My post on reducing the pain of taking the bar exam has attracted eminent critics such as Jim Chen and Nancy Rapoport.
In the original post, I argued that many students spend too much time preparing for the bar exam and attending prep courses. Since the exam is primarily a test of memorization, many people can pass simply by studying the books at home, and taking practice tests (which is what I did myself, and I know quite a few other people who successfully did the same thing).
Chen and Rapoport emphasize two points: that the bar exam is hard (as witness the fact that many students fail), and that there are negative career consequences if you don't pass.
Much of our disagreement probably stems from their failure to notice and my own failure to properly emphasize, a key part of my argument that I briefly noted in the original post: that my approach is only likely to work if "you're reasonably good at managing your time and memorizing legal rules." I strongly suspect that many of those who fail the bar exam did so because they didn't measure up on one of these two dimensions. Either they are bad at memorization or they did a poor job of managing their time, or both.
Moreover, I would also emphasize that most of those who failed probably weren't using methods similar to those I used, but instead attended the full Bar/Bri course or the equivalent. I can't know for sure without detailed test data. Yet I suspect that some of them would actually have had a higher chance of passing using the methods I suggest, because bar prep courses tend to use a "lowest common denominator" approach that devotes a lot of time to repetitious explanation of even very simple points. This is useful for the weakest or most inattentive students, but probably isn't necessary for the rest. If you instead spend this same time (or, potentially, much less time) studying the more complex points that are difficult for you personally, you might well do better.
As for the critics' second point (the career damage caused by failing), I think that it is valid but overstated. The fact that failure is a serious setback doesn't prove that students aren't studying too much. After all, no one argues that you should spend every waking moment from graduation to bar exam time studying. That suggests that there is an optimal amount of studying beyond which additional effort isn't worth the cost. If, for example, something like what I did gives you a 95% chance of passing, while spending twice as much time increases it to 97%, the tradeoff probably isn't worth it. Moreover, Chen and Rapoport implicitly assume that your career is kaput if you don't pass the first time around. In reality, plenty of people pass on the second or third attempt and still go on to have perfectly good careers as lawyers. So - assuming that you are reasonably good at memorization and time management - what you get with my approach is a vast savings of time on your first attempt combined (with possibly) a slightly increased chance of having to retake the exam in six months. If you allocate your time properly, you might actually increase your chances of passing relative to taking the full prep course, because you won't spend so much time on endless repetition of material you already know.
Lastly, Jim writes that "[a]n academic appointment is an immense privilege in a world of finite resources and constrained opportunities, and those of us lucky enough to hold a winning ticket should refrain from treating our life circumstances as realistic benchmarks for the legal profession as a whole." In answer, I would note that I didn't know whether or not I would get an academic job at the time I took the exam, and I had to assume that I might end up working in a firm. I may be "immensely privileged" now; but I wasn't back then. Even more to the point, the validity of any argument is independent of the background of the person making it.
Bottom line: I spent about two weeks preparing for the Massachusetts Bar, working perhaps 4-5 hours per day. I know several other people who used similar tactics and spent less time. All of them passed, including a few on the very difficult New York and California exams. I was not an innovator, and was actually on the more cautious side relative to most of the people I know who decided to follow this approach.
Yes, these people were all good students from good schools. However, you don't have to be unusually smart compared to other law students in order to do this. All you have to do is be reasonably good at memorizing, and disciplined enough to take the time to do the necessary memorization. Passing the bar exam is mostly a matter of memorizing legal rules. You don't have to understand the legal rules covered by the exam in any deep way. All you have to do is be able to regurgitate the material you learned.
And, even if my argument is only valid for good students from good schools, it still has some value. Many people who fit this description also spend unnecessarily large amounts of time preparing for the bar. And their time is valuable too.
Related Posts (on one page):
- More on Reducing the Pain of Taking the Bar Exam:
- Reducing the Pain of Taking the Bar Exam:
However, I would not recommend this strategy for anyone else. Why? I believe you're recommending a strategy for the College Bowl All-Star/Trivial Pursuit ace/Jeopardy! champ. For those of us who have qualified for Jeopardy! (Miami tryouts, Summer 2004, never got a call-back - too bald), you've got a winning strategy. For the majority of very good, smart people whose minds don't happen to absorb trivia like a chamois, I'm afraid that the over-learning strategy is probably the best bet.
You have to decide if that 2% is worth six months of income until the next exam. Of course, there's no way to quantify that. Lawyers (and potential lawyers) tend to be risk averse, so when presented with an unquantified risk, we are likely to assume that it's worse than it likely is.
Possibly, but it's also possible that some students don't take it seriously. While waiting in line to get in the building to take the exam, someone near me said, "Yeah, I failed it last time, and I started studying again last night."
You are right about memorization. Many of us who go into law suck at memorization. You don't need to memorize much to practice law. That's why we have law books--so you can look up the rule when you need it. Becoming a good lawyer is about judgment and knowing where to find the law when you need it, not memorizing every aspect of the Rule against Perpetuities.
My advice: Study. Memorize. Study. But also prepare for the marathon aspect of the test: Stay in shape physically, get in the habit of getting full nights of sleep, and wean yourself from caffeine (you may not be able to have coffee with you, and even if you can, you don't want to have to go to the bathroom every 45 minutes).
Yes and no. Yes, one can assess arguments about the world that are not about an individual making the argument without reference to that individual. That is, you can assess the logical validity and correctness of an argument without any concern about the person making it.
However, more pragmatically, in the real world we know that people making arguments sometimes make flawed arguments because they make assumptions that often fit with their personal experience and individual perspective, but not necessarily society as a whole. It is sometimes useful to provide such an individual with feedback that goes beyond a minimalistic assertion that their premises are flawed, but gives a reason to believe that this is probabilistically the case.
In other words, in the absence of perfect knowledge about the correctness of particular premises, if you can make a connection between an individual's biases and their premises, you have some reason to case some doubt on the premise. If you have n alternative premises that one could make and we do not have a reason to prefer one to another, but a particular person is gravitating towards one of the n due to their particular background, it is useful to point out this bias. This doesn't prove that they are wrong. But it does show that they are probably wrong. The chances of their premises being correct is only 1/n, but they keep on acting like it is more like 100%. It is a serious flaw to express great confidence in a conclusion based on shaky premises. Often, we fail to recognize the uncertainty concerning the correctness of the premises we choose.
And this is actually quite common. Man is an ideological animal. We like to make assumptions that fit into our own biased worldview. In a world of imperfect information, this seems to be quite convenient. Most people will not deny something that is known to be true with a high probability, even if they do not like the implications that seem to flow from that something ideologically. But, if there is any uncertainty at all, people tend to gravitate towards explanations that fit into most comfortably into their preferred worldview.
In a nutshell, what I am saying is that you are incorrect that the person making an argument is irrelevant. Much of the time, the reason that people adopt shaky premises (yet often act and speak as if those premises are rock solid) very much goes to who they are.
When you make a linkage such that you show that a particular set of premises is being adopted due to the biases of a particular individual, you have not proven that individual's argument is wrong in some absolute sense. After all, it is not impossible that the person's premises are right, even if ideologically convenient. (That is, if we know nothing else, we expect those premises to be right 1 time out of n trials.)
But, what you have done may be just as useful. If a particular argument rests on premises that have only a 1/n probability of being correct, then that argument should not be expressed in a very strong and without nuance that acknowledges uncertainty.
