MPRE- May Practice Relaxed Ethics?

So as I prepare to take the ethics portion of the Bar exam on Friday- the MPRE- I have begun to notice how gray the lines of ethics really are.

You CAN turn in a client who threatens to murder someone…but you don’t have to…

You CAN deny an appointment to a case because you are so disgusted by the clients course of action that you cannot logically represent him.

But heaven forbid you enter into a partnership with a non legal professional- because that sir is unethical.

I guess as a profession that always finds loopholes in claims and issues, we would also interpret ethics in a similar manner. It’s just interesting how many choices there are for what they call the federal “model rules”, that is ethical standards that the Bar Association holds their members to. Many of the answer choices on the practice exams tend to be “the lawyer can do so and so, and but doesn’t have to take on that liability if they choose not to get involved”.

Or as I read out to nick on the plane ride home , “a member of the bar should aspire 50 hours of pro bono work a year”. Wow, I though that’s a lot- before reading the word aspire again. Sure I should do 50 hours a year for charity, but even the ETHICS book says that you can designate one lawyer in the firm to do the 50 hours for every lawyer and just be the Pro Bono guy. How does that work?
Hopefully I can at least get all of these tricky ethical standards or lack of standards into my head by Friday- but maybe if I fail I could just argue that I thought there was an optional obligation to pass the MPRE before the bar exam, and that it was merely an ethical suggestion and not my duty as a member of the legal profession.