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Bengos practice passages are not available in print. Please use the site to practice.
The method
Spaced repetition is how Bengos decides when each rule comes back. Memory tends to fade fastest right after you learn something, and each time you come back to the material it fades more slowly. Spaced repetition uses that pattern: instead of rereading everything on a fixed cycle, each rule returns at a gap that grows as long as you keep knowing it. The practical effect is that most of your review time goes to the rules you are least sure of, and the ones you already know take very little of it.
Your rating is what drives the schedule. After each review pass you rate the law Not Comfortable, Familiar, or Know It Well. Rate a rule well and the gap before it returns keeps widening. Rate it Not Comfortable and it comes back soon and starts over. Each passage carries its own history of how you have rated it, which is why two people working through the same library end up on different schedules.
That rating is the only input, whether you give it on a card or after a typed pass. Speed and accuracy from typed passes are recorded for you, but they never move the schedule. A Learn pass, your first meeting with a rule, is different: it records that you met the rule and sets no gap, so the rule is due for its first review the same day. That first review is not a second full pass. Review, the return visit, gives you the Short Rule, which is shorter than the Full Rule you typed in Learn, and you can clear it on a flashcard instead of typing it. If you do not get to it that day, the rule stays due and waits; nothing is lost. The first rating you give it sets the first gap. On flashcards, a new rule comes back later in the same session for you to recall, and that first rating starts its schedule.
Each day Review gives you what is due, most overdue first. Missing a day costs you nothing in the schedule. Passages that came due stay due and wait at the front of the queue, so a break means a longer session when you return, not lost work.
Should I learn new rules or review first? Learn new rules first, early in the session, when your attention is at its best. Then do the reviews, and try to finish what is due before you stop. A rule that is due is one you are starting to forget, and recalling it now is what lets the gap before its next return keep growing. If the day is short, skip the new rules and do the reviews: each new rule you start becomes a review later. Typing and flashcards clear the same due queue. On flashcards you can keep the two apart, with Learn and Review, or mix them, with one new rule after every four due rules.
When both Learn and Review are done for the day, use the time you have left on released exam questions. Write an answer to one under its time limit, then compare it with the published answer or analysis. That is where you practice timing, writing at the level of detail the question calls for, and deciding what to cover first.
Learn is your first pass on a rule. You meet the Full Rule, the longer of the two versions: typed on the Type page, or read on a flashcard that comes back a few cards later for you to recall. The flames beside the rule name, on the Type page and on a card, show how often the issue has been tested. Each rule also shows the past exams where its issue appeared, on the Type page, on both sides of a flashcard, and in the Library. Learn is the slower pass on purpose. It is where you meet the rule and work out what else you need to study about that issue. One good use of that list: find the released question from your examiner, write an answer to it within its time limit, then compare it with the published answer to see what you missed and how you managed the time.
Review is the return visit. You get the Short Rule, a shorter version of the same rule written for exam day, type it or recall it, and then rate how comfortable you felt with the law. That rating sets when the rule comes back. A review pass is short, which is why a day of review takes much less time than a day of Learn.
Both work on the same rules and the same schedule. On a flashcard, you read the issue, recall the rule, then press Show Rule to check it. When you type a rule, you slow down and work through it more actively: you write it out in full with its structure visible, and your speed and accuracy are recorded. Either way you rate your confidence, and that rating sets when the rule comes back. A rule you rate on a card is cleared for typing too, and the reverse, so the due count is one number wherever you look. If your typing speed is already where it needs to be, you can study the rules on flashcards alone.
Typing needs a computer with a keyboard. Flashcards work on a computer or on a phone, so you can keep studying when you do not have your computer with you, or rest your hands between typing sessions. Each card shows how often the issue has been tested on released exams, with the same flames as the typing page, and lists the past exams where the issue appeared.
Flashcards access includes the flashcards and the rule library. Full access adds typing.
Typing a rule can make you slow down and read it word by word, so you see how that rule is structured. Typing a rule is more active than rereading an outline. It is still no substitute for working real past questions: writing out the rule statements, doing the analysis, comparing your answer with a published one, and building a sense of timing.
Many people type prose at 40 to 60 words per minute, but writing a bar essay is not copy-typing. Your speed collapses because you are doing several things at once: reading the facts and thinking them through, recalling the rule, composing the sentence and reworking it as you go, and making sure the point is stated accurately and with enough substance to score. On the essay portion time is short, 30 minutes per essay on the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) and 60 minutes per essay on the California Bar Exam, and every second spent trying to remember the wording of a rule is a second not spent on analysis. Typing a rule statement until it comes quickly reduces that pause. It also quiets the doubt that makes a writer hesitate, whether the rule came out accurately and whether you have written enough, so the time goes to analysis instead of second-guessing.
