Category: Bar Prep

So you are starting law school this month?  Congratulations!!  You are about to embark upon a trying and most rewarding several-year journey, a step in a life path filled with potential and power. When you graduate and pass the bar exam, your license will allow you to speak for people who have no voice, to skillfully navigate waters clouded with rules and regulations and lead the way, to change and improve lives and society.  You will be poised to not only earn a living but also to live an endlessly meaningful life.  Be proud of your choice to study law.

Here are a few of the many books my students have found helpful as they begin the law school process, with some thoughts on why each is particularly useful.  Please write in and tell me if you have other suggestions!

Bridging the Gap Between College and Law School: Strategies for Success by Ruta K. Stropus and Charlotte D. Taylor, 3d ed. 2014 Carolina Academic Press, ISBN 978-1-61163-224-8 

This book is like having your own tour guide to law school. It tells you what to expect and how to make sense of the process, and thrive!  A must have for new law students!!

Reading Like a Lawyer: Time-Saving Strategies for Reading Law Like an Expert, By Ruth Ann McKinney, 2d ed. 2012 Carolina Academic Press,  ISBN 978-1-61163-110-4

Arguably, the most critical skill for success in law school is reading comprehension.  With tweets having largely replaced novels, we are in a time when mastering critical reading skills is more important than ever. Lawyers work with words; they are our power tools. This book’s text and exercises will help you get a firm foothold on reading for law school.

Pass the Bar: A Practical Guide to Achieving Academic & Professional Goals, By Sara J. Berman, ABA Publishing 2013, ISBN: 978-1-62722-238-9

This book may seem like you don’t need it until you are ready to take the bar.  No!  Read it now.  It will help you see the light at the end of the tunnel and set the stage for success from Day #1.  This book demystifies the bar exam and how to pass it the first time around.  Reading it as a 1L will train you lay the critical groundwork to develop the skills and confidence you need to succeed.

Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies, By Michael Asimow and Paul Bergman, ABA Publishing 2013, ISBN-13: 978-0740754609

Watch some movies, before you start law school!  And, read Reel Justice while you watch so you can learn what is “real” and where the entertainment has replaced reality.  Learn what courtrooms and lawyers really do, with fun and clear examples from film.

Represent Yourself in Court: How to Prepare and Try a Winning Case, By Paul Bergman and Sara Berman, Nolo.com 2013, 8th Edition, ISBN 9781413319446

This books helps you get the “big picture” –civil litigation in an easy-to-understand snapshot, explaining the process from pre-trial discovery through appeal.  It will help you put into context all the cases that you are reading all year, to truly understand who has the burden of proving what and why.   A quick and essential read for law students to help you put the world of law into context.  At the same time, this is a down payment for success on the performance test portion of the bar exam.

The Criminal Law Handbook: Know Your Rights, Survive the System, By Paul Bergman and Sara Berman, Nolo.com 2013, 8th Edition, ISBN 9781413319484

Read this alone to understand criminal law and criminal procedure in plain English, and/or as a companion to Represent Yourself, to understand the civil and criminal justice systems.  This book gives you a clear picture of criminal law and procedure, an overview of the process from arrest to appeal.

 

 

So proud of my students who finished Day 1 of the #barexam today.

Stay strong!  This is your exam to pass!!

Remember the two C’s: Remain Calm & Confident.

Read slowly and carefully; read like a lawyer!

And, good luck tomorrow on #MBE day!!

Lectured today at my alma mater, the UCLA School of Law.  Filled with memories, and most of all, with immense gratitude for the amazing professors I was lucky enough to study with.

Happy Father’s Day!

If you are taking the July Bar Exam, you have been working like crazy for a weeks now.  So, you deserve a break.  Take a moment out of your studies today to wish your father a Happy Day.

If you don’t have a dad to thank (and even if you do), take a few minutes to thank someone else who has acted toward you in a fatherly way –maybe a mentor, teacher, or a friend’s dad.  You would be amazed at how appreciative that person will likely be to know the he has made an impact on you.  And, you may also feel a renewed sense of purpose and perspective by just taking a few minutes out of your stressful studies to say, “Thank you.”

If you are a Dad yourself, enjoy some good vibes, rest and re-charge your own batteries with some great family time!  Today, a toast to YOU!  Happy Father’s Day!!!

Remember that studying for the bar exam is a long haul.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint.  You need breaks, days when you think of something other the exam and thereby get a healthy second wind.  Today is one such day; July 4th will be another.  Look for posts in the next week on taking some time off on that weekend.

 

It does not hurt and may well help a lot to be completing all your practice tests closed book and under timed conditions.  However, for sure by July you must be writing closed book.  June studying may still be effective, even if you need to do some brief consultation of books and notes while writing.

In June, most people are still learning the law.  (Yes, we call it “bar review” but there is a great deal of new information that most of us learn while studying for the bar exam.)  One great way to learn rules is to type them out (or better still, handwrite them 50 times).  So, if you are writing a practice exam, and know there is a rule but forget how to phrase it, or do not know what the rule is at all, go ahead and look it up.  Then, close the books, and try to type it into your answer from memory.  After the brief book consultation to refresh your recollection (pun intended), finish writing your analysis and conclude on the particular issue you are addressing.

Stopping to look up rules will not likely be too much of a crutch so long as you give the full month of July to entirely closed book writing.  Having some open books in June will still help you learn the law while you practice exam writing.  And, you are likely to more easily recall rules in the future that you learned in the context of particular fact patterns.

