Themis Bar Review Hangout - July 2016 Forum

[psm11]

Fellow CA bar takers, what did you think of the graded con law essay (guy denied spot on cheerleading squad)? Was getting 65s and even a 75 on the other graded ones but got a 50 on that. Halfway through writing it, I realized I was focusing on all the wrong issues and deleted everything and started over with about 15 mins left. Although, after reading the sample I would have been better off leaving what I wrote.

Anyway, in the post essay lecture the guy said it was "atypical" and there hasn't been one like it since 2002. Really hope another one like that doesn't appear. Not feeling great about con law.

[BarPreppin'12]

Anyone having problems with the essays? It seems like I can't remember the rules at all when doing them. I score between 60-70 on MBE questions usually, but I can't seem to do well on essays. Although I do t do this on graded essays, for regular, non graded ones, I usually am forced to look in the outlook book. We are a month away from exams and it is extremely disappointing to be doing this poorly on the essay questions. Anyone have any advise?

This is me. I'm doing well on MBE's but I can't write the rules from scratch. I know the rules but when I have to write it, I just miss it.

I'm using a flash card type system so I can memorize them. Memorizing the law cold isn't something I did in law school, so it's going to be a different experience.

Same with me. Most of my exams in law school were open book exams. Moreover, on essay exams, it was usually a discrete subject, not 3-4 wrapped into one out of a possible 19. For Florida, the bar examiners can choose from 19 subjects. Some of the subjects, like family, have over 10 facts to consider. That's fine. I can learn 10 factors. But 10 factors in family law, the hundreds of different factors in torts and criminal law, the intricacies of Trusts, among the many other things makes it very difficult. That + it is all mixed up. I could have a Family law question with a Dependency + Juvenile question wrapped up, topped off with Ethics. It is just so overwhelming.

Yes, exactly. And I find the essay grader's feedback to be totally unhelpful "this is confusing, read the sample answer" "you should have expanded more, read the sample answer" and then the grade is so low. But they don't give us a scored sample answer, so it doesn't help me personally if I don't know what I'm comparing my answer against.

Yeah. Out of curiosity, I wonder if someone would copy the sample answer verbatim, would that be enough to get the maximum number of points. Also, my essay grader does this, "You got the concept down, but you haven't shown mastery of the rules. You need to memorize it." My retort would be, "You try memorizing 19 possible subjects, show mastery, all in a 2 month period, with most of the subjects being completely new."

Since they are attorneys, they have tried at least?

No, they haven't. Because unless they are recent admitted attorney's, they had less subjects. Moreover, the Florida Bar Exam has been consistently getting harder and harder as time went on. That is not a disputed fact. It has generally been a consensus that this is, indeed, true.

Also my grader is wrong, mastery is not required. The target score from what I understand on the essays is a 44. If it's a 44 out of a possible 100, that's a 44%. Meaning, in grade terms, that's an F. In other terms, that's spotting less than half the issues, that's explaining less than half of what is needed to be explained, that is less than half of the analysis that could be gotten from a particular essay.

In other words, if the goal is a 62-63% on the Multiple Choice, and a 44 on the essay, they is not even close to mastery.

[minimumcontacts]

I recognize this is probably my late night paranoia, but I'm curious how all of you are handling this. I'm taking MA, where Themis' pass rate is 93+% for those who complete 75% of the course (96% in 2015). I started a few days late because of when my graduation was, so I'm at 51% now. Obviously I would like to do as much as possible in terms of subjects so that I don't see an essay question on something I don't have a clue on, but I also don't want to drive myself insane if the result is the same as if I took it a little easier and kept my sanity. 2%/day is manageable (100% completion), but on days where I do my tougher subjects and outline/review outside of themis time, it's brutal.

For those of you who are aiming for less than 100% completion, what aren't you doing? I just took secured this past semester, so I plan on reviewing the outline, but the lectures are low priority because I have some catching up to do. Are you substituting your time with other prep materials? I have the law in a flash cards, but those are more for on the go/quick study sessions when I don't have ~45 minutes to do some MBEs.

[Rahviveh]

Gonna have to spend a whole day learning secured transactions. What a god awful subject

[1down1togo]

I recognize this is probably my late night paranoia, but I'm curious how all of you are handling this. I'm taking MA, where Themis' pass rate is 93+% for those who complete 75% of the course (96% in 2015). I started a few days late because of when my graduation was, so I'm at 51% now. Obviously I would like to do as much as possible in terms of subjects so that I don't see an essay question on something I don't have a clue on, but I also don't want to drive myself insane if the result is the same as if I took it a little easier and kept my sanity. 2%/day is manageable (100% completion), but on days where I do my tougher subjects and outline/review outside of themis time, it's brutal.

