BarBri Paced Program

[heyzeus]

Thought I'd post a quick check-in before my third day starts. Yesterday we covered "federal jurisdiction and civil procedure" in a single 33-page, 3.5 hour lecture.

That summarized everything I learned in my entire first year of civil procedure.

Condensed into 3 hours.

It's a pretty weird feeling realizing all the time we spent in class on it, and all the studying I did for BOTH exams (it was two separate semester long classes for me), can so easily be condensed into 3.5 hours of a crazy man talking to me.

Weird.

By the end of the class, you'll have the surreal sensation that you spent three years slaving in law school, but any reasonably intelligent person off the street could take this month long course and pass the bar exam. And so it is.

[Simbagal23]

By the end of the class, you'll have the surreal sensation that you spent three years slaving in law school, but any reasonably intelligent person off the street could take this month long course and pass the bar exam. And so it is.

I have a friend in NYC who was a legal secretary/legal assistant at a lawfirm for a number of years....never went to law school but decided to take the bar exam. Passed on her first try. I believe NY no longer allows this (they now require that you attend law school)....at least that's what I was told. She's a damn good lawyer, too!

[BenNX74205]

By the end of the class, you'll have the surreal sensation that you spent three years slaving in law school, but any reasonably intelligent person off the street could take this month long course and pass the bar exam. And so it is.

I have a friend in NYC who was a legal secretary/legal assistant at a lawfirm for a number of years....never went to law school but decided to take the bar exam. Passed on her first try. I believe NY no longer allows this (they now require that you attend law school)....at least that's what I was told. She's a damn good lawyer, too!

Yeah, pretty much every state now requires you to graduate from an ABA-accredited law school. I think only Minnesota doesn't have that requirement. But with reciprocity you could also practice in Wisconsin, so.....yeah.

heyzeus: Did you get any additional books with sample MBE questions? I don't want to burn through all the ones BarBri provided (though it looks like a whole lot), and then have nothing to work through later on. Any suggestions?

Also, the books are mostly broken down into separate subject areas. Did you work on a particular area at a time or did you have more sets of questions that were taken from all the MBE subject areas? I'm hoping to start working on MBE questions each night starting next week and want to have enough available.

[heyzeus]

heyzeus: Did you get any additional books with sample MBE questions? I don't want to burn through all the ones BarBri provided (though it looks like a whole lot), and then have nothing to work through later on. Any suggestions?

Also, the books are mostly broken down into separate subject areas. Did you work on a particular area at a time or did you have more sets of questions that were taken from all the MBE subject areas? I'm hoping to start working on MBE questions each night starting next week and want to have enough available.

I'm pretty sure it's Montana that doesn't require you to go to law school to sit for the bar exam. But then you'd have to practice law in Montana. I'm not sure what that entails. Probably moose law.

Ben, for MBE questions, a friend hooked me up with a practice MBE computer program. Unfortunately I don't remember what it's called and the computer I had it on is dead now. But if you poke around I'm sure you can find something like it. It was a great study tool, b/c it fed you a ton of questions, told you the right answers after the test, and tracked your progress as you went along.

I think I started off just studying one MBE area at a time, but as soon as I could, started doing practice questions from all of the subjects, all mixed up just like it is on the exam.

[BenNX74205]

So, heyzeus, your comment in the "Bachelor Party" thread prompted me to put up an update on how the Bar Review is going so far.

I looked at the full paced program and it includes at least 1 hour of MBE questions from different subject areas assigned pretty much every day, so I've been working on those as suggested. So far I've done 36 Con Law questions, getting 24 correct. That's what the BarBri books listed as the amount I "should" get right. Granted it was two sets of 18 that I should have gotten 12 of on each, and I got 8 on one and 16 on the other, but I think it's a good sign.

An even better sign was on my first graded practice Essay for the VA portion of the Bar Exam. Like once a week we write out a full answer to a sample essay problem and they mail them off to graders who grade them and give us our score (0-10, just like the VA portion) for that particular essay.

The essay I submitted was on Federal Jurisdiction, and it was a 4 part question. Essentially it was (a) on subject matter jurisdiction (diversity/fed q, with a supplemental state claim); (b) federal motion for summary judgment; (c) how summary judgment would have been different if the case were in VA court and not federal court; and (d) after dismissal of the fed claim, what the fed court should do since only the state law claim remained. Pretty standard federal civil procedure stuff, but a fair amount of stuff to cover nonetheless.

