
Study – 10:00-11:00am (this is generally when I would get finished with my first run on the outlines, I’d then take a look over the things I had written down and I’d go over the flash cards I had made. Some days this would mean several pages/cards, especially for topics like property/torts which I struggled with. I didn’t cheat myself, if I missed a question whether it was because of a mistake, or I just didn’t know, the black letter law got written down). 
Lunch – 11:00-12:00pm (I would completely disconnect myself from studying and have a full hour of lunch, in my past attempts at studying I’d sometimes just power through lunch and I felt like taking an hour off really helped my mental stamina).
Study Afternoon – 12:00-2:00pm (after lunch I’d get back into using Adaptibar, I’d pick the same topic I was studying in the morning and try to finish 25-75 questions, depending on how confident I was about it. If I performed less than 75% I’d write down every single black letter law I got wrong and add it to my pile for the day to study later on.)
Flashcards/Outline – 2:00pm-4:00pm (This was important for me, and maybe the most important part. I had never done this before as I felt I didn’t learn much from it. But making my own outlines gave my brain a way to compartmentalize everything I was trying to remember. There are a lot of rules that seem to run together and that’s really what the NCBE is hoping you didn’t study for, like is this a products liability question or maybe negligence?) After each day I would update my outline for the topic I had worked on, this sometimes meant I had to work longer or shorter. I was very confident in my criminal law/procedure skills but lacked on things like property and torts.) 
Cool-down – 4:00pm – Finish (I allowed myself to take as much time as I needed to cool off. Sometimes it would be an hour, sometimes it would be three. I always wanted to end the day going over the outline I had made, the flashcards, and then I did a cover to cover on the Seperac rules only section that you said to study if you’re in a hurry. The shortened rules gave my brain a way to memorize rules and I focused heavily on this early on. I knew I had learned most of the law already from my past attempts, but I was failing somewhere in memorizing it.)

I did all of this for the entire length of my study. During the last two-three weeks I incorporated the NCBE study aids and NCBE exams into my Adaptibar time-frame. THOSE ARE GOLDEN!!!! I took each of those exams no less than 3 times a piece. The last time I took them all I was scoring 90%+. Towards the end I neglected the full Seperac outline more than I had in the beginning and substituted in the rules only outline. 

The final week of the bar exam I really pressed hard on the brakes. Instead of sprinting towards the finish line I took my time. I studied broad stroke subjects like First Amendment, Negligence, and Fourth Amendment. Things I knew would undoubtedly be on the exam. I completely gave up worrying about things like future estates and other small topics that I knew were out the window. I was still waking up at the same time and having a workout, but I wasn’t still going over the outlines as heavily. I made sure to go back over broad stroke subjects until I knew I was confident with them. In my past attempts I would brush over things like in-depth approaches to negligence (really struggled with causation) so I only had a partial knowledge of what is likely the largest topic on the MBE. Don’t cheat yourself, and don’t rush things. I had to continue repeating that to myself because I wanted more than anything to go back into old habits of blasting my way through questions until I was too tired to go on. 

At the end of my study time I had completed only 1050 questions on Adaptibar but my percentage correct was 86% overall. I was absolutely slamming them towards the end and it gave me A LOT of confidence. To put this in perspective, I had done roughly 2000-3000 questions on Barbri once before, 1500ish on Kaplan, and 2200 on Adaptibar previously. And my scores weren’t bad then either, I was in the 70-75% range. I really don’t know if it was test anxiety getting to me or just a sloppy study schedule. Maybe I was doing too many questions, it sure looks that way. But I felt it was necessary to pass. You’d always read/hear about people saying “An automatic MBE pass is around 1500 questions, or 2000 questions. None of this is true if you’re not learning anything.

Come exam day I finished both sections of the MBE exam with less than five minutes on the clock both times. I made sure to take my time and understand what kind of question I was answering. If it was negligence, I’d make sure to ask myself the questions like “is there a duty owed here?” I even panicked in the early session because I got behind on some questions but I didn’t let that speed me up. 

The Seperac outlines are a gold mine of MBE knowledge. They were concise and it really feels like Joe has a backdoor into the NCBE’s brain. I would spot questions on the exam this attempt and go, “yep, easily a negligence question, look at how they’re trying to trick me.” Maybe it’s because I had taken the exam four times previously, but I really think it’s because I was more confident and prepared. 

Once again, I’m sorry for such a lengthy email. I wanted to be able to give someone some insight into what it took me to pass. Just don’t ever give up, it’s a difficult thing to achieve. Since passing I regularly visit the KY Bar Association website to see my name, it still feels unreal, but I know that if I can do it, anyone else can with the right preparation. Despite all the COVID-19 problems I already have two job offers and I look forward to exploring them more when the world returns to normal. 

Thanks so much for your help, Joe. If there’s anything else I can do to help please don’t hesitate to ask, keep doing what you’re doing because it worked for me when other programs didn’t. I know around Law School Elites and Reddit people speak very highly of you. I’ll make sure to give my input if I ever see people discussing it. 

For additional subscriber comments, click here. To purchase a subscription, click here