It is a serious flaw to express high certainty and confidence in an argument resting on shaky premises. And this is true, even if the argument eventually proves to be correct and further evidence for the premises later emerges that make them probabilistically more likely. After all, even more likely, further evidence would have shown that your premises were incorrect. So, you should not have expressed that argument with such confidence and certainty, given what you knew at the time.
In the real world, where people adopt ideologically convenient premises all the time, it would be foolish to avoid arguments that fail to point this out. Yes, this is these sorts of critiques do not show that an argument is incorrect in an absolute sense (in fact, we would expect the argument to be correct 1 out of n times, if we knew nothing else) but rather that an argument is being expressed too strongly, given what we actually know. In a world of uncertainty, that is actually a very valuable move to make.
He said, under no circumstances should you ever seek anything more than a level one understanding of the law for the bar exam.
As I said on the previous thread, though, even that level takes a while for most of us. Certainly more than 4-5 hours a day for two weeks. Yikes!
I'd be very curious to know what the passage rates are after discounting those who, like PD's 'friend', put almost no effort in as well as those who have some idiosyncratic event (e.g., contracting the flu two days before exam, or having a car accident on the way and being distracted on that account). There are almost surely a handful of people in the remaining fail group who might make good lawyers, but I'd hazard that group is smaller than the size of PD's friend's group by several orders of magnitude.
If the bar exam's main effect** is to screen out (some of) those who can't take their own future even marginally seriously, I can't be too terribly worried about its anti-competitive effects.
* - All of this, of course, follows from my experiences and from the anecdotal evidence I've received. Given different evidence, I'd likely reach different conclusions.
** - This is certainly not the only effect. As I mentioned, there are almost certainly some who fail but should in fact be lawyers (meaning here, would make competent lawyers by some roughly agreed judgments, not meaning should have the freedom to be lawyers or some variant of that argument). There is also the effect of dissuasion - some who would make good lawyers and who would put in the effort are only the fence about everything and the sunk costs of the effort of studying for the bar dissuades them. (And there are certainly many other effects.) I'm not arguing that these other effects are morally irrelevant; rather, the main effect (excluding some of those with poor judgment) is of tremendously greater scale.
Moreover, it seems to me that the bar exam is likely the least bad offender here. Requiring people to attend law school (as almost all jurisdictions do) seems to exclude more of the good sorts of people. Consider, e.g., that it involves much greater costs, and so someone who would make a very good lawyer but who is coming to law as a second career is likely to be dissuaded by the high 'startup' costs.
I just graduated from Harvard, and I had kind of a temper tantrum when I saw how much stuff was on the bar that I was never exposed to in law school (like the UCC, ha!). I feel like 70% of the subjects covered on the bar are brand new to me, and I'm angry that I have to waste an entire summer memorizing them.
The helpfulness of Barbri is that it gives me an intro lecture to ground me. I don't think it's repetitious at all. The lecture coveres a whole-semester course in 3 hours. Normally I learn by listening (not by reading), so it's taxing even my good powers of memorization to be whizzing by brand-new material so rapidly.
I know that the pass rates are high, and I only have to do better than a pretty small percentage of people. However, I'm starting really far behind the starting line compared to a lot of people that went to lower-ranked schools that teach to the test. I have a hard time gauging how little I'm going to need to study this unknown amount of brand new material to do better than, say, 25% of test-takers.
1. You didn't take Barbri.
2. You didn't take the California bar.
3. You aren't going into BigLaw.
4. You don't seem to even KNOW anyone who ever failed.
This is especially striking with respect to Barbri. "Bar prep courses tend to use a "lowest common denominator" approach that devotes a lot of time to repetitious explanation of even very simple points."
Good lord! You obviously have no idea what Barbri actually entails.
Entire law school courses are summarized into one to two day capsules, 3 hours of material a day. There is simply no time for repetition of "simple points." Instead, Barbri is devoted to a METHOD of taking the Bar -- IRAC coupled with proper organization, and enough mastery of structure to pass.
They teach you far MORE then is necessary to pass the California bar, because it's impossible to tell what of the vast volumes of material you see that you'll actually absorb.
It's also fairly clear you don't know anything about the California bar. "All you have to do is be able to regurgitate the material you learned" indeed.
There's something called the "Performance Test" on the California bar. It has nothing to do with memorization. It requires legal analysis and reading cases. Now, yes, it's not all that hard if you know what to do. But you learn what to do by going over practice answers and learning a method for it.
Even the essays are about fact analysis more then they are regurgitation of law. Sure, I can state the minimum contacts test. But it does take practice to do so in a way that passes the bar. It's even better to mess up the rule, but do an exhaustive fact analysis. More points that way.
I'm surprised there's a second post on this. 1) you don't know anything about the bar, and don't seem interested in learning, and 2) you come off as one of those pompous former gunners that boast about getting drunk before the test and "completely acing it."
Temper tantrum? Geez. You were exposed to all areas of law in law school (even the UCC), you just made poor choices about which classes to take.
But law school is not a Bar Review course. Over the long term, you are better off if you got an understanding of how the law works than if you spent your time memorizing a lot of rules. The rules change year-after-year. That's why the better law schools (Harvard is sometimes counted as one of them) don't focus on memorizing rules.
You need to make out a detailed daily schedule broken up into 1 to 2 hour chunks on each area you need to cover. You need a study group that is working in parallel with you to discuss the day's problems over your beverage of choice at night.
The advantage of review courses (bar/princeton) etc. is that to survive they pretty much have to have inside knowledge of the shape of the exams/areas that are emphasized/quirks of markers, etc. which you as an individual will not have even if you have access to the old exams.
tarheel is right. The bar exam (and bar exam classes) are superficial. Glenn Rhodes is right about one thing, "We have enough mediocre lawyers that do just "enough" to get by." But he's wrong about the solution. Memorizing rules discourages an understanding of how they fit together and how they change. That is the true path to mediocrity.
For example, I have no need to memorize the rule against perpetuities. I do need to know that the law disfavors dead-hand control and devises ways to stop it. t some state's concepts of duty to retreat
However, the lectures were useful, since hearing the material reinforces the reading and writing parts of studying. The schedule was also useful, since it provided a mostly logical outline of how to get started studying and taking prep questions. The materials were extremely useful.
I never spent more than six hours a day studying, exercised almost every day, read for pleasure, and generally had very relaxing month and a half before the bar. So my advice is, take it seriously, study steadily using whatever methods worked for you in college and law school, take lots of practice tests, and don't cram (apologies to Professor Somin, but his study pattern is probably a recipe for a nervous breakdown for most people). BarBri is helpful and provides some security, but remember that they make their money by freaking people out about the exam.
Oh, and if you find yourself catching the stress bug, reconsider who you hang out with. Stress is contagious, and anyone who's been to a competitive school knows what I mean.
Of course, there's no doubt she's not as bright as Ilya. But it's fitting to be taking this position in the context of discussing a documentary which demonstrates the real risk associated with such bar nonchalance.
For many students, failing the bar exam is a catastrophic spiral into unpayable debt and unemployability. Failing the bar can ruin your life.
I mean, lets face it: even WITH bar passage your T4 degree isn't great. But without it?
Now you have $150,000 in debt, and nothing to show for it.
