BarBri Bar Review Hangout - July 2015 Exam Forum

[mushybrain]

Has anyone done the Property section of Emanuel's? It's killing me. I suck at property, but I'm doing worse on these than the BarBri ones...

omg yes, it kicked my ass so hard I had to put MBE stuff away for a day

[EvelynS]

BarBri's inspirational quotes of the day are just killing me, especially when they are by people who probably did not even manage to get their GEDs. I guess I am at the point when I am annoyed and anxious about small stupid things. lol

[Danger Zone]

123/200

Niiice

And my best subject was Property lol wtf

[atticus89]

I know this has been complained about a lot on here, but I'm just not really sure what to make of the essay feedback. I turned in Essay #1 for Evidence (CA) and got a 60. The question had 5 subquestions -- 4 of them had no feedback other than I should have broken down the relevance section into logical and legal relevance. Note that I discussed both for each question in separate paragraphs with topic sentences under the heading of "Relevance", I just didn't have subheadings for each. The feedback told me I should have done this and to "see model answer." The model answer didn't break down relevance into separate subheadings, it did what I did. The other subquestion, I missed a couple of hearsay exceptions. The feedback at the bottom said they were giving me a 60, but it was "sliding too close to a 55."

Look, the essay was by no means perfect, but I thought it should have been in the 'clear pass' 65 range at least. I'm a pretty good writer and my answer was ~2300 words, which I think is a lot for a 1 hour essay. None of it was really fluff either, as I got a vast majority of the issues. I have a subscription to BarEssays.com and, although I certainly missed some things, none of the essays on that site that scored 55s had close to as many words as I had and were far more conclusory.

I've heard mixed things but I'm not sure what to believe. It's 2.5 weeks from the exam and I just don't see why Barbri thinks it would be a benefit to freak us out more this close to the test. In CA, I believe the average score you needed on essays to pass was ~62 (so some 60s, some 65s). I know they're not actually bar examiners, but I just wonder what Barbri is telling them. I just feel uncomfortable banking on the notion that it will be easier grading on the actual exam.

[Good Guy Gaud]

BarBri's inspirational quotes of the day are just killing me, especially when they are by people who probably did not even manage to get their GEDs. I guess I am at the point when I am annoyed and anxious about small stupid things. lol

I gave up on life once I realized they didn't even have a new quote for each day. I've seen a handful of repeats...

[EvelynS]

BarBri's inspirational quotes of the day are just killing me, especially when they are by people who probably did not even manage to get their GEDs. I guess I am at the point when I am annoyed and anxious about small stupid things. lol

I gave up on life once I realized they didn't even have a new quote for each day. I've seen a handful of repeats...

I guess they don't have enough inspirational people w/ no GED for a different quote each day. I nominate Shia Lebouf (or whatever his last name is) and Mark Wahlberg to be our inspirational quotes for the next 2 weeks. "Just do it!"

[EvelynS]

I know this has been complained about a lot on here, but I'm just not really sure what to make of the essay feedback. I turned in Essay #1 for Evidence (CA) and got a 60. The question had 5 subquestions -- 4 of them had no feedback other than I should have broken down the relevance section into logical and legal relevance. Note that I discussed both for each question in separate paragraphs with topic sentences under the heading of "Relevance", I just didn't have subheadings for each. The feedback told me I should have done this and to "see model answer." The model answer didn't break down relevance into separate subheadings, it did what I did. The other subquestion, I missed a couple of hearsay exceptions. The feedback at the bottom said they were giving me a 60, but it was "sliding too close to a 55."

Look, the essay was by no means perfect, but I thought it should have been in the 'clear pass' 65 range at least. I'm a pretty good writer and my answer was ~2300 words, which I think is a lot for a 1 hour essay. None of it was really fluff either, as I got a vast majority of the issues. I have a subscription to BarEssays.com and, although I certainly missed some things, none of the essays on that site that scored 55s had close to as many words as I had and were far more conclusory.

I've heard mixed things but I'm not sure what to believe. It's 2.5 weeks from the exam and I just don't see why Barbri thinks it would be a benefit to freak us out more this close to the test. In CA, I believe the average score you needed on essays to pass was ~62 (so some 60s, some 65s). I know they're not actually bar examiners, but I just wonder what Barbri is telling them. I just feel uncomfortable banking on the notion that it will be easier grading on the actual exam.

