my experiences studying for the bar

i thought i should probably describe my game plan for studying for the bar in case anyone reading this is preparing for the july '08 bar. i'm certainly no expert, i feel extremely lucky to have passed on the first try, so all of the following should be taken with a grain of salt. i assure you, your tutors, bar prep teachers, law school professors are much more knowledgable than i, and their advice is worth much more than mine. that being said...... :)

i apologize in advance for the length of this post. i'm primarily going to talk about the physical (studying) preparation this post, and will next time write about mentally dealing with preapring for the exam.

while in law school, i took all classes that would be on the bar, except that i never got around to taking Con Law II. so, about a month before i started preparing for the bar exam, i checked out an "examples and explanations" book on con law ii from my law school and just skimmed one chapter a week so i would have a basic idea of the subject when i began to study it in preparation for the bar. i think this helped a lot, and would certainly recommend that: 1) take all the classes that will be on the bar, if possible. 2) if not possible, get one of those canned outline books or another good summary of the subject and at least glance it over. even just a very basic knowledge is better than nothing.

i was nervous about preparing for the bar because i first started law school in the fall of 2003...a long, LONG time ago. i ended up having to take a medical leave of absence after my first year, but returned a year later to finish. so, my first year (which as you know makes up a LOT of the subjects on the bar) was a year before everyone else who i was studying with. including my medical leave of absence, law school was a 4.5 year endeavor for me, compared to the 3 years it took most of the other people i was taking the bar with. so, i felt as if i was at a disadvantage and thus tried to study harder and decided that a barbri class was necessary for me.

i highly recommend taking some kind of bar prep class, whether you choose barbri, pmbr, bar passers, etc., is up to you. i'm a pretty firm believer that they're all pretty much the same, so decide what works for you. i wanted to take a prep class because i knew i would be so exhausted from always studying that i wouldn't want to come up with my own schedule. it was very nice having someone hand me a schedule, say "read these outlines on these nights, do these MBE questions on these days, write these essays..." because that was one less thing i had to worry about.

i followed the schedule pretty closely. i would usually read the short outline instead of the long one, but i did all the practice MBEs and essays they told me too. like i said, i felt at a disadvantage and knew i had to make up for it somehow. if you've glanced at materials from your first year throughout law school, then maybe you won't need to do every single question.

the exam was the last week of february, so i studied from christmas up until the exam. my schedule while studying for the bar was: i would be in the barbri class from 9am -1pm every day, eat lunch for 30 min., then either go to work or head to the library. i continued to work during the month of january, but took the entire month of february off. during january, i would go to work usually 3 times a week. on days where i went to work, i would go to work right after my barbri class, and stay until 5pm. then i would usually stop at the gym for a quick workout, and go straight to my law school's library. fortunately my law school had a student break room, so i would just eat dinner in there. i'd study at the library usually until 10pm or so. as i mentioned earlier, i would do whatever was on the barbri schedule for that night. usually that included reviewing whatever material was covered in the class that day, skim over the material that was to be covered the next day, and do practice MBE and essay questions.

for the essays, i tried to write out at least one full answer for each subject, and outline all the other essay questions for that subject. i would highly recommend, if you don't have time to even outline all the other questions. at least read the question and think about it. you want to be prepared for whatever the bar examiners may throw at you.

for the MBE questions, by the time the exam rolled around, i had completed every question in the barbri MBE book. i also signed up for an online MBE practice website. i forget what it was called. i know micromash has one, but i signed up for one that was cheaper. by the time of the exam, i had taken over 2500 practice MBE questions. i know many people completed much more. i found it helpful to review every single answer, even quickly skimming the answers of the ones i got right. at the very least, study the answers of the ones you got wrong, and perhaps make a mark next to questions you guessed on and look over the answer even if you got it right to make sure you KNOW why you got it right. a lot can be learned from your mistakes.

on days where i didn't have to work, after the barbri class and lunch i would go to my school law library and just study for the rest of the day. i would usually take a break around 4pm and usually go to the gym, then come back and resume studying. i went to the gym about 4 days a week, so on the off days i would either go watch tv in the break room or go play pool in my school's rec room (i discovered pool is a GREAT stress reliever and distraction). as the exam neared and i became exhausted, i would usually just put my head down on my desk, keep my earplugs in, pull my hood from my sweatshirt over my head, and take a litte nap. of course, then its a little awkward when you wake up and your study neighbor is staring at you because you were snoring. ;)

on days where i didn't have the barbri class (which was sundays), i'd get up and go straight to the law library and study for most of the day. then, usually around 3pm i'd leave. sunday afternoons were always my "free" time, to do things like grocery shopping, clean, laundry, or even just relax. i'll write more about the mental aspects of coping with the bar next time.