Your debt payments begin in, what, October? $700 or more a month in interest payments. What do you do waiting up until February? Study? More likely you're working -- as a paralegal or something -- trying to stay above your debt load.
Now it's February and you're taking the bar exam again. Many DON'T pass their second time -- after all, they already failed once, and that two month summer grace period where you only had to study is over.
And NOW you have $150,000 in debt, three years of your life are gone, and you're probably never going to pass the bar.
This isn't uncommon. 40% of first time takers fail. 20% from schools like USC and Hastings fail! And most of them fail by tiny margins, after a regrade.
When you have a JD from Yale, and go on to be a Professor, perhaps it's best to step back and say "Does my life experience or command of data give me any authority to talk about this?"
Sometimes the answer is no.
In law school, you eventually learn how much you need to study in order to get the grades you want. That's not true for the bar exam. You don't know how much you need to study unless you fail -- in which case you clearly needed to study more. Those of us who pass don't know whether we overstudied or not, but I've never lost a wink of sleep worrying that I studied too much for the bar. I studied my *** off. I passed. I'm happy.
Anyone who takes this 5 hours/2 weeks advice is truly playing with fire. Frankly, choosing to do so raises judgment issues on the part of the exam taker.
I know it was a lot more efficient. The first bar I took (and passed) was through BarBri, and that was fine but it was a crapload of work and very expensive. I used MicroMash for another state while I was working full time, and studied about 3 hours a night for about 5-6 weeks. It cost half as much, was a snap, and I got around 180 of the multistate questions correct - versus 140 or so the first time through. It's a bit of a leap to take MicroMash coming out of law school (Computer based? What? No classes? No nervous peers in classrooms?) but I strongly recommend it to our summers who ask about bar prep. You simply don't waste any time at all answering questions you already know the answers to, and get the answers to the problem questions beaten into your head by dumb repetition. It's possible to do the same thing with BarBri using pen &paper, and re-testing yourself on your past wrong questions, but you have to get through a lot of chaff coursework to get to that point.
BarBri portrays the bar exam as a one-time hurdle you've got to get over, a do-or-die proposition. From that perspective, buying an expensive and inefficient product makes sense to a lot of people. It's almost like an insurance policy in that you are paying a premium to hedge against a big career risk.
But I don't buy that conceptualization of tha bar exam. I view the bar as a statistical problem. I realized that most people pass (especially outside of NY and CA) and that I wasn't in the bottom 15% of test takers in terms of legal acumen. I take standardized tests well, stick to study schedules, and have a temperment that handles risk without undue worry. I imagine that a good portion of law students are like me. I could self-insure against the risk of failing.*
Plus, there are plenty of free or almost free ways to reduce your risk without paying $5000 to BarBri. Buy used study books (PMBR are best and cost me $150). Study with two or three friends.
And remember that the point of passing the bar is that you can practice law. Clients won't wait (and certainly wno't pay) for you to drag through a case until you've mastered every angle. You've got to learn quickly and teach yourself. Opting out of BarBri is thus not only cheap, it helps you get ready to practice.
I am not arguing that BarBri is ineffective, merely that it is inefficient for most people.
*I should note that I was not heading directly to a law firm after the bar. I had a federal clerkship and thus three opportunities to pass the bar. However, one of the friends with whom I studied was heading straight in. He studied more than me (he had more riding on passing) and scored the highest of our self-study group. But he was able to adjust his effort to the level he needed, instead of spending countless hours getting droned at in BarBri lectures. And I think that studying with a couple of clerks made him less stressed because we were less stressed.
Thoughts: Failing the bar would have been a big deal to me; a really big deal. An assured increase of 95% pass expectation to 97% pass exepectation would have been a substantial incentive to do whatever it was that would make that happen.
There is certainly a diminishing marginal utility to additional studying; I did not study 80 hours a week. I considered the marginal utility. But there was no way I was entering that bar without some serious confidence that I had the thing nailed. The difference between 50 and 300 hours of studying for me was probably the difference between an 85% chance of passing the bar and a 99% chance of passing the bar. That was well worth it.
One comment particularly baffled me:
Suppose, hypothetically, that I attend Bob's Waffle Hut and Unaccredited Law College at cheap-o prices. In what way does a good school affect your analysis? I really don't see it - failing the bar, whether from Yale or BWHaULC, will be viewed as bad. And at Yale, you'll be in the hole for more than the $30K I was hypothetically down after BWHaULC.
In fact, I'm not even sure that the "good student" aspect is a necessary condition either, at least in the sense of, "gets good grades." I think the conditions precedent to slacking on the bar prep are:
1. Very smart; able to learn very fast.
2. Very good at things the bar exam tests.
3. Pre-existing knowledge of the areas and topics.
4. Backup employment plan which pays debts.
5. Lack of ego investment in passing the bar.
Even for those of us who have enough ego to think we've got 1-3 covered, 4 and 5 are severe incentives to pass. Sure, I have friends and colleagues who flunked the bar the first time; many have done just fine. But their lives are different than they would have been if they had passed the first time. Failure stays with you in some way forever. Plus, recidivist pass rates are awful in California.
I think the 50-hour plan is terrible advice.
--JRM
So what's the best way to make sure you are a good test taker for the bar? Take a good bar review course and study for the damn thing. The good review courses are good predictors about what may be on the exam, have good programs to aid in the memorization needed for some things, etc.
I didn't realize Bar/Bri had gotten so expensive, but probably well worth it in the big picture sense of things. Getting practice at handling the types of long on facts find the "best" answer among more than one possible correct answer type multistate questions is exactly the kind of help some will need to pass.
All the above aside though. Just remember if you weren't accustomed to being in the bottom 1/3 of your law school classes, then likely you will pass without problem (but take that review course of some decent kind and study. Being cock sure you will pass is just how some pretty smart people from some pretty good schools end up failing the thing, I bet.).
Now if you want an exam that is tough to pass. Try the CPA exam. Instead of 2/3's passing on their first try, its more like 5% to 10% passing on their first try, with only the top 1/3 ever passing no matter how many times they take it.
If given the choice of having to take the bar exam over again or the CPA exam over again, I'd choose the bar exam every single time.
Says the "Dog"
I second this. In fact, I really appreciated the bar prep process: It allowed me to pull together into a comprehensive picture of law a lot of pieces that I had been collecting throughout law school. It was immensely gratifying and even fun.
The bar itself, however, was for the birds. Being herded by the thousands into a cavernous testing area, then instructed by disembodied voices, was simply awful.
...but I think it's worth responding to anyways. Ilya, this is absolutely not true. Barbri classes are not intended for the "lowest common denominator." They are not even slightly repetitive because there is simply no time to repeat. They're intended to tell you the rules most likely to be tested on the bar exam at an absolutely frenetic pace.
Take an average law school class. Remove all discussion of policy. Remove all the vagueness. Remove anything that could possibly be considered arguing both sides. In other words, take the law, and boil it down to the least interesting, most mind-numbing rules that everybody can agree upon. The purpose of Barbri is to stuff as much of this into your head as possible so that you'll be able to appropriately regurgitate the material in a psychotic two- (or three-) day exam. In order to do this, there isn't any repetition in the classes because there simply isn't any time to repeat anything. And, because most people take the same course,
What I've described isn't a class intended for the lowest common denominator. It simply an explanation that (1) the bar exam forces graduates to engage in a memorization game that bears no resemblance to actual law practice and would be malpractice in real life, and (2) since most bar takers have taken Barbri, the bar examiners know that the information they test has to generally resemble what's taught in Barbri, otherwise the vast majority of students won't know the answer.
