Bar Thoughts: Part II

The Process

Bar Review Course Selection

It’s a grueling process studying and taking the bar exam. I decided to take the same bar review course that nearly everyone takes: a course put on by a company called Bar/Bri. So if you saw any of my away messages that said Bar/Bri, that was not a mistake. No, I didn’t mistakenly spell the name of the most famous American children’s toy (who, on a sidenote, apparently has competition now).

I’m going to qualify this by saying that I’m not a Bar/Bri representative nor have I been compensated by the company. The course isn’t necessarily for everyone. First off, “satellite” locations outside of LA, San Diego, San Francisco, and Sacramento have their lectures played by DVD. In addition, there is less “hands on” instruction. Essentially a lot of the learning goes on through listening to lectures then going to self study. But one thing I found was that this was really perfect for me.

I’m very self-motivated to study and I don’t need a lot of handholding along the way. I don’t need extreme analysis of everything I write. As long as what I have to study off of is really good, I’m usually going to be ok. Bar/Bri’s materials are really second to none. The outlines they provide, the volumes of sample essays, software to analyze your multistate scores, along with their website were things I really loved. In addition, you could always look back to watch any lecture that you missed on the website. There are video reviews for every sample test along with lecture videos on essay approaches.

One last additional thing about Bar/Bri and the reason why I took it is that about 70-80% of people in CA taking the bar also take it. When taking the bar, you don’t want to be different from everyone else. Different rule statements, different approaches, different definitions, and different mnemonics are not a good thing. If your essay looks like everyone else’s, its great because it “looks” passing. And if you screw up because you were told something wrong, chances are, everyone else got the same thing wrong. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing but good things to say about the quality of the course. But it’s very reassuring that I don’t need to be second guessing and asking, “Did Bar/Bri say this right?” Well…if I’m wrong, at least everyone else is too!

Taking the Course

I took my Bar/Bri course at Chapman University Law School. It’s a beautiful building, state of the art, and brand new. The library became my home for two months. The first day I walked in was like going for the first day of school all over again. Except, unlike my first day of kindergarten, junior high, high school, college, or law school, I had no fears that the kids would be mean to me or any of the natural anxiety of being in a new environment. Anytime you attend class, although there is open seating, there is an unwritten rule that you don’t sit in someone else’s seat. From day one, I chose a place right in the back. From that vantage point you can see everyone’s computer monitors and who’s paying attention or not.

It’s surprising how many people were just browsing the internet, playing games, or doing online shopping. One dude who sat in front of me played one of three games the whole time: Everquest, solitaire, or online poker. Another gal was actually browsing for bikinis and at one point took out her credit card to pay. I don’t know WHEN she was going to don her newly purchased swimwear, certainly not during bar exam season. At least her future clients can be reassured that she’ll have a good tan. A lot of the bar review class coincided with the World Cup in South Africa. Streaming video of the World cup through ESPN3.com is evil. There would be people watching it while taking notes during lecture. I must admit, I was tempted to start streaming. Fortunately, I had enough self control to limit myself to looking at “gametracker.” There were other people who had interned at different prosecutors’ offices during their law school careers in my class and we came up with a pretty creative joke (at least I think so) to describe the people distracted: “it looks like we have a lot of future PD’s (public defenders) here.” Haha…sorry PD’s it’s all in good fun.

The course started May 24 (two days after my graduation/birthday) and consisted of morning lectures starting at 9:00 AM. We would run until around 12:30-1. Every day, there were different areas of law covered and we would have assignments associated with each day. For example, June 1 would be a “Torts Day 1”. We would watch the lecture in the morning and then study torts in the afternoon/evening on our own time.

As part of the course, we are given a grip load of books. A couple of volumes of multiple choice questions and explanations. An essay workbook with essay questions and model answers. A performance test workbook with performance tests. Long outlines of all the subjects on the bar, along with a “conviser mini-review.” But my personal favorite is the 3-4 inch thick “in class workbook” that contained all the handouts for the lectures that we were to attend.

The “outside” self study would involve a lot of review over the morning’s materials as well as studying black letter rules and outlines. I would make my own note cards and study outlines as part of the review process. We were also assigned different things within the course as homework. Bar/Bri is pretty comprehensive, so there are videos online that you can watch (how to write essays in different subjects, reviewing multiple choice questions, reviewing essays). We would also have to write and outline essays that were real bar exam questions from years past. And we would also have to work on multiple choice questions in review for the MBE.

One thing about Bar/Bri is that they make things super hard. The essays that we were given in the essay book in the study materials are always amongst the toughest ones ever given. The model answers that they give for essays are always perfect and are humanly impossible to write in the one hour that we’re allotted on the real test. The MBE multiple choice questions that they give you test either test on really obscure points of law, or purposefully try to trick you. I think this really helped me a lot in that I was prepared to deal with things that were a lot worse than what was given on the real exam. On the other hand, seeing such perfect answers and being butchered on super-challenging multiple choice questions had the unintended consequence of really being discouraging at times. I started thinking that I was really not prepared, when in fact, I actually was.