It is not a replacement for one. Courses teach the law and give you practice questions. They also help you build a broad mental map of the law, a strategy for the exam, and a sense of timing for each part of it.
Bengos drills one narrow part: getting the rule statements into memory and keeping them there until exam day. Use it as a supplement alongside a course. If you are self-studying, the built-in subject order gives you a clear path to follow.
The Bengos library is not built for the multiple-choice section of the bar exam, such as the Multistate Bar Examination. That section tests detailed knowledge of the law and its exceptions across a wide scope. The library is aimed at the essays, which tend to test the main doctrines and whether you can apply the law to the facts at the level of minimum competence expected of a new lawyer.
The library
Bengos has rule libraries for three exams. For the UBE, it covers the essays, which are the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE). For the NextGen Uniform Bar Exam (NextGen UBE), it covers the integrated question sets, in the jurisdictions that give it. For the California Bar Exam, it covers the essays. If you are taking the California Attorneys' Examination, the essay practice applies to you directly, since that exam has no multiple-choice portion.
The NextGen exam has no standalone essays: the written answers come as shorter items inside integrated question sets, and it also has performance tasks, which Bengos does not cover. Those written answers still call for rule statements as part of the legal analysis, which is what the NextGen library drills.
Here is every jurisdiction, the exam it gives, and the library Bengos has for it. The last row is the jurisdictions Bengos does not cover.
| Exam | Jurisdictions |
|---|---|
| Uniform Bar Exam | Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, District of Columbia |
| NextGen Uniform Bar Exam | Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon, Washington, Guam, N. Mariana Islands, Palau, U.S. Virgin Islands |
| California Bar Exam | California |
| No library |
Jurisdiction-drafted exam:
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, South Dakota, Virginia
Civil law:
Louisiana
Exam in Spanish:
Puerto Rico
|
Jurisdictions may change which exam they adopt and administer. Bengos updates this table and the app when a change takes effect. Confirm your exam with your jurisdiction's bar admissions office.
No. Bengos is a selected library of rule statements for the essay subjects. An essay can still raise an issue Bengos does not cover, and Bengos is not a substitute for a complete outline of the law.
No study tool can promise full coverage, because the examiners do not publish a complete list of the issues they may test. The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) says its MEE outline "is not intended to list every aspect of a topic mentioned." NCBE's NextGen content scope marks some topics with a star. In NCBE's words, starred topics "require an examinee to rely solely on recalled knowledge and understanding of the topic; they will be tested without provision of legal resources." For those topics you need to know the law from memory, which is the part Bengos drills. California's outline is open in the same way: the State Bar's content map for each essay subject says, "The topics listed below are illustrative of those covered in [the subject], but are not exhaustive." You can read each outline at the following links:
Because the outlines leave the scope of possible issues open, looking at past exams is one practical way to narrow what you study. Released essay questions show that big-picture doctrines tend to be tested. Many of the same issues come back across administrations. That is why Bengos shows how often each issue has been tested.
NCBE has not released questions from a past NextGen administration, so there is no testing history to guide you the way past exams do for the UBE and California. The NextGen library holds Bengos rules for the starred topics. NCBE stars whole topics, while each Bengos rule covers one issue inside a topic. The library does not hold a rule for every issue a starred topic can raise, so some starred topics are covered in part.
One library per exam, each with its own set of rules.
| Library | Rules | Rules previously tested | Exams tracked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uniform Bar Exam | ~650 | ~300 | 2013 to 2026 |
| NextGen Uniform Bar Exam | ~270 | not shown | no past exams released |
| California Bar Exam | ~900 | ~500 | 2012 to 2026 |
These counts are approximate and may change over time.
Each rule statement is grounded in black-letter law from controlling authority: the United States Constitution, statutes, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and of Evidence, the Restatements, uniform acts such as the Uniform Commercial Code, model acts such as the Model Penal Code, the Model Business Corporation Act, and the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, and leading cases. UBE and NextGen UBE content follows general law. California content follows California law where the exam requires it, such as the California Evidence Code and the California Rules of Professional Conduct. How often each rule has been tested is drawn from past exam questions and the released answers that graders selected as high scoring.
The flames rate how often released exams have tested that issue, from Occasionally Tested up to Highly Tested. Below them, Past Exams lists the administrations that tested it, such as July 2017 Question 5.