Barbri classes simply provide the voluminous rules that a student needs to memorize in order to succeed on the bar. It's up to the student to actually engage in memorization of the material.
For what it's worth, I went to the classes but didn't follow their schedule or advice. Until mid-June, I barely did any studying. Starting in mid-June, I started copying my Barbri notes rule-by-excruciating-rule into outline form. For almost all of July, I just continued copying my notes, and reading them over. At some point in early July, I started doing the practice questions that I had ignored for most of the course. In July, I spent almost every waking moment on studying.
It was the most mind-numbing activity I have ever engaged in, making last July the most miserable month of my life. Everything I enjoyed about the law was made irrelevant in Barbri and the bar exam. But I don't have any ill-feelings towards Barbri -- they provide a useful service that's well-organized and most of their teachers genuinely try to entertain the students, even though they know perfectly well that the material is BORING -- because the bar exam itself is designed to test the least intellectually stimulating parts of being a lawyer. Personally, I think that Barbri does a good job.
I scored around 165 on the MBE. I suspect that this places me in the top 10%. Clearly, I overstudied by an enormous extent. But was it worth it? Probably yes. Because of the way the exam is structured, it's almost impossible to be sure that you're going to pass until results are posted. I think the exam is a ridiculous psychotic exercise in boredom and useless memorization. But I'm happy that I'll never have to take it again (unless I move cross-country). And within 48 hours after the exam, I was staring at the ice over the north pole on my way to Asia, doing my best to forget everything I had learned for the bar.
Professor Somin's ideas about the bar exam are a lot like his ideas about property law--interesting, intellectually honest, and internally consistent, but detached from reality.
On the first one I established a routine of spending 3 hours each afternoon reading and underlining the outline for that evening's BarBri lecuture. The lecture lasted 3 hours, so I spent 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. I did nothing else. I never looked at an outline again after I had read and underlined and attended the lecture. I never gave the bar exam a single thought on a Saturday or Sunday. The 2 days of the exam were a breeze.
Since I was fresh out of law school at the time of my first bar exam I enjoyed an advantage that was lacking the second time around, 30 years later. In addition, this second exam was in a state in which I had never practiced or attended law school, and I had been warned that the bar examiners in that state were keen on testing bar applicants on lots of local distinctions on the essay part of the exam.
Since I was now working I signed up for the home study form of BarBri with all of the lectures from the previous bar exam on an iPod. While BarBri did give me a book on the local distinctions of the state, I did not rely on it exclusively and instead read lots of cases from that state's supreme court in 16 areas of the law, of which 10 were to be on the essay.
This was necessary, in my view. I believe I would have had serious trouble with the essay if I had not done this. There were 10 essay questions and several of the fact patterns were taken directly from cases I had read. Sure enough, of the 20-25 percent who fail the essay part of the exam in this state, a majority are either lawyers from another state without reciprocity seeking admission or recent graduates from out of state law schools.
Tarheel: I agree with what you have said about Professor Whitebread. He is one of the best lecturers on BarBri. However, his prescription works only for the multistate and not the essay, in my view. At least in the state in which I was recently admitted (Wyoming).
In face, their time is especially valuable.
Could I have studied less and passed? Probably. But knowing my school's pass rate and knowing my own intelligence, I figured that if I did what BarBri asked, I'd have a great shot at passing, and so when July 25 rolled around, I wasn't too worried. After the third day, I felt pretty good, and was pretty sure I'd passed. The time between July and November wasn't stressful.
Would I have had the same comfort if I'd winged it and not done BarBri? Probably not. I would have worried that the majority of test takers would have answers that were structured differently from mine, or that I had put down too much law (or too many facts) and not enough analysis, or vice versa.
So to me, the extra, say, 200 hours spent studying was totally worth it for the peace of mind both during and after the exam.
Obviously, I'm not one of those students...
However, I'm not sure that improving your chances of passage from 95 to 97% (even if you could calculate probabilities like this) is a bad thing. Another way of looking at the same assumption is to say that extra studying will reduce your chances of failing by 40% (from 5 to 3%).
- Ilya would be 100% correct if the bar consisted solely of the MBE, or even the MBE and the performance test. I've felt like I could comfortably pass the multiple-choice for a few weeks now, and the performance test just seems designed to weed out those incapable of following instructions. But the essays change the game, simply because of the need to affirmatively generate material from memory. I honestly haven't done anything like that since high school. It isn't easy.
- Has anyone had the incomparable experience of watching Erwin Chemerinsky's con law lectures? He is a god.
An interesting way to quantify this. Let's do the math: You spent about 2 weeks, 4-5 hours a day. Assuming you studied on weekends, that's 14 days at say 4.5 hours/day, or 64 hours. 64 hours more would give you a 2% greater chance of passing the bar exam. Let's also assume that instead of teaching, you were going to a firm, because the first year salary at big firms is well known -- currently 160,000. Let's also assume the cost of applying for the bar and taking barbri cost about 5,000. So the cost of failing might be estimated to be six months' salary plus the cost of the bar exam, or 85,000.
One way of looking at the value of increasing the chance of avoiding an 85,000 loss is to multiply the loss by the odds of encountering that loss. So one might reasonably pay 2% of 85,000 to increase the chance of passing by 2%. 2% of 85,000 is $1,700. So is it worth $1,700 to do an additional 64 hours of studying? Dividing 1,700 by 64 is $26.56 an hour; about $53,000 per year.
I would say that it is quite rational to study an additional 64 hours at the equivalent of $25 an hour to avoid the risk of losing around $85,000. This calculation does not include the substantial nonmonetary losses associated with failing, not the least of which is that you then have to take and study for the bar exam again.
He is a bit like a Con Law Rain Man, with a few bad puns thrown in.
Somnus? I distinctly recall wondering how anyone could make anything as facinating as con law into such a damned droning affair.
The best bar review advice I have gotten this summer was from Charles Whitebread...
I took him/BarBri way back in 1992, and I still vividly remember him calling the First Level of learning "gracious plenty." Good memories.
I respectfully disagree with Ilya. If you look at his hypothetical passage-rate statistics from the other side, you see that taking the Bar the Ilya way gives you a 5% chance of failing, while using Barbri gives you a 3% chance of failing. In other words; Barbri reduces your failure rate by 40%. To me, that seems quite significant. That, in addition to the 'psychological comfort' factor Arvin discussed, made Barbri well-worth it to me. I felt Barbri really prepared me well for the California Bar, and I walked out of those 3 days completely confident that I had passed ... the actual bar questions were probably slightly easier than the practice essay questions I got from Barbri. As I said in a prior thread: I have little doubt that if I had taken Barbri *before* law school and then taken the Cal. Bar without ever attending UCLAW, I would have passed...law school itself was quite enjoyable, but did not add much to my readiness re taking the bar exam.
Your (very good) analysis is more conservative than it needs to be. As other commenters have noted, the utility associated with not worrying is very high for most people. So studying an extra 64 hours at $25/hour to avoid the risk of losing $85,000 PLUS two weeks of being confident instead of panickedly worrying is an even better deal than you describe.