I stopped submitting my essays after the 2nd one. Their comments are useless. In fact, I did not see any substantive comments on my essays except for see the model answer and break it into paragraphs. And I refuse to believe that examiners take off a bunch of points for this. So, unless you give me a substantive feedback, submitting essays are very useless. I am in NY, but I feel that these graders just randomly assign points. After submitting 2 essays, I learned absolutely nothing on how to improve my score or what I really did wrong (even though I had a passing score both times). I am sorry that my answer is not helpful at all.

[3|ink]

How useless is Franzese's commercial paper handout? I'm asking because this thing looks like bare bones to me.

[Devlin]

Are question set 5s supposed to be extremely difficult? I'm in the middle of a K one and have only got 1/7 so far. I did well on the simulated MBE and generally have done well in K.

WTF barbri?

[charlesxavier]

Are question set 5s supposed to be extremely difficult? I'm in the middle of a K one and have only got 1/7 so far. I did well on the simulated MBE and generally have done well in K.

WTF barbri?

They're just extremely difficult and specific. Just did property set 5 and hit the goal of 9/18. I also did okay on the MBE. These are just really specific rules/exceptions being tested. I'll read a question and think "I know what they're asking but I've never heard the rule before." Based on the way the answers are being phrased I can tell that they're testing an exception that applies 1% of the time...

[MTBike]

Are question set 5s supposed to be extremely difficult? I'm in the middle of a K one and have only got 1/7 so far. I did well on the simulated MBE and generally have done well in K.

WTF barbri?

Yeah I just did Crim Law/Pro Set 5 and got 7/18. Much harder than the other ones.

[atticus89]

We need to keep one thing in mind about the Barbri question sets. Use Evidence as an example: On the MBE let's say that there will be 28 Evidence questions. Probably 8-9 of those will be on hearsay and its exceptions. That's 8-9 total questions on hearsay for an entire 200 question exam.

By contrast the Barbri MBE subject sets will have about 6 hearsay questions per set -- that's 30 overall. Of the 8-9 that will appear on the actual exam, you can bet that many of those will hit the big exceptions: probably business records, dying declaration, excited utterance, etc. But instead of asking you 6 excited utterance questions, Barbri seems to have taken the approach of making the sets more narrow as you go.

The reason I don't get discouraged with the subject-specific sets is because to me it's more likely that they're going to test excited utterance on the bar than they are an obscure exception for inscriptions made in a bible (which actually appears in a later Evidence set). It's just Barbri's way of exposing you to new information. In my opinion the mixed sets are most useful at this point because they seem to be tailored towards the actual ratios that subjects will appear on the bar.

[gmail]

If the 2016 election was Donald Trump v. Examsoft, I think I would vote for Trump.

[Ludacrispat26]

We need to keep one thing in mind about the Barbri question sets. Use Evidence as an example: On the MBE let's say that there will be 28 Evidence questions. Probably 8-9 of those will be on hearsay and its exceptions. That's 8-9 total questions on hearsay for an entire 200 question exam.

By contrast the Barbri MBE subject sets will have about 6 hearsay questions per set -- that's 30 overall. Of the 8-9 that will appear on the actual exam, you can bet that many of those will hit the big exceptions: probably business records, dying declaration, excited utterance, etc. But instead of asking you 6 excited utterance questions, Barbri seems to have taken the approach of making the sets more narrow as you go.

The reason I don't get discouraged with the subject-specific sets is because to me it's more likely that they're going to test excited utterance on the bar than they are an obscure exception for inscriptions made in a bible (which actually appears in a later Evidence set). It's just Barbri's way of exposing you to new information. In my opinion the mixed sets are most useful at this point because they seem to be tailored towards the actual ratios that subjects will appear on the bar.

Yep, agree totally here. I just did MPQ 4 and it tested whether or not a potential adverse possessor's non-payment of taxes defeats an adverse possession claim not once, but twice! (Note: in a minority of states it would, but does not for our purposes).