When July hits, close the books while writing practice exams.  If you don’t know a rule, try hard to remember whatever you can of it and/or analogize to an area of law you do know and write what you think the rule likely is.  The minute you finish the essay (writing under timed conditions), then look up the rule or rules you guessed on.  Right then and there, as you are studying a model or sample answer, (which you must do to get the full benefit of practice writing), write out any rules you missed.  Write them on your flashcards or outline, say them out loud, and/or re-write them 10-20 times to “seal” them into your memory. (Everyone memorizes differently.)

By allowing yourself to look up some rules in June but targeting July for being closed book, you are giving yourself a “break” of sorts while maintaining a concrete goal and acknowledging the need to ramp up as the exam approaches.

The bar exam is at the end of July, not tomorrow.  You still have plenty of time to hone your analytical and writing skills, to vastly increase your knowledge of the law, and to memorize those rules you will need to articulate in bar exam essay writing.  Keep at it!  Slow and steady wins this race.

Students have been telling me at every bar review lecture this summer, and coming in to office hours regularly with pleas of: “Help: I’m not finishing the essays and PTs I’m writing.”

If this is you, you are not alone.

FIRST, SOME GENERAL BAR EXAM PREPARATION THOUGHTS:

1) Delighted to hear you are writing practice essays and PTs.  Keep at it!  That is critical to your success.  Nothing worries me more than people who say, “I’m too busy learning the law to write practice exams; I don’t know enough yet to write.”  You learn by writing.  And, if you knew all the law in the world in theory but had never practiced bar exam essays and performance tests, you would likely not pass the bar exam.

2) Also glad you are practicing under timed conditions.  Too many students write open book and/or giving themselves unlimited time, and never learn to perform under the strict constraints and exam conditions they will face on their bar exam. Again, keep at it!

3) Let’s also look at what it is that you are doing that is taking the time that puts you over time on essays and PTs.  Knowing what is taking your time can sometimes help you trim down your time in certain areas.

NEXT, SOME THOUGHTS ON ESSAYS:

• Are you working with an outline?  Outlining before you write, providing yourself a roadmap (that you can turn into headings to give the grader a roadmap) takes time but ultimately can save time.  (You don’t waste time cleaning up a disorganized rambling answer.)
• How long are you spending reading the question and thinking before writing?  It may seem counter-intuitive, but one way to speed up writing is to invest more time in understanding the problem before you begin writing.
• Next, on essays, assess what is taking the bulk of your time?  Is it issue spotting?  If so,
  • a) learn the law more fluently.  The better you know the rules, the easier it is to spot issues.
  • Read more carefully.
  • And, practice with many many essays.
• Is it rule statements?  Memorize succinct (concise and precise) rule statements.  You should not need to spend time thinking about how to phrase a rule.  You should spit it out.  That will come with practice and active work on memorization.  (Remember, how you learned vocabulary studying a foreign language?  Memorize your legal terms that way.
• Next, is it analysis?  Again, a careful reading of the facts and practice will help.  Also, practice writing out model answers (copying them). That will help tune your ear to a successful essay answer, and it will help you see if you are spending too much time doing the analysis portion of your writing.

Pay close attention to how much time you spend on each part of your essay writing and you will likely gain insights into where and how to increase your speed and efficiency.

SOME THOUGHTS ON PERFORMANCE TESTS:

As to PTs, the first time saving tip is seeing the big picture, figuring out what the performance test is really asking you to do, and figuring out at least the major rules that need to be written down. These are huge areas where many students struggle, and get bogged down.  You have to find the “freeway” (the main rules); you cannot get caught up in the “side streets.”

With timing, how much over are you?  If you are 30 minutes or less over time, complete 4-6 more exams under timed conditions and see where you are. Practice alone may speed you up.

Complete at least 2 each week now.  (You want to master them as much as possible in June since they are open book and leave more time for essay and MBE work, which require memorization, for July.)  You should see your timing go down significantly, just by virtue of getting more comfortable with these.

Be sure to take the time you need to read, and think, and outline.  Even if you are a slow reader, the better grasp you have of what the assignment is and how to organize a logical and thorough response, the faster you will be able to type that response.

Also, with each practice PT you complete, watch for time saving techniques, such as:

• “Book briefing” and using the table of contents of the Library to list the page numbers where all the holdings are, rather than writing all the rules out in an outline,
• Using shorthand cites, and
• Typing your headings right into your document and then populating that “outline” rough draft as your final draft.

Note too that a way to save a great deal of time is skimming the File first, then only going back to it in detail when you know the law (so you don’t get mired in the irrelevant material in the File).

You also may have about 10 minutes or so of an adrenalin boost on the actual exam, but do not bank on that.  Keep practicing writing these out in full so that you get your timing where it needs to be.  And, with each practice test, take note of where you are getting caught up and push yourself to move more quickly through those slow moments.

For more tips and strategies for success on the bar exam, see Pass the Bar: A Practical Guide for Achieving Academic & Professional Goals.

Fit a full performance test (“PT”), under timed conditions, into your study schedule today.  Hopefully this entire you have already begun writing bar exam essays in full.  If not, start today!

Many people ask me if it’s ok to just memorize rules now, and wait to write out in full.  No.  Write.  Practice writing.  The time is now!

There is no way to master bar exam essays and PTs without practicing them. As I told my class yesterday, if we decided to spend the next month in an intensive tennis workshop and what we did were to take every class session to read tennis books and watch tennis videos without ever hitting the court, we would not learn to play tennis.  Even if we watched and read for 15 hours a day for 30 days, we would not have trained our muscles or reflexes.

Likewise, to learn to write effective bar exam essay and performance test answers, you must put the book learning into practice.  It’s often ok to write open book in June (not looking at answers but simply looking up a rule if you need to) so long as by July you are regularly writing practice exams closed book. The point is now to get started.  Dig in, and go!