For those who haven't started practice yet, what the h*** else do you have to do between graduation and your first job that you can't spend that amount of time to get your lifetime pass?
However you absorb information, I advise you to put yourself into it.
I had the bad luck of getting an abscessed tooth two days before my first bar exam in Pennsylvania. In excruciating pain, I failed the exam by one point. (My overall score was high enough to pass, but I badly mishandled a trusts and estates question, and the examiners would not pass me, so adjusted my score to within one point of passing.)
I had taken a BRI-like course lectures and all, and had studied very hard for the first try. I built on that work, but just used the books the second time, studying while working as an associate in a large firm (I was not fired).
The second time, I passed with flying colors, although I found out years later I had had an undiagnosed heart attack a few weeks before the exam. The point is it was very stressful.
Four years later I took the exam in Georgia using the GA BRI materials, but taking no lectures. I took about 10 practice exams, grading them myself. I passed the first time, although the pass rate in GA was then about 50%. Having been trying cases for the four year period between exams really helped in evidence, civil and criminal procedure, Con Law, and a number of substantive areas with which I had become familiar. The materials filled in the blanks.
I still rememver my bar exam experience vividly although it is 38 years since I took my last one. Trust me, it is worth any effort you need to exercise to pass it.
Which state was the second round? Mississippi?
While I didn't study all that much for the bar exam, I studied way less in law school. I knew very little "bar exam law" when I graduated. I picked it up quickly, and most anybody can, but it clearly takes more time for the clueless grad.
Not likely. He seems to base it on his personal experience, and he went to Yale.
I don't quite understand your point. Are you saying that Yalies don't learn the law during law school?
He may be saying that, but more likely he is saying that Yale students generally don't learn bar material specifically.
Sum Budy - it's not possible to overstudy for the MBE because in most jurisdictions every correct answer counts toward a passing score. Contrast that with the essays, which are typically graded on an extremely narrow curve (i.e. 67-72) and then scaled beyond recognition . . .
there's no point in going beyond basic proficiency.
Oh, and bar exams are not "psychotic" - it's just the people taking them (usually the BARBRI indoctrinees).
Totally second the Micromash recommendation - their MBE prep system is awesome! Thanks to Micromash, I know I will ace the MBE (my third) so that takes the pressure off the essays.
What "mystery?" The ability to rote-memorize huge amounts of info over a broad range, and lean on the defective memory-cuing crutches of the A/B/C/D formats? An initiation rite no different than a Frat hazing.
So much discussion on this thrwad, but so little effort of anyone to actually research the "essential functions" of actual attorney employment to determine whether actual lawyer jobs require the BarBri rote memorization-A/B/C/D style of "thinking like a lawyer."
Amazingly, this "thinking like a lawyer" did not help a REAL LAWYER like Kathleen Sullivan walk into a test room, roll up her sleeves, apply her actual lawyer skills, and pass the test. No, she failed for lack of logging the 2 months rote-memorization with aid of defective memory-cuing "thinking like a lawyer" crutches marathon known as BarBri.
w/o such "essential functions" of actual lawyer employment tasks foundation, there is really nothing to measure the current formulations of bar examinations against for validity, reliability, and predictive success to dispel the obvious conclusion they are merely yet one more form of "initiation hazing rites" -- I, for one, have NEVER seen a lawyer memorize for over 2 months and need to look at A/B/C/D defective memory-cuing crutches before going to a motion hearing or some such. When a judge says "what's the basis for your objection?," I have NEVER heard a lawyer ask in response, "Judge, give me some A/B/C/D defective memory-cuing crutches so I can jigger my memory and tell you said basis."
In sum, current bar examination formulations in the majority of States do not test the "essential functions" of the actual job functions of lawyer employment. They simply test foo foo imaginary rote-memorization abilities constituting mere "marginal functions" a number of more hands-on performance oriented folks (who excel at actual lawyer essential job functions tasks) do not necessarily have.
The problem with THIS is, while it is a system that gives excessive rewards to those with defective memories requiring cuing crutches to pass, and even does so without a neuropsychological eval to weed out those of whom the A/B/C/D defective memory gene happens to be linked to one form of mental illness or another, the current testing system does not match the type of test that would be required to evaluate the ability to meet the "essential functions" of actual lawyer job tasks with those actual "essential" lawyer job function tasks. Thus, the current tests fail on almost all marks save for serving as an effective initiation hazing rite and enrichment cash cow for BarBri and the American Psychological Assn.
As a further consequence, the current bar examination formulations in most States are irreparably prejudiced against thousands of disabled Americans and violate Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and likewise may be racially biased as well.
In essence, serve not only as a restraint of trade barrier, but one whose objectives are to enrich those who the defective memory-cuing current tests select over their more able hands-on performing competitors through a disability and racial screening out mechanism.
Of course the reason those who have already passed the current regime of defective memory-cuing tests resist changing such tests to measure what lawyers actually do on the job is because if the playing field were truly leveled to force a comptetition on the merits (by eliminating the "marginal function" of rote memorization and also the defective memory-cuing A/B/C/D crutches), there would be a re-ordering of the current legal profession heirarchy.
But under a changed testing regime, Kathleen Sullivan and other lawyers who hands-on work everyday, would be able to simply walk into a test and pass w/o ANY preparation or BarBri course needed.
That's what I'm saying. Yale's far from alone in that regard, but it is the most extreme practitioner of the top tier law school approach of teaching everything about the law, around the law, but not the law itself (or hardly any of it anyway). It's more of an academic study of law as social science than it is training in law as a trade. (Compare, for example, medical school, where the curriculum is practical and the training progressively hands-on.)
Having gone to one of those law schools, I'm not knocking it. I liked it. And though I think Ilya's advice is unintentionally irresponsible, it does hint at the pointlessness of trying to occupy better students for even one full year, much less three, with anything you'd need on a bar exam. Most practitioners learn the actual law they'll use professionally on the job anyway. And those specialties, like tax, that are useful to study extensively before you start practicing aren't tested on most bar exams (or at least they weren't as of 20 years ago).
Barack Obama will never, ever nominate Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court, even though that would be a good way to give her a sideways career shove that would ensure she's never threaten him again.
The reason is that she flunked the D.C. bar exam.
Average Americans may know little and care less about what distinguishes potential SCOTUS nominees from one another or makes them fit for the bench. But they do understand what it means that one flunked the bar exam.
OTOH, many who have passed have not been chosen.
Since Roman Hruska is no longer in the Senate, it is unlikely that mediocrity will be rewarded with a SCOTUS slot.
One tip for passing the bar would be that its a lot easier to pass if you don't foam all over the questions.
I mean come on really, all that excitement over a test that the top 2/3's or more pass on their first try. If you don't pass it isn't the test's fault.
Like blaming the gun instead of the criminal.
Says the "Dog"
Your personal experience seems very far removed from that of the vast majority of students.
Your advice is irresponsible in your dismissive approach and offensive in its implications for students who are unable to perform at your level.
Sorry for the thread jack, but that's far from the only reason Obama would never nominate Hillary. And my guess is that it's pretty far down the list.
Yet the reality is probably that there are multiple reasons to fail the bar exam the first time around:
- Not prepared enough, which often means that the applicant didn't spend enough time preparing. Most of us aren't as smart as Ilya are, and so it takes a lot more work. Remember JFK, Jr., who was routinely on the cover of People Magazine because of his social life, failed it twice, and then only buckled down to pass when facing a 3 times and out employment limit?