If anything these sets seem to be helpful for the really tricky, top 10% hardness questions we'll probably see on the exam. I think, out of the 50 I saw, only about 4-5 times was I like "well I'm positive it's this." I bet that feeling registers more often on the real exam.

[3|ink]

We need to keep one thing in mind about the Barbri question sets. Use Evidence as an example: On the MBE let's say that there will be 28 Evidence questions. Probably 8-9 of those will be on hearsay and its exceptions. That's 8-9 total questions on hearsay for an entire 200 question exam.

By contrast the Barbri MBE subject sets will have about 6 hearsay questions per set -- that's 30 overall. Of the 8-9 that will appear on the actual exam, you can bet that many of those will hit the big exceptions: probably business records, dying declaration, excited utterance, etc. But instead of asking you 6 excited utterance questions, Barbri seems to have taken the approach of making the sets more narrow as you go.

The reason I don't get discouraged with the subject-specific sets is because to me it's more likely that they're going to test excited utterance on the bar than they are an obscure exception for inscriptions made in a bible (which actually appears in a later Evidence set). It's just Barbri's way of exposing you to new information. In my opinion the mixed sets are most useful at this point because they seem to be tailored towards the actual ratios that subjects will appear on the bar.

Yep, agree totally here. I just did MPQ 4 and it tested whether or not a potential adverse possessor's non-payment of taxes defeats an adverse possession claim not once, but twice! (Note: in a minority of states it would, but does not for our purposes).

If anything these sets seem to be helpful for the really tricky, top 10% hardness questions we'll probably see on the exam. I think, out of the 50 I saw, only about 4-5 times was I like "well I'm positive it's this." I bet that feeling registers more often on the real exam.

Yeah. I did mixed set 5 yesterday and thought I failed it because I was so uncertain about nearly every answer. Somehow I maintained my ~70% average.

[charlesxavier]

With a joint tenancy between A and B, a judgment creditor against just one of them, say A, has the right to foreclose on A's share and the result would be a tenancy in common between B and Creditor/Purchaser, right?

The essay answer says "Since Creditor only has a lien, there is no break in the unity of possession and, therefore, he cannot foreclose on A's interest in the property."

I agree that there is no severance until a foreclosure sale, but I don't understand why it says "he cannot foreclose on A's interest..."
Nothing in my state specific stuff appears to clear this up.

[Kage3212]

With a joint tenancy between A and B, a judgment creditor against just one of them, say A, has the right to foreclose on A's share and the result would be a tenancy in common between B and Creditor/Purchaser, right?

The essay answer says "Since Creditor only has a lien, there is no break in the unity of possession and, therefore, he cannot foreclose on A's interest in the property."

I agree that there is no severance until a foreclosure sale, but I don't understand why it says "he cannot foreclose on A's interest..."
Nothing in my state specific stuff appears to clear this up.

Here there is a split based on the jx.

In a LIEN THEORY JX - JT can take a mortgage on her interest without severing the JT (not title passes to mortagee/bank) (majority jx). I dont think a creditor can therefore foreclose on a property unless the creditor is a creditor of BOTH joint tenants. Lien theory clearly favors the protection of the JT with regard to mortgages.

In a TITLE THEORY JX (minority) - JT is severed if any JT makes a mortage on her interest because in this jx title passes to the mortgagee when that security interest is created.

This is my understanding at least.

[cdelgado]

With a joint tenancy between A and B, a judgment creditor against just one of them, say A, has the right to foreclose on A's share and the result would be a tenancy in common between B and Creditor/Purchaser, right?

The essay answer says "Since Creditor only has a lien, there is no break in the unity of possession and, therefore, he cannot foreclose on A's interest in the property."

I agree that there is no severance until a foreclosure sale, but I don't understand why it says "he cannot foreclose on A's interest..."
Nothing in my state specific stuff appears to clear this up.

Here there is a split based on the jx.

In a LIEN THEORY JX - JT can take a mortgage on her interest without severing the JT (not title passes to mortagee/bank) (majority jx). I dont think a creditor can therefore foreclose on a property unless the creditor is a creditor of BOTH joint tenants. Lien theory clearly favors the protection of the JT with regard to mortgages.