For those of you who are aiming for less than 100% completion, what aren't you doing? I just took secured this past semester, so I plan on reviewing the outline, but the lectures are low priority because I have some catching up to do. Are you substituting your time with other prep materials? I have the law in a flash cards, but those are more for on the go/quick study sessions when I don't have ~45 minutes to do some MBEs.

Email your state director and ask them. I imagine they know more about Where to focus your time the. We do

[NaeDeen]

I recognize this is probably my late night paranoia, but I'm curious how all of you are handling this. I'm taking MA, where Themis' pass rate is 93+% for those who complete 75% of the course (96% in 2015). I started a few days late because of when my graduation was, so I'm at 51% now. Obviously I would like to do as much as possible in terms of subjects so that I don't see an essay question on something I don't have a clue on, but I also don't want to drive myself insane if the result is the same as if I took it a little easier and kept my sanity. 2%/day is manageable (100% completion), but on days where I do my tougher subjects and outline/review outside of themis time, it's brutal.

For those of you who are aiming for less than 100% completion, what aren't you doing? I just took secured this past semester, so I plan on reviewing the outline, but the lectures are low priority because I have some catching up to do. Are you substituting your time with other prep materials? I have the law in a flash cards, but those are more for on the go/quick study sessions when I don't have ~45 minutes to do some MBEs.

I started super early but got derailed by external circumstances. In addition, I lost my job at the end of May so that gave me all the time I need to study plus extra time to cry/panic about my finances. And I just hit 50% last night. Here's what I did and now I can finally breathe--I put the remaining lectures on 2x, 2.25x, 2.5x (depending on how fast the professor talks) and filled out the handouts.

I am like you, I work on creating outlines which takes an unbelievably incredible amount of time--a 45 page handout can take me all friggin' day with like an hour to spare before bed time. I was able to complete 8 lectures in two days. Now for those remaining 8 lectures, I do one outline a day and then I tackle something on the Themis site. I have several 20 page handouts so that's about 4-6 hours of creating and another 8 hours to complete the stuff that Themis schedules.

In addition, I'm using Emanuel's Strategies & Tactics book--so far it's helped me. However, I do caution that if you read it, take notes on how to attack MBE sections, they are very very very valid. I also use MBE Essentials by Silverman--it's just an Q & A book for highly tested MBE topic and it's in english! LOL. I also practice my essays using my outline by just rewriting rule statements and not doing analysis--analysis is the easy part, if you know the rules, you can apply them. If you don't, well then you're shit out of luck. Given that memorizing 19 subjects is not a feat I've ever attempted, I figure that my best bet is to work on strict memorization of rule statements for essays ONLY. For MBE I work on application, those bastards are ridiculously tricky.

Another thing I did was skip workshops that were not necessary by clicking on the chapter and then clicking next video. B/c there are no assessment qs associated with workshops, you get credit just by opening the video. I also didn't do the assessment qs at the end of each lecture chapter--I just click D & submitted the answer...saved a good amount of time. I also skipped the AQs by doing them all, once again just choosing answer choice D. That brought my % up and got that out of the way.

Good luck....just remember YOU GOT THIS!

[NaeDeen]

I recognize this is probably my late night paranoia, but I'm curious how all of you are handling this. I'm taking MA, where Themis' pass rate is 93+% for those who complete 75% of the course (96% in 2015). I started a few days late because of when my graduation was, so I'm at 51% now. Obviously I would like to do as much as possible in terms of subjects so that I don't see an essay question on something I don't have a clue on, but I also don't want to drive myself insane if the result is the same as if I took it a little easier and kept my sanity. 2%/day is manageable (100% completion), but on days where I do my tougher subjects and outline/review outside of themis time, it's brutal.

For those of you who are aiming for less than 100% completion, what aren't you doing? I just took secured this past semester, so I plan on reviewing the outline, but the lectures are low priority because I have some catching up to do. Are you substituting your time with other prep materials? I have the law in a flash cards, but those are more for on the go/quick study sessions when I don't have ~45 minutes to do some MBEs.

Getting lectures out of the way is great because it leaves you with only the practical stuff that is crucial for passing. Don't panic...once you figure out what works for you, it's smooth sailing.

[Easy-E]

Ugh. Supposed to start the day with a property PQ set. Tough sell.

[Chardee_MacDennis]

Gonna have to spend a whole day learning secured transactions. What a god awful subject

For the first time ever, I'm actually glad I took sec trans 2L year.

[Vantwins]

Gonna have to spend a whole day learning secured transactions. What a god awful subject

That was me yesterday, today is Advanced Sales. I'm so over the UCC. At least it's Geis. Family Law tomorrow and then I'm done with my lectures finally. Friends staying with us Sunday - Tuesday morning, so I've got to work my butt off on Saturday.