- Not smart enough. MBE used to, and probably still does, have decent correlation with LSAT scores. With any group, there are those at the top and those at the bottom. Of course, some just don't get the type of legal analysis required, even after 3 years of LS.
- Panic. I am always amazed at some of the smarter people who did great in LS failing their first time. The first time I took the MBE, we weren't allowed out of the room the last half hour for just this reason (so, I made sure I was done before then).
--BarBri'd
Wyoming.
Maybe the difference is that I don't memorize well. I have always been a theory guy (I am sure that Ilya is good there too), and gotten by on having a better understanding of the underlying structure than most. But that doesn't work well in the case of having to understand subjects within a 3 or so hour class. A class on each of these subjects, then rereading the outlines a couple of times, was apparently sufficient for me to limp through the essays on these irrelevant (to me) legal subjects.
The MBE seemed to require a bit more depth in the subjects covered. Plus, a lot of it was fairly picky. The first time through, I knew I could pass the bar by doing well on just the MBE, and so was doing a full practice test a day for most of the last week before the bar, then knocking off the last two days. With that break, I was able to score better than 10 points higher than I had done before, which was 20+ above the cutoff for passing on just the MBE. A decade later, taking it for a second state, BAR/BRI had a computer version of the MBE that was great. I got much faster feedback, and wasn't bothered by the overhead of grading my own tests. The result was a drop of only 5 points over that decade of practicing law. I am sure that many of the other computer based practice tests are just as good.
What do you, mean "good schools"? If you mean schools that prepare you to pass the Bar Exam, then that can't mean Yale and the like. Many other schools (schools that require students to take Evidence, for example) teach directly to passing the Bar Exam instead of being more focused on legal theory. In that sense, I would think Cooley is a "better" school than Yale. Of course, a greater percentage of Yale students pass than Cooley students, but that is function of, on the average, being brighter or having better study habits. It seems to me that the US News ranking of your school has little to no effect on passing the Bar.
His message is one of Targeted Studying. How many times do you need to read over, hear, or answer a multiple choice question about the elements and defenses to battery. In this area, as in many others, the law has a way of breaking down a common sense idea into common sense elements and pretending like you just learned something, rather than just experienced a fairly unremarkable concept. Battery is offensive touching coupled with intent? You don't need to make a flash card with something that banal on it! Now when the government may regulate speech and to what extent... that is a much more complex question, and deserves more time.
So what the Professor is advocating is that you not waste your time vigorously copying an hour's worth of intentional tort "elements" and instead spend that time contemplating and understanding the nuances of more complex issues.
Those who advocate mindless self-subjugation to lectures full of simple concepts and countless multiple choice questions testing those concepts are motivated by their sense of panic over passage (I think that panic comes across in Professor Rapoport's observations) rather than the real goal of the bar exam: learning the law!
However, I will say that BAR/BRI provided me with two valuable things: (1) lots and lots of sample test questions and (2) an organized structure to study. Like Ilya, I spent about 5 hours a day for the 2.5 weeks before the exam memorizing my outline of material and taking practice tests. If I had to do it again, I would probably buy the books and maybe the DVDs rather than actually go to the class.
"Those who advocate mindless self-subjugation to lectures full of simple concepts and countless multiple choice questions testing those concepts ...." --->
Now HERE's a couple of those "simple concepts" that violate Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act by TEACHING FUTURE LAWYERS TO INSTITUTIONALIZE THEIR UNLAWFUL DISCRIMINATION AGAINST DISABLED AMERICANS:
MBE Contract Question: B is a blind, deaf American. A offers to sell B widgets. A is a giant widget maker, had its BIG LAW firm draft its adhesion contract for the sale/purchase of widgets. A is a monopoly in widget manufacturing in an ear of Bushism anti-anti-Sherman Act enforcement. B says, well, I will take some widgets if they are blue. A ships B widgets, but they are red, full of product defects, and some were made in China, the rest in India. B cannot see to read the print on the paper contract or the small print instructions for returning the defective widgets to A for a refund of B's U.S. Treasury money. A feels it is too inconvenient and just bothersome to offer a TTY or Speech Relay number to any of A's customers, after all, A is a monopoly and no one can tell A sh#t.
Is there a contract?
NCBE's model test answer says, yes, predicated on contract law. The A/B/C/D mental memory defective MBE passer who qualified for an attorney license say, yes predicated on contract law. BIG LAW SCHOOL thinks Title II and II Americans With Disabilities Act classes are waaaayyy too passe, don't offer such a course. BIG LAW SCHOOL, Tier I, does not even include people who are blind, deaf, or with autism on their ADA accommodations page. Who needs disabled Americans, anyway, no one even LIKES them. The newly minted lawyers go out into the litigation world "knowing the contract law" because they passed the MBE and got their license.
Lawyer for widget maker A meets Molski, Jr., who is a disabled blind, deaf American. Widget maker A's goody 2-shoes lawyer alleges A should be paid millions for the red defective widgets A shipped to B. B defends that no contract was ever formed because A failed to comply with Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act braille and TTY alternative formats mandates, w/o which compliance B did not understand the contract, and thereby it was impossible for there to be any meeting of the minds.
A's lawyer scratches head, and says "Huh ????" A's lawyer gats SO MAD he/she goes on numerous blogs to defame, harass, and destroy the credibility and reputation of B, calling B "teh Krazy," etc. B files a motion to dismiss A's complaint, predicated on Title II Americans With Disabilities Act violations, as well as Title II ADA violations for A's invoking state action through filing A's complaint in the state court. Jurisdiction is New York, a very savvy Americans With Disabilities Act state. B's motion is granted.
Has the MBE bar exam tested the "essential functions" of attorney job tasks performed? NO. Has the MBE bar exam even tested a real version of what the law is? NO. By putting myopic blinders on the A/B/C/D can't think their way out of a paper puke bag "thinking like a lawyers" to the extent such erroneous exam failed to test issues that overlap (ADA overlaps contracts when a blind, deaf person is a party to a contract), the MBE did not even function to test the REAL STATE OF ACTUAL EXISTING LAW.
So WHAT GOOD is the MBE? How can anyone possibly give any validity to the qualification of anyone who did/did not pass the MBE?
"Bill is right on that score. If your ambition is to be a SCOTUS Justice, DON'T FLUNK ANY BAR EXAMS."
GREAT ... and now we HAVE AN ADMISSION that the critical thinker who failed the MBE because he/she answered that no contract was formed in the A-B transction above due to A's Americans With Disabilities Act violations WILL AUTOMATICALLY BLANKET-STYLE BE SCREENED OUT OF QUALIFICATION FOR SCOTUS!!! Or, in other words, how about Let's institutionalize the Americans With Disabilities Act violations predators commit on disabled Americans every day be APPROVED BY THE SUPREME COURT! How so? Because we have this unwritten little rule that the BETTER QUALIFIED critical thinker who knew the Americans With Disabilities Act violation by A made it impossible to form a contract, is DISQUALIFIED FROM SCOTUS!
