“The importance of misdirection incorporated into your act cannot be stressed enough. Factors include where your audience is positioned, where and when they look and what they are thinking about. Basically, misdirection is making sure that [they] stay focused on the magic and don’t start trying to figure out how the trick is done” – www.goodtricks.net
The last entry of You and the Bar Exam discussed the three perspectives that an astute applicant should bring to his or her MBE strategy: perspectives from which to analyze each of three broad categories of questions. This entry will introduce the notion of “foils” and “distractors,” and the simplest way to deal with them.
The Double Bullet Catch is full of foils and distractors. No doubt Penn’s conversation with the audience member marking the bullets is extended and amusing. Two beefy stagehands may make a display of carrying out the large pane of glass that will be sacrificed. Picture drum rolls, colorfully clad assistants, perhaps an overbearing announcer or two, and you can understand why most audience members, even astute ones, might miss the all important palming and mouthing of the marked bullets by our stars. At the same Penn and Teller or their assistants may even do things that persuade you that they are not all that smart -certainly not smart enough to fool you unless, of course, there is real magic involved.
The National Conference of Bar Examiners has publicly devoted itself to a policy of no trick questions and no trick answers. Questions and answers are reviewed repeatedly and thoroughly before being administered and if item statistics reveal a question that isn’t working as designed, it is not scored.
However, what is, or is not, a trick question or answer may be more in the eye of the beholder. By definition, a “distractor” is something that compellingly and confusingly attracts in the wrong direction. (Picture the two beefy stagehands.) A foil is something that serves to set off another thing to advantage or disadvantage by contrasting with it. (As in “How could I, a simple magician, fool you unless there is really magic involved?) Simply put, some of the incorrect options are on the MBE to make others around them look good and others are there to make the correct options look bad.
Here’s an example of something that might be thought of both as a foil and as a distractor. Every so often a Latin phrase, such as in flagrante delicto, appears on a question, posing as a rule of law such as res ipsa loquitur. It may look good to you (and make the other options look bad) precisely because you don’t know what it means.
There’s good news though. You can prevail over these attempts at legerdemain with one very simple technique. That technique is to evaluate each option independently, without comparing one to the others. Be sure to read all four, even if you believe you have settled on the correct one. In other words, rely on the technique that you have adopted and practiced – stick to the plan!
(And oh yeah, by the way, after three or four years of law school and another three months of commercial bar preparation, you will probably know all the Latin phrases that will be on the exam. If you don’t recognize one, don’t fall for it. Just stick to your process of elimination technique.)
