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freewing

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how to prepare during the last month

Post by freewing » Sat Feb 03, 2018 2:43 am

I am a new york admitted attorney and moved to california recently. I only need to take the essay and PT exam, and chose not to take the MBE. this is my second time try to take the exam. Now there is only one month left. I am reviewing all essays posted on bar admission website from 2012 to 2017. I also want to finish reviewing once again the outline of all subjects. I wonder if I should also find time to do MBE simulated exam because I feel MBE covers most testing points that essay may possibly test as well. Time is limited, and it seems I cannot finish all my objectives (reviewing outline once again and do MBE). I would appreciate some advice re how to prioritize study assignments to be most efficient during the last month. I still feel I should do more MBE although I am not tested on that.

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RCinDNA

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Re: how to prepare during the last month

Post by RCinDNA » Sat Feb 03, 2018 1:04 pm

I am not barred, yet, but I have to ask why would would you bother studying for an area of the test you are not taking?

It seems to me you should be re-reviewing outlines, taking notes, and doing practice essays and MPTs. The MBE is certainly important but the sheer reality is that it tests nuances that may never come up in an essay testing scenario...

valentina

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Re: how to prepare during the last month

Post by valentina » Sat Feb 03, 2018 8:34 pm

I'm a 10+ year barred attorney in another jurisdiction and just passed the July California Attorney's Exam.

You are wasting your time doing MBE questions. The Attorney's Exam is a different beast, so you have to study differently. Get an account on baressays.com and literally do every. single. available. exam. Every one! Start with issue spotting - this is the key to excelling on the essays. You don't get points for an issue you don't spot. Then move on to outlining essays once you are more familiar with tying issues with the facts given. Finally, start writing out full essays under timed conditions. Three of the five essays on the exam I passed were nearly identical to fact patterns I had already done. I felt extremely confident writing them out. I felt the most confident about the remedies essay, in particular. When I finished it, I knew I had not missed a single issue, had IRAC'd perfectly, and had pretty much knocked it out of park.

For the PT, remember to always start with the library first (in the exam I took, it was one court case) and then read the file that contains the facts. The facts will fit in with the case law and it'll be easy for you to see where. Make sure to IRAC the hell out of PT just like with the essays, but also adopt the tone that they ask for (objective vs persuasive).

I did not use a commercial bar course and was only able to study for five weeks due to an unexpected death in my family. I was able to pass using the above strategy.

freewing

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Re: how to prepare during the last month

Post by freewing » Sun Feb 04, 2018 6:13 pm

Thank you!

freewing

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Re: how to prepare during the last month

Post by freewing » Sun Feb 04, 2018 7:26 pm

valentina wrote:I'm a 10+ year barred attorney in another jurisdiction and just passed the July California Attorney's Exam.

You are wasting your time doing MBE questions. The Attorney's Exam is a different beast, so you have to study differently. Get an account on baressays.com and literally do every. single. available. exam. Every one! Start with issue spotting - this is the key to excelling on the essays. You don't get points for an issue you don't spot. Then move on to outlining essays once you are more familiar with tying issues with the facts given. Finally, start writing out full essays under timed conditions. Three of the five essays on the exam I passed were nearly identical to fact patterns I had already done. I felt extremely confident writing them out. I felt the most confident about the remedies essay, in particular. When I finished it, I knew I had not missed a single issue, had IRAC'd perfectly, and had pretty much knocked it out of park.

For the PT, remember to always start with the library first (in the exam I took, it was one court case) and then read the file that contains the facts. The facts will fit in with the case law and it'll be easy for you to see where. Make sure to IRAC the hell out of PT just like with the essays, but also adopt the tone that they ask for (objective vs persuasive).

I did not use a commercial bar course and was only able to study for five weeks due to an unexpected death in my family. I was able to pass using the above strategy.
I have signed up with baressays. As of today, I have outlined the 8 essays per subject with barbri, and have reviewed 2012 to 2017 essays but did not outline or write full essays of them. For the time left, I can review 2012 to 2017 essays for twice or review more essays from 2011 and earlier. Which way do you suggest? I also need time to prepare PT and start writing full essays.