Now THERE's a real surefire way to institutionalize the unlawful discirmination against disabled Americans, and WHO CARES WHAT CONGRESS HAS TO SAY IN ENACTING THAT STUPIS AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT LAW ANYWAY !! It is mere "surplus verbiage," and we all hate it. And we hate B's lawyer, too, because he/she circumvented the MBE (THAT drives us Krazy) by signing up for the NY Bar Examiners alternative job performance in the NY Courts program method of achieving attorney licensure. Persky lawyers who skirt that nice little MBE tool that KEEPS THE DISABLED AMERICANS OUT OF OUR BAR GUILD, AND AFRICAN AMERICANS, TOO ... We HAVE TO RESTRAIN TRADE donchaknow ... or those disabled mukes will get the money and some of us will earn less and we won't be able to buy that yacht we always wanted, Boo Hoo.
Bruce, Hayden, aren't you the one who told me the current forumulation of bar exams discriminates against autistic thinking?
"Not smart enough. MBE used to, and probably still does, have decent correlation with LSAT scores. With any group, there are those at the top and those at the bottom." --->
Okay, so you ADMIT the LSAT AND the MBE discriminate against disabled Americans in violation of the Americans With DIsabilities Act. What a way to inspire confidence in the Bar's function of protecting the public. A/B/C/D dumb-down tests producing our "minimally" allegedly competent lawyers, with emphasis on the word MINIMALLY. HERE's a thought: since the Americans With Disabilities Act requires the "essential functions" be of attorney job task functions tested, WHY DO WE HAVE (1.) MINIMAL COMPETENCE PASSES A GENERAL BAR EXAM, (2.) BOARD CERTIFICATIONS, (3.) NO RECIRPOCITY? If the current formulations of the bar exam DID comply with the mandates of Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, a person would be able to select practice areas to be tested (no generic subjects), and if that person scored VERY HIGH, say in admiralty, that person shold be licensed immediately at the level scored -- e.g., Board Specialization in Admiralty. As for the "no recirpocity" barrier, the Americans With Disabilities Act requires National uniformity, so just where does the "no reciprocity" barrier have any defense to being struck down by the ADA? (It also violates the right to travel).
"Of course, some just don't get the type of legal analysis required, even after 3 years of LS." --->
No, Bruce, some don't, and the scary thing is some of those people HAVE ATTY LICENSES precisely because they can't see that the blind, deaf disabled American, B, did not form a contract with A. And IT'S A GOOD THING those LICENSED LOSERS did not make it onto the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ...
of blind Americans would still be forced into dependency on having the predator foxes-guarding-the-henshous COUNT THEIR MONEY!!
"Those who advocate mindless self-subjugation to lectures full of simple concepts and countless multiple choice questions testing those concepts ...." --->
Now HERE's a couple of those "simple concepts" that violate Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act by TEACHING FUTURE LAWYERS TO INSTITUTIONALIZE THEIR UNLAWFUL DISCRIMINATION AGAINST DISABLED AMERICANS:
MBE Contract Question: B is a blind, deaf American. A offers to sell B widgets. A is a giant widget maker, had its BIG LAW firm draft its adhesion contract for the sale/purchase of widgets. A is a monopoly in widget manufacturing in an ear of Bushism anti-anti-Sherman Act enforcement. B says, well, I will take some widgets if they are blue. A ships B widgets, but they are red, full of product defects, and some were made in China, the rest in India. B cannot see to read the print on the paper contract or the small print instructions for returning the defective widgets to A for a refund of B's U.S. Treasury money. A feels it is too inconvenient and just bothersome to offer a TTY or Speech Relay number to any of A's customers, after all, A is a monopoly and no one can tell A sh#t.
Is there a contract?
NCBE's model test answer says, yes, predicated on contract law. The A/B/C/D mental memory defective MBE passer who qualified for an attorney license say, yes predicated on contract law. BIG LAW SCHOOL thinks Title II and II Americans With Disabilities Act classes are waaaayyy too passe, don't offer such a course. BIG LAW SCHOOL, Tier I, does not even include people who are blind, deaf, or with autism on their ADA accommodations page. Who needs disabled Americans, anyway, no one even LIKES them. The newly minted lawyers go out into the litigation world "knowing the contract law" because they passed the MBE and got their license.
Lawyer for widget maker A meets Molski, Jr., who is a disabled blind, deaf American. Widget maker A's goody 2-shoes lawyer alleges A should be paid millions for the red defective widgets A shipped to B. B defends that no contract was ever formed because A failed to comply with Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act braille and TTY alternative formats mandates, w/o which compliance B did not understand the contract, and thereby it was impossible for there to be any meeting of the minds.
A's lawyer scratches head, and says "Huh ????" A's lawyer gats SO MAD he/she goes on numerous blogs to defame, harass, and destroy the credibility and reputation of B, calling B "teh Krazy," etc. B files a motion to dismiss A's complaint, predicated on Title II Americans With Disabilities Act violations, as well as Title II ADA violations for A's invoking state action through filing A's complaint in the state court. Jurisdiction is New York, a very savvy Americans With Disabilities Act state. B's motion is granted.
Has the MBE bar exam tested the "essential functions" of attorney job tasks performed? NO. Has the MBE bar exam even tested a real version of what the law is? NO. By putting myopic blinders on the A/B/C/D can't think their way out of a paper puke bag "thinking like a lawyers" to the extent such erroneous exam failed to test issues that overlap (ADA overlaps contracts when a blind, deaf person is a party to a contract), the MBE did not even function to test the REAL STATE OF ACTUAL EXISTING LAW.
So WHAT GOOD is the MBE? How can anyone possibly give any validity to the qualification of anyone who did/did not pass the MBE?
"Bill is right on that score. If your ambition is to be a SCOTUS Justice, DON'T FLUNK ANY BAR EXAMS."
GREAT ... and now we HAVE AN ADMISSION that the critical thinker who failed the MBE because he/she answered that no contract was formed in the A-B transction above due to A's Americans With Disabilities Act violations WILL AUTOMATICALLY BLANKET-STYLE BE SCREENED OUT OF QUALIFICATION FOR SCOTUS!!! Or, in other words, how about Let's institutionalize the Americans With Disabilities Act violations predators commit on disabled Americans every day be APPROVED BY THE SUPREME COURT! How so? Because we have this unwritten little rule that the BETTER QUALIFIED critical thinker who knew the Americans With Disabilities Act violation by A made it impossible to form a contract, is DISQUALIFIED FROM SCOTUS!
Now THERE's a real surefire way to institutionalize the unlawful discirmination against disabled Americans, and WHO CARES WHAT CONGRESS HAS TO SAY IN ENACTING THAT STUPIS AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT LAW ANYWAY !! It is mere "surplus verbiage," and we all hate it. And we hate B's lawyer, too, because he/she circumvented the MBE (THAT drives us Krazy) by signing up for the NY Bar Examiners alternative job performance in the NY Courts program method of achieving attorney licensure. Persky lawyers who skirt that nice little MBE tool that KEEPS THE DISABLED AMERICANS OUT OF OUR BAR GUILD, AND AFRICAN AMERICANS, TOO ... We HAVE TO RESTRAIN TRADE donchaknow ... or those disabled mukes will get the money and some of us will earn less and we won't be able to buy that yacht we always wanted, Boo Hoo.
Bruce, Hayden, aren't you the one who told me the current forumulation of bar exams discriminates against autistic thinking?
