The Florida bar exam has two multiple-choice experiences, and they are not the same test. Part B is the familiar multistate MBE. Part A's afternoon session is one hundred Florida multiple-choice questions, written by Florida's examiners, on Florida law. This guide covers what that section tests, why national prep alone leaves a gap, and how to close it.
Part A is the Florida-prepared day of the exam. The morning is essays. The afternoon is the multiple-choice session, one hundred Florida questions. Both halves test Florida law, but they do not test the same set of subjects, and that single fact should shape your whole study plan. The Florida Board of Bar Examiners publishes the controlling subject list and revises it from time to time, so confirm the current version at floridabarexam.org before you build a schedule.
This is the distinction most study plans miss. A focused group of subjects can appear on the Part A essays. The remaining Part A subjects are tested on the multiple-choice only. Knowing which is which tells you exactly where to spend writing practice and where the question bank is your only path to the points.
Tested on the Florida essays:
Tested on the Florida multiple-choice only: the remaining Part A subjects, which currently include Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, Florida Rules of Judicial Administration, Evidence, Business Entities, Wills and Administration of Estates, Trusts, and Articles 3 and 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code.
The practical takeaway: the multiple-choice-only subjects are where a question bank earns its keep, because you will never write your way to those points and your essay practice will never touch them. Civil Procedure, Evidence, and the business and estates subjects reward steady multiple-choice drilling more than almost anything else on Part A.
The most common Part A mistake is assuming that thousands of multistate practice questions will carry the Florida session. They will not, for one structural reason: the Florida questions are written to reward Florida law, and Florida law diverges from the multistate rules in exactly the places examiners like to test. A taker who has only drilled multistate rules will confidently choose the multistate answer, which is the wrong answer when the rules differ.
A few well-known illustrations of the kind of distinction the Florida session rewards:
| Topic | Multistate rule | Florida rule |
|---|---|---|
| Civil jury size | Federal civil juries must have at least six jurors | Florida civil juries are six, and twelve only in specific cases such as capital matters on the criminal side |
| Service of process | 90 days under the federal rules | 120 days under the Florida rules |
| Speedy trial | Constitutional balancing test | Florida's rule sets specific clocks: 90 days for misdemeanors, 175 days for felonies |
None of these are obscure. They are the bread and butter of Florida multiple-choice questions, and they are learnable as a layer on top of the multistate rules you are already studying in your main course. The efficient framing is not "learn Florida law from scratch." It is "learn the deltas."
For the eight essay subjects, essay practice and multiple-choice practice reinforce each other, so every rule you memorize there pays twice. For the multiple-choice-only subjects, there is no essay to fall back on, so the points come entirely from drilling questions and locking in the rules behind them. The takers who do best on Part A usually combine three habits: reading past essays from the Board's study guides for the essay subjects, drilling Florida multiple-choice questions with explanations across the full Part A list, and keeping a written rule list from their misses. It is a system, and every part of it is available to a taker on a budget.
No. The MBE is Part B and tests multistate law. The Florida multiple-choice is Part A and tests Florida law, including the distinctions where Florida departs from the multistate rules.
The Part A essays test Contracts, Criminal Law and Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Family Law, Federal Constitutional Law, Florida Constitutional Law, Professional Responsibility and the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, Real Property, and Torts. The remaining Part A subjects, including Florida Civil Procedure, Florida Criminal Procedure, Florida Rules of Judicial Administration, Evidence, Business Entities, Wills and Administration of Estates, Trusts, and UCC Articles 3 and 9, are tested on the multiple-choice only. The Board revises its specifications, so confirm the current list at floridabarexam.org.
Roughly even between the Florida bank and MBE-style practice once both are in rotation, shifting toward whichever section scores lower under timed conditions.
Drill a full Florida multiple-choice bank with explanations, plus every Florida rule statement, in the $149 bundle →