Anyways, I got my essay back and was a bit dismayed because I didn't have any comments or feedback--just a lot of checkmarks. So I checked to see my score, and it was a 10. Definitely a confidence booster to nail a topic so awesomely.

Anyways, back to studying. Gotta get ahead before my friends kill me this weekend.....

[heyzeus]

Good work, man. I recommend taking this weekend and just having fun. Even in the midst of the bar studying, you have to allow yourself something like this. 4th of July weekend is another good time to kick back for at least a day and not open a book.

Also, don't kill any hookers.

[lukethedrifter]

Aw, c'mon. The bar can't be that hard cuzI know some crazy dumb lawyers. Congrats, Ben. Sounds like you're gonna nail it.

[stlouie_lipp]

I can't believe I didn't see this thread sooner. Heyzeus all ready has given you great advise. Here are my two cents (better late than never).

1 - The summer I studied for, and passed, the bar is the summer that my golf game was the best it will ever be. My buddy and I went to play golf every day after class.

2 - Do as many MBE questions as you can and read each answer (computer programs are great for this). I'd usually sit around the house watching the Cards on mute, doing questions. When the game got interesting, I'd put the questions down and watch.

3 - I didn't write any answers on the practice essays. In fact, I kind of ignored them until about three weeks before the test. I just got together with a friend and we "talked them out" so to speak. Unless you were under a time crunch finishing exams in law school, there is really no need to write out answers. To me, the only reason to write out answers is if you are worried about time.

4 - When the time comes for the test, put the books down and relax. We took it downtown Chicago, and the night in between the tests we went to Ditka's for a burger and a beer. BTW don't talk about the 1st part of the test with anyone because you'll just freak yourself out.

5 - No matter how prepared you feel, you will walk out of the multiple choice day thinking there is no way you passed....but you will.

6 - Good luck, and feel free to PM me with any thoughts, questions or concerns.

[BenNX74205]

Here we are again, boys and girls. Three weeks from now (yesterday, actually), I'll be done with the Bar exam. We had a practice full-day MBE last week. BarBri says the average score on it is around 105/200, and that people generally move their score up 25-30 points by the actual MBE. I scored 118/200, so I take that to be a good sign, though I still need it to go up the 25 points or so. A lot of the questions were fine distinctions that I'm not all the way there on just yet, and some of them I just made stupid mistakes. Gotta get past that.

I signed up to take the PMBR program because it got me more MBE questions, and general word has been those are more representative of what the actual exam will be like. I've been getting ~80% correct each time I sit down and do a set of those, so maybe I just didn't do as well the full day setting. It also gets me a 3 day "boot camp" on the MBE, with a full day practice MBE (all 200 questions) and two days of intensive review. That's next weekend, and that's good because my fiancee is having her bridal shower that weekend, so it gives me something to do instead.

I'm having some trouble feeling like I'm doing enough stuff to study, no matter how much time I spend doing MBE questions, or reviewing state materials, I feel like I didn't get enough done for that day. It's probably because of all the other crazy things happening in my life. For example, I'm getting married in mid-August, and all the fine details of that have to be taken care of. So tomorrow morning we're going to get our marriage license. We also spent the last weekend looking for (and finding) a house to rent. We've been approved for our second choice house, but we're waiting to hear from our first choice, so now we have a place to live starting next month. I feel pretty comfortable with some topics, like the MBE topics, Wills/Trusts, Civ Pro, Agency/Partnership/Corps, but Local Govt and Equity are giving me some troubles for some reason. I know in reality-ville that's doing pretty good, but I always have all these other things going on and it's all getting pretty crazy with all this other stuff going on.

Just wanted to get all that out there and off my chest. That feels a bit better. Now back to learning about Secured Transactions/Commercial Paper--thankfully I took a class on Financial Products and Payments Law in law school last semester, so I actually ended up learning enough of this for it to make sense!

[heyzeus]

Stay the course, Ben - you're doing plenty. For example, I didn't do PMBR, and had never taken a class on secured transactions/commercial paper/income tax/family law/marital property, and still learned what i needed to learn to pass. Just keep being methodical about it; take as many practice MBE questions and essays as you can, and review everything that you get wrong. The more stuff you see now, the more stuff will be old hat when it appears on the bar.

Good luck! Keep checking in when you can.