Those dates are there so you can look up the question and read it. Bengos gives you the rule and tells you where the issue came up. Bengos does not reproduce exam questions or published answers.
More than half the UBE rules and about half the California rules have no testing history. Those show no flames and no dates, and practicing only the ones that do is the previously tested scope. The NextGen library shows no flames and no dates at all, because the exam is new and NCBE has not released questions from a past administration.
Yes, on the UBE and California libraries. You pick a scope when you sign up and can change it later in your preferences.
Full scope of essay topics gives you every rule in your library, which is intended to cover the topics the examining boards list as testable on the essays. Previously tested rules only narrows it to the rules a released exam has actually tested, which is roughly half of each library. The narrow scope suits a short window, since it is about half the work. The full scope suits a longer one, because an issue that has not been tested yet can still be tested this time.
The scope changes what new material Learn gives you. It does not take away access to the rest of the library, and it does not remove rules you are already reviewing.
The NextGen library has no scope choice, because it carries no testing history to narrow by.
No. Bengos drills the rule statements for the questions you answer from memory. The performance test is a closed universe: the file and library supply the law, so it does not depend on memorized rules. That holds for the Multistate Performance Test (MPT) on the UBE, for the NextGen exam's performance tasks, and for the PT on the California Bar Exam. All three work the same way.
Planning your study
It depends on how you study each rule, which scope you practice, and how long you have. You can type everything, do everything on flashcards, or type each new rule and do your reviews on cards. The tables are for the UBE library at an average typing speed. The NextGen library holds fewer rules, so its days run shorter. The California library holds more rules, so its days run longer: a typed Learn day about a tenth longer and a typed review day about a third longer.
| When you start | Typing only | Flashcards only | Mix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 to 5 months out | 130, then 55 | 35, then 15 | 70, then 15 |
| 1 month out* | 420, then 90 | 110, then 25 | 270, then 25 |
| When you start | Typing only | Flashcards only | Mix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 to 5 months out | 105, then 25 | 25, then 10 | 60, then 10 |
| 1 month out* | 180, then 40 | 45, then 10 | 110, then 10 |
Starting earlier does not make each day shorter. It ends Learn sooner. Learn adds at least 20 new rules a day and finishes at the end of the month before your exam month, so the time after that is review only. The review day gets a little shorter over time as the gaps between reviews grow.
These are estimates only. Your own pace moves them, whether you type or use cards, and the figures assume you clear the review deck each day. If your own days run longer or shorter, adjust your study time to match.
The daily totals can look long, but they do not have to happen in one sitting. We encourage you to split the day into shorter sessions, take frequent breaks, and mix in other study between them, such as your bar prep course, multiple-choice practice, and full essays and performance tests. Answering past questions on an issue and reading the published answers are important study of their own, and they take their own time.
A short window is not enough time to learn the law from zero. It is enough time to make some rule statements come back on demand. Slow typing is one cause of time lost on an essay. Another, often, is hesitation: pausing to recall how a rule is worded. Repetition reduces the hesitation on the rules you drill, and that is what Bengos trains.
No. Published answers are top outliers, meant as references, and some sample essays may not have been written under the conditions a typical exam taker faces (more on that here). Check the word counts against what you can type in the time your exam gives you for each essay. Length is not the grading standard. UBE essays are ranked against the other answers to the same question, and California sets its pass line at a defined minimum competence. An answer under the commonly cited target range may still pass when it is clear, efficient, and well organized. No word count decides the result; how an answer scores is up to the graders. Many candidates run out of time trying to write like these examples.
Each rule statement is a model of correct legal English: the phrasing, the connectors, and the sentence patterns graders expect, and you meet it again on every review. It will not replace English study, but users working in a second language get repeated language practice and rule recall in the same minutes.
Like most typing tools, Bengos counts a word as five characters. You see three numbers. Raw speed is how fast you type before errors are counted. WPM is that raw speed minus the errors you left uncorrected, so fixing a mistake as you go costs you time but not accuracy credit. Accuracy is the share of words you typed with every character correct.
WPM and accuracy count errors differently, which is why they can look out of step. Accuracy works word by word, so one wrong character marks the whole word wrong; WPM works character by character, so the same mistake costs a single error. A steady typist with scattered small mistakes can show a high raw speed and a much lower accuracy at the same time.
WPM is the main number. Your goal, your starting baseline, and the improvement figure on your dashboard all track it.
Your account
Your account pauses. Your history stays. If you buy access, Flashcards access or Full access, you continue from where you stopped.
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