From 2010 to 2017, there are about 203 essays. How many essays did you tie issues with, how many did you outline, and how many did you actually write out the full essays? How did you allocate time during 5 weeks?

Thank you very much for your advice!

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valentina

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Re: how to prepare during the last month

Post by valentina » Mon Feb 05, 2018 5:56 pm

freewing wrote:
valentina wrote:I'm a 10+ year barred attorney in another jurisdiction and just passed the July California Attorney's Exam.

You are wasting your time doing MBE questions. The Attorney's Exam is a different beast, so you have to study differently. Get an account on baressays.com and literally do every. single. available. exam. Every one! Start with issue spotting - this is the key to excelling on the essays. You don't get points for an issue you don't spot. Then move on to outlining essays once you are more familiar with tying issues with the facts given. Finally, start writing out full essays under timed conditions. Three of the five essays on the exam I passed were nearly identical to fact patterns I had already done. I felt extremely confident writing them out. I felt the most confident about the remedies essay, in particular. When I finished it, I knew I had not missed a single issue, had IRAC'd perfectly, and had pretty much knocked it out of park.

For the PT, remember to always start with the library first (in the exam I took, it was one court case) and then read the file that contains the facts. The facts will fit in with the case law and it'll be easy for you to see where. Make sure to IRAC the hell out of PT just like with the essays, but also adopt the tone that they ask for (objective vs persuasive).

I did not use a commercial bar course and was only able to study for five weeks due to an unexpected death in my family. I was able to pass using the above strategy.
I have signed up with baressays. As of today, I have outlined the 8 essays per subject with barbri, and have reviewed 2012 to 2017 essays but did not outline or write full essays of them. For the time left, I can review 2012 to 2017 essays for twice or review more essays from 2011 and earlier. Which way do you suggest? I also need time to prepare PT and start writing full essays.

From 2010 to 2017, there are about 203 essays. How many essays did you tie issues with, how many did you outline, and how many did you actually write out the full essays? How did you allocate time during 5 weeks?

Thank you very much for your advice!
Pick the subject you want to study - say, Con Law. Go on baressays.com and download and print every available essay. Take one day to look them all over for issue spotting and for outlining. You can do these two steps simultaneously, and it should take you a while. When you review your outlines and compare them to higher scoring essays, make notes of what those high scoring essays did - how did they IRAC? What rules did you need to pull out based on the facts? This should take you a full day to do, depending on how many essays are available.

The next day, take all of those same essays and outline and write them out, as best you can. They should be fresh in your mind. You will start seeing patterns emerge in the questions the more you review them. Remember that the bar examiners can only test certain legal concepts in very specific ways, so things tend to get repetitive after a while. Write out those essays for 2 - 3 days and then move on to the next subject. I got into the habit of re-reading my essays frequently to keep things fresh, especially after I'd moved on from a subject.

A caveat: I had such limited time to study that I relied pretty heavily on the "predicted" subjects, to my benefit. Things could've gone wildly wrong! I probably wouldn't have passed if I'd faced a Business Associations or a Trusts essay on my exam, I barely glanced at those materials. Instead, I focused heavily on subjects that I felt had a good chance of showing up on my bar exam - CP, professional responsibility (know this inside and out - they test this every administration, so this shouldn't be a surprise to you), and remedies. Torts kind of threw me for a loop (I wasn't expecting a negligence question, more a strict liability/privacy torts prompt), but I'm a civil litigator by trade, so I can crush a negligence essay pretty handedly even with a cursory review of prep materials. Civ Pro I also wasn't expecting, but again, my experience in a court and handling cases in active litigation really helped with that, too. I'm not sure what subjects are being predicted this time around, but from what I've heard from friends taking the next bar, they are focusing a lot on Con Law, Contracts, Property, and Wills (and of course, PR). Take that for what you will.