"Not smart enough. MBE used to, and probably still does, have decent correlation with LSAT scores. With any group, there are those at the top and those at the bottom." --->
Okay, so you ADMIT the LSAT AND the MBE discriminate against disabled Americans in violation of the Americans With DIsabilities Act. What a way to inspire confidence in the Bar's function of protecting the public. A/B/C/D dumb-down tests producing our "minimally" allegedly competent lawyers, with emphasis on the word MINIMALLY. HERE's a thought: since the Americans With Disabilities Act requires the "essential functions" be of attorney job task functions tested, WHY DO WE HAVE (1.) MINIMAL COMPETENCE PASSES A GENERAL BAR EXAM, (2.) BOARD CERTIFICATIONS, (3.) NO RECIRPOCITY? If the current formulations of the bar exam DID comply with the mandates of Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, a person would be able to select practice areas to be tested (no generic subjects), and if that person scored VERY HIGH, say in admiralty, that person shold be licensed immediately at the level scored -- e.g., Board Specialization in Admiralty. As for the "no recirpocity" barrier, the Americans With Disabilities Act requires National uniformity, so just where does the "no reciprocity" barrier have any defense to being struck down by the ADA? (It also violates the right to travel).
"Of course, some just don't get the type of legal analysis required, even after 3 years of LS." --->
No, Bruce, some don't, and the scary thing is some of those people HAVE ATTY LICENSES precisely because they can't see that the blind, deaf disabled American, B, did not form a contract with A. And IT'S A GOOD THING those LICENSED LOSERS did not make it onto the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ...
of blind Americans would still be forced into dependency on having the predator foxes-guarding-the-henhouses COUNT THEIR MONEY!!
The CA bar is indeed a tough one. I was fortunate enough to learn from a classmate that the testing site in Riverside offered large tables to work at, while the local testing site in Los Angeles involved sitting at a small school desk with little room to spread out exam papers, blue books, pens, etc. I went to Riverside (to the convention center) and was assigned a spacious table near the restrooms. People were going in there and vomiting throughout the exam.
If I had only studied for two weeks, I'm not sure that I would have passed, and if you wait until the final two weeks to start studying, what happens if there is a death in the family, etc.? You have left yourself without any sort of strategic reserve.
I took another (much easier) bar six months later and passed that on the first try as well. I wasn't as motivated the second time around, and had less time to study because I was working, but once again I focused on the mini-outline for CA. I couldn't afford to buy a second set of books for the second jurisdiction, and I didn't find the Bar/Bri lectures to be very helpful in relation to the amount of time they consumed, so I would NOT have gone to another Bar/Bri class even if time and money had not been at issue.
My advice to anybody STARTING law school this fall would be to buy the most recent edition of the Bar/Bri or PMBR mini-outline book from Half-Price books ($20) and make recordings of them to create your own CDs. Listen to the CDs while you drive, wash dishes, mow the lawn, etc. You'll increase your performance in law school, and you'll be ahead of the game when it is time to start studying for the bar. Make sure that you take all of the classes corresponding to the subjects that will be tested on the bar exam that you will take. I knew people who decided that "Family Law" was a waste of time because they had no intention of handling divorces, but CA Family Law was actually memorization intensive, and I think it would have undermined my precarious self-confidence going into the bar if I had NOT taken the class. If you haven't taken a subject in law school before you graduate, you are likely to devote a disproportionate amount of time studying that topic prior to taking the bar, and IMHO that could hurt your overall performance and cause you to fail.
That computerized "Mash" program sounds good, too, and if I take a third bar exam, I will look into using that. Nothing like that was available back in the olden days!
Miss Ilya is the smartest woman in the world?
The Dog says, "If you don't pass it isn't the test's fault." -
The "you" in that sentence wasn't meant to mean you personally. However, it is unclear, and I should have written "If one doesn't pass, it isn't the test's fault."
Sorry for any confusion caused by my less than clear grammar and usage structure.
Its good to have time to post once in a while. I started a new job in February and don't have any free time it seems these days. So I don't get a chance to post nearly as often.
Says the "Dog"
Here's my experience with BAR/BRI and the Ohio bar exam in 2004 (which I passed and was in the top 10% of test-takers)...
Of what possible relevance to you or anyone is your class rank on the Bar Exam? And how do you know?
Maybe Ohio lets you find out, but the states where I have taken the Bar let you see your exam only if you fail, and then only the essay questions that you failed (at least so everyone was told by the bar examiners when I took the bar).
- Fewer subjects tested on the essays
- A full hour for each question so you don't have to race to write everything down in 20-30 minutes like some other states
- Unlimited space so you don't have to worry about hitting all the key points in your one allotted page
- Two 3 hour performance tests that are nothing less than a gift to any practicing attorney because they require no memorization whatsoever and they test the kind of analysis and writing that lawyers do every day
- Casual dress (unlike Virginia - I can't imagine taking a bar exam in a suit!)
The only difficult thing about California is that it is three days long, which makes it a true marathon. But believe me, there is nothing inherently difficult about the exam.
It's not clear if Casper has already taken the calbar, or if it's the one coming up at the end of the month. If he hasn't taken it yet, I'm surprised he's tempting fate. I know a similarly cocky, recent Michigan grad who failed twice and had to leave his firm. One-third of Northwestern grads failed a recent calbar. I hope Casper comes back in November and lets us know how it went.
And I was right - on day 1, many of my fellow bar takers missed lunch because it took so long for the proctors to figure out how to collect all the exams. Not a great way to start off the marathon. I, on the other hand, was refreshed and ready to go.
My point is that you should take the bar seriously, but if you take it too seriously, it can be counterproductive.
Those that I know that have failed the bar (both good students at good schools and good students at schools on whose campuses Somin apparently wouldn't be caught dead) did so because they did exactly as Somin advised. They coasted based upon the perceived intelligence and the fact that they have done so in the past. They did not take Barbri, or they did not attend or take advantage of it. They studied a bit, here and there, at the end, but did not take the task seriously. Some lost their jobs.
I am licensed in two states and took Barbri before each bar examination. In addition to the structure the course itself offers, BARBRI delivers materials that it has distilled from past analysis of the bar examinations in those jurisdictions. They have state specific analysis of past bar examinations (and I note that Somin did not set forth a state by state analysis or comment upon the 51 different sets of materials Barbri offers for the state/DC jurisdictions). What I found most helpful was the practice MBE test offered by BARBRI, administered under test like conditions, and the comprehensive post mortem done the following day. For the MBE, Barbi offers the various tricks that the examiners prefer and the most likely answer based upon those tricks. That's some institutional knowledge I did not have and did not have time to research.
Sure, BARBRI is expensive. But that's because it's a monopoly and the bar examination process is a cottage industry in which the states are complicit. But that's irrelevant to the question at hand, which Somin cavalierly dismisses. In this enterprise, one should recommend the cautious approach with the best likelihood of success.
Mr. Somin's approach has an additional benefit: even if you study material back in May, you may not remember it at the very end of July. Early studying is good for familiarity and for "gellers" - those who need to let information sit around in their heads a bit until it makes sense to them.
Having worked before law school, I thought it resembled a three-year vacation more than anything else. It made few demands on me to budget my time. It gave me an entire semester to learn only five subjects, not eight weeks to learn 17. But the expected quality of the work product was much lower.
If you're working at a BigLaw firm, the firm probably pays for BarBri. If you're not working at a firm that pays it, you're also likely not working at a firm that pays you $3,000/week before taxes.
(Incidentally, once you'r