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In 2003, Tarek Fadel enrolled in a class designed to prepare him for the bar exam, a notoriously rigorous standardized test used as a measure of the ability to practice law in a given jurisdiction. Eventually, he grew so discouraged he quit.
“I found myself taking cookie-cutter bar-prep programs designed for the masses. How was sitting in a lecture hall with thousands of people helping me with my individual needs?,” Fadel said. So, “I withdrew from the exam.”
But Fadel hadn’t abandoned his ambitions. Instead, he used his newfound free time to build an alternative bar-prep resource: a digital platform called AdaptiBar.
AdaptiBar focuses on the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE), the multiple-choice component of the exam. (The bar also includes a written portion, which is usually administered on a separate day.) It’s designed to adapt to a student’s learning rate and style, altering the order and presentation of questions based on the test-taker’s strengths and weaknesses.
The platform uses over 1,500 licensed questions from previous exams, Fadel said, as well as over 200 simulated Civil Procedure questions written by professors of Civil Procedure. As a user answers these questions, proprietary algorithms gauge her habits, as well as areas in which she excels or struggles. They then present these questions to challenge areas of weakness, generating feedback such as the optimal length of time she should spend on that question.
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“[The algorithm] takes into consideration the performance in each subject and subtopic, as well as the question distribution on the actual exam. It does this subtly so that the student is not conscious of the fact that they are spending more time in areas of weakness, which makes studying more effective and efficient,” Fadel said. “This is an important factor in test preparation because humans are naturally inclined to gravitate away from areas of weakness so that they find more areas of positive reinforcement.”
Students can use the platform in two modes: Practice Questions and Practice Exam. In the former, students answer questions at their own pace, guided by the aforementioned algorithms. The latter mimics testing conditions, offering timed, 100-question practice exams that are designed to mirror the subtopic distributions found on the actual test, Fadel said.
After a student completes an exam, she receives a grade, complete with explanations. According to Fadel, teams of law professors, attorneys, and recent law-school graduates compose explanations for most of the questions, while the rest are explained by the National Conference of Bar Examiners.
Fadel said AdaptiBar recently released an analytics platform that enables schools to view their students’ bar exam performance statistics and has begun to offer assessment testing and consulting for law schools and organizations. “We’re looking to increase our adoption among law schools across the country as well as build upon our existing relationships,” he said.
He added that, since the company’s 2003 inception, AdaptiBar’s user base has increased by at least 35 percent each year, which he attributes to the platform’s adaptive approach and NCBE-licensed questions. “The combination of the adaptive technology with the licensed questions is what makes the program most effective,” he said. “We hope to continue this trend.”