In a TITLE THEORY JX (minority) - JT is severed if any JT makes a mortage on her interest because in this jx title passes to the mortgagee when that security interest is created.

This is my understanding at least.

That essay answer was off for sure, at least with respect to that spouse's interest.

The title/lien only applies in cases of mortgages, I'm pretty sure. In cases of judgment creditors, once foreclosure occurs, then the JT is severed and a TIC is created. So, I think your assessment is right.

[charlesxavier]

With a joint tenancy between A and B, a judgment creditor against just one of them, say A, has the right to foreclose on A's share and the result would be a tenancy in common between B and Creditor/Purchaser, right?

The essay answer says "Since Creditor only has a lien, there is no break in the unity of possession and, therefore, he cannot foreclose on A's interest in the property."

I agree that there is no severance until a foreclosure sale, but I don't understand why it says "he cannot foreclose on A's interest..."
Nothing in my state specific stuff appears to clear this up.

Here there is a split based on the jx.

In a LIEN THEORY JX - JT can take a mortgage on her interest without severing the JT (not title passes to mortagee/bank) (majority jx). I dont think a creditor can therefore foreclose on a property unless the creditor is a creditor of BOTH joint tenants. Lien theory clearly favors the protection of the JT with regard to mortgages.

In a TITLE THEORY JX (minority) - JT is severed if any JT makes a mortage on her interest because in this jx title passes to the mortgagee when that security interest is created.

This is my understanding at least.

I thought in a Lien Theory JX taking mortgaging your JT interest doesn't automatically sever the interest however if you don't pay they can foreclose and sell, which severs?

Pg. 44 of the Multistate Outline discusses liens and the example says (paraphrased):

"A and B own land as JT. P obtains and records a judgment against A. If A dies at that point, B owns the entire land, and P has a lien on nothing. However, assume that P has a judgment sale (foreclosure), and a sheriff's deed is issued to X, who buys at the sale. Then A dies. B and X each on 1/2 as TIC."

Honestly, it was a crappy answer/question. Basically you were told the Creditor filed a complaint in foreclosure, A&B filed a motion for summary judgment, and asked to respond.

[BVest]

The title/lien [theory differentiation] only applies in cases of mortgages

This is correct. And the OP was asking about a judgment lien rather than a mortgage.

I don't know about the remainder of the analysis about not being able to foreclose on a lien against a JT without the lien applying to both (or all) JTs, but that would seem to run counter to any common sense. Otherwise a lien against a JT is effectively worthless.

[diowad]

Just did the first 50 of Emanuel's 200 Q mixed set. Did surprisingly poorly on it, as I only got 33/50. Questions seemed considerably more difficult and obscure than the subject-specific ones I had been doing. There was a crim pro question that invoked some SCOTUS case from the 1880's about pursuing a suspect beyond national borders that I had never heard of.

[atticus89]

Just did the first 50 of Emanuel's 200 Q mixed set. Did surprisingly poorly on it, as I only got 33/50. Questions seemed considerably more difficult and obscure than the subject-specific ones I had been doing. There was a crim pro question that invoked some SCOTUS case from the 1880's about pursuing a suspect beyond national borders that I had never heard of.

You're not alone. I divided it up the same way, did much better on the 2nd set of 50. I was doing better on the subject-specific sets than I had been doing on Barbri, so I'm not sure what is up with the Emanuel's mixed set.

[Good Guy Gaud]

Anyone else completed the BarBri half day MBE?

[Benjamin1987]

What is the consensus on how much of the PSP we should be aiming to finish? 100? 75%? I think in the introduction they said that of those students who finished 75% of the PSP, virtually no one didn't pass.

Sorry if this has already been discussed.

[charlesxavier]

What is the consensus on how much of the PSP we should be aiming to finish? 100? 75%? I think in the introduction they said that of those students who finished 75% of the PSP, virtually no one didn't pass.

Sorry if this has already been discussed.

It probably depends on if you're behind or not. My PSP is mostly essays and review from here on out so it's pretty easy to handle. However, if I was way behind it would probably be better to go off script. Barbri said my school was 100% pass rate last year for those who hit 75% on their PSP.