Good luck!

freewing

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Re: how to prepare during the last month

Post by freewing » Mon Feb 05, 2018 6:37 pm

Thank you for your advice!

Snowflake1

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Re: how to prepare during the last month

Post by Snowflake1 » Sat Feb 10, 2018 11:17 pm

valentina wrote:
freewing wrote:
valentina wrote:I'm a 10+ year barred attorney in another jurisdiction and just passed the July California Attorney's Exam.

You are wasting your time doing MBE questions. The Attorney's Exam is a different beast, so you have to study differently. Get an account on baressays.com and literally do every. single. available. exam. Every one! Start with issue spotting - this is the key to excelling on the essays. You don't get points for an issue you don't spot. Then move on to outlining essays once you are more familiar with tying issues with the facts given. Finally, start writing out full essays under timed conditions. Three of the five essays on the exam I passed were nearly identical to fact patterns I had already done. I felt extremely confident writing them out. I felt the most confident about the remedies essay, in particular. When I finished it, I knew I had not missed a single issue, had IRAC'd perfectly, and had pretty much knocked it out of park.

For the PT, remember to always start with the library first (in the exam I took, it was one court case) and then read the file that contains the facts. The facts will fit in with the case law and it'll be easy for you to see where. Make sure to IRAC the hell out of PT just like with the essays, but also adopt the tone that they ask for (objective vs persuasive).

I did not use a commercial bar course and was only able to study for five weeks due to an unexpected death in my family. I was able to pass using the above strategy.
I have signed up with baressays. As of today, I have outlined the 8 essays per subject with barbri, and have reviewed 2012 to 2017 essays but did not outline or write full essays of them. For the time left, I can review 2012 to 2017 essays for twice or review more essays from 2011 and earlier. Which way do you suggest? I also need time to prepare PT and start writing full essays.

From 2010 to 2017, there are about 203 essays. How many essays did you tie issues with, how many did you outline, and how many did you actually write out the full essays? How did you allocate time during 5 weeks?

Thank you very much for your advice!
Pick the subject you want to study - say, Con Law. Go on baressays.com and download and print every available essay. Take one day to look them all over for issue spotting and for outlining. You can do these two steps simultaneously, and it should take you a while. When you review your outlines and compare them to higher scoring essays, make notes of what those high scoring essays did - how did they IRAC? What rules did you need to pull out based on the facts? This should take you a full day to do, depending on how many essays are available.

The next day, take all of those same essays and outline and write them out, as best you can. They should be fresh in your mind. You will start seeing patterns emerge in the questions the more you review them. Remember that the bar examiners can only test certain legal concepts in very specific ways, so things tend to get repetitive after a while. Write out those essays for 2 - 3 days and then move on to the next subject. I got into the habit of re-reading my essays frequently to keep things fresh, especially after I'd moved on from a subject.

A caveat: I had such limited time to study that I relied pretty heavily on the "predicted" subjects, to my benefit. Things could've gone wildly wrong! I probably wouldn't have passed if I'd faced a Business Associations or a Trusts essay on my exam, I barely glanced at those materials. Instead, I focused heavily on subjects that I felt had a good chance of showing up on my bar exam - CP, professional responsibility (know this inside and out - they test this every administration, so this shouldn't be a surprise to you), and remedies. Torts kind of threw me for a loop (I wasn't expecting a negligence question, more a strict liability/privacy torts prompt), but I'm a civil litigator by trade, so I can crush a negligence essay pretty handedly even with a cursory review of prep materials. Civ Pro I also wasn't expecting, but again, my experience in a court and handling cases in active litigation really helped with that, too. I'm not sure what subjects are being predicted this time around, but from what I've heard from friends taking the next bar, they are focusing a lot on Con Law, Contracts, Property, and Wills (and of course, PR). Take that for what you will.

Good luck!
+1 - I agree with this strategy.

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