in addition to the barbri class and the online MBE practice website, i also took a one day performance test (PT) workshop. i discovered very quickly that the PT was difficult for me. i'm still not sure why, since that's the kind of task i've done regularly at my jobs/internships for the past 2+ years, but it is. so, i knew i needed some extra help in that area, and the barbri lectures and books on the PT had me totally confused. so, i decided that the workshop would be well worth the cost. and boy, was it ever! i found it extremely helpful, and my performance on the PT was drastically increased. i hated spending all this extra money on prep classes and materials, but my philosophy throughout studying for the bar was "i only want to do this once." i'm sure no one says to themself "i'd LOVE to take the california bar exam 2, maybe even 3 times, if i'm lucky." no one wants to take it more than once, so make sure you put that plan into action.


i'm a visual memorizer, so i made flash cards for all of the MBE subjects. i got those cheesy colored 3x5 cards and assigned a different color to each MBE subject. then, for the non MBE subjects, i made short outlines. the barbri outlines were anywhere from 15-70+ pages. especially as the exam neared, i needed something smaller and easier to study from, so i made my own short outlines by using the barbri outlines and taking out stuff that wasn't critical. i probably still have some saved on my computer if you want to see an example. many people, including barbri, will tell you that making your own outlines is a waste of time. that may be true, it probably depends on how you learn. i didn't completely recreate the outline, i just shortened barbri's. and, i found my short outlines especially helpful for the new california subjects (civ pro, evidence) so i could highlight the differences between federal and CA law. this was helpful for me, but you may have a better solution.

i studied up until the day before the exam, which always begins on a tuesday. the previous sunday i looked over my flash cards and short outlines, especially in the subjects i knew i was weak on. monday morning, i did a practice run to see how long it would take me to drive to the location, park, and walk to the place of the exam. i did it at the exact same time i would need to the next morning, so i got up early, showered, and drove down there as if it was the real thing. then i studed until noon and took the rest of the day off to relax.

the morning of the exam, for all three mornings, i woke up and did 30 min. of yoga to help me keep from getting stressed. then, i would do about 10 MBE questions before going to take the exam. i didnt check the answers, the purpose was more to get my brain working. i don't know about you, but it takes me a while to wake up in the morning. i didn't want the first thing i thought about that morning to be the REAL exam.

okay, that's it for now. sorry this turned into a frickin' book! :) next time i'll write about the other things to do to prepare. feel free to email me if you have any questions, at elleyjaye@hotmail.com. i don't check that email very often (thus the posting it on the web and subjecting it to what i expect to be a buttload of spam) so it may take a few days to get back to you.

out.
- L

well, it's official....

i was sworn in two days ago. booyah!!! i have to admit, up until thursday i expected to receive a call any minute from the committee of bar examiners telling me they made a mistake and i in fact did NOT pass. the good news.....the call never came. now i've been sworn in, there's no way they can take it back! man, did i fool them!!

the ceremony was nice. since i went to law school here in san diego, my school had a breakfast for us new admittees before the ceremony. it was cool to see other people from my school who had passed, although i was surprised at the small number of new admittees from my school. i only saw 10 of us (its very possible there were a few i missed) out of about 35 of us who took the exam. i do know 2 people for sure who were unable to attend the ceremony, so perhaps there were many more. i hope so, i'd like to see my school's bar passage rate increase.

unfortunately my family and friends couldn't come to the ceremony since none of my family lives here and all of my friends (who were not being admitted) had to work. but, i did make friends with the guy sitting next to me...i made him take a goofy picture of me taking the oath and did the same for him. taking the oath was kind of fun...raising my right hand and swearing to defend the constitution made this all seem real, finally! now i'm a cool lawyer, like this guy....



it's a great feeling that this is finally all over with. i feel very fortunate to have passed the exam on my first try...i can't imagine doing that all over again, and really do have a lot of respect for people who take it more than once.

congratulations to all the other new admittees, and good luck to everyone preparing for the july exam! i'll try and post this week about what i did to prepare for the exam, in case anyone's looking for some tips. and, feel free to send me an email you may have with any questions about studying!

out.
- L