[Chardee_MacDennis]

For those taking IL: am I understanding correctly that commercial paper is neither an MEE nor IEE subject?

[BarPreppin'12]

Gonna have to spend a whole day learning secured transactions. What a god awful subject

I agree. It's my worst subject, and I've never taken it in law school. Although I did take an introductory commercial paper class in undergrad because I needed credit.


Are you all really memorizing stuff, or just trying to understand concepts that you can spit out on the exam?

[Vantwins]

Gonna have to spend a whole day learning secured transactions. What a god awful subject

I agree. It's my worst subject, and I've never taken it in law school. Although I did take an introductory commercial paper class in undergrad because I needed credit.


Are you all really memorizing stuff, or just trying to understand concepts that you can spit out on the exam?

I remember for the VA Bar Exam, I got a commercial paper essay and the best I could do was say, "this is a commercial paper issue" and then literally just wrote down everything I could remember whether relevant or not and didn't bother trying to relate it to the facts. I passed anyway (presumably helped along by doing better on all the other essays)!

[Fivedham]

I spent like four hours yesterday re-learning mortgages, because that's my single weakest subtopic according to Themis and AdaptiBar. I feel pretty damn comfortable with it, pretty much like I mastered it at the end. Nice feeling.

Then I got a crazy ass question about marshaling of assets, which is supposedly a mortgages question. WTF does that even mean!? Anyway, I at least have put not getting mortgages behind me. Apparently a lot of my problems stemmed from not getting liabilities of transferees and subsequent transferees, and not getting the difference between "subject to the mortgage" and "assumed the mortgage."

[Rahviveh]

Gonna have to spend a whole day learning secured transactions. What a god awful subject

I agree. It's my worst subject, and I've never taken it in law school. Although I did take an introductory commercial paper class in undergrad because I needed credit.


Are you all really memorizing stuff, or just trying to understand concepts that you can spit out on the exam?

For the MBE I'm mostly just trying to understand. For some of the harder MEE topics like SecTrans I'm trying to memorize the general rules.

If you have access to a big question bank like adaptibar then deliberate memorization isn't necessary. Your brain will absorb the law as you do the practice questions.

[grizz91]

Anyone see/have any predictions for the MEE? They should start popping up online within the next few weeks.

[ndp1234]

Anyone see/have any predictions for the MEE? They should start popping up online within the next few weeks.

I saw one on Reddit, but didn't look too credible. That person predicted Civ Pro, Real Property, Contracts, Crim Pro, Corporations, Trusts. The wildcard subjects were Family Law and Torts.

[Easy-E]

Anyone see/have any predictions for the MEE? They should start popping up online within the next few weeks.

I'm waiting on efficientbarprep.com

[Nebby]

For those taking IL: am I understanding correctly that commercial paper is neither an MEE nor IEE subject?

I think it's on the IEE

[Nebby]

Anyone see/have any predictions for the MEE? They should start popping up online within the next few weeks.

What do you mean they will be popping up online?

[grizz91]

For those taking IL: am I understanding correctly that commercial paper is neither an MEE nor IEE subject?

I think it's on the IEE

It's on the IEE, but only been tested once (Feb 2012).

[Rahviveh]

Anyone see/have any predictions for the MEE? They should start popping up online within the next few weeks.

I saw one on Reddit, but didn't look too credible. That person predicted Civ Pro, Real Property, Contracts, Crim Pro, Corporations, Trusts. The wildcard subjects were Family Law and Torts.

Is there a general expectation as to how many non-MBE topics we will get? Like are there usually 2-3 out of the six that are gonna be family law, trusts, and other shit lke that?

[grizz91]

Anyone see/have any predictions for the MEE? They should start popping up online within the next few weeks.

What do you mean they will be popping up online?

A lot of commercial bar prep websites will post their predictions online. BarExamSecrets.com posted theirs recently for the Cali bar, they got all but one right for the Feb bar.

[Nebby]

Anyone see/have any predictions for the MEE? They should start popping up online within the next few weeks.

What do you mean they will be popping up online?

A lot of commercial bar prep websites will post their predictions online. BarExamSecrets.com posted theirs recently for the Cali bar, they got all but one right for the Feb bar.

omg I didn't know this was a thing

[BarPreppin'12]

Gonna have to spend a whole day learning secured transactions. What a god awful subject

I agree. It's my worst subject, and I've never taken it in law school. Although I did take an introductory commercial paper class in undergrad because I needed credit.


Are you all really memorizing stuff, or just trying to understand concepts that you can spit out on the exam?

For the MBE I'm mostly just trying to understand. For some of the harder MEE topics like SecTrans I'm trying to memorize the general rules.

If you have access to a big question bank like adaptibar then deliberate memorization isn't necessary. Your brain will absorb the law as you do the practice questions.

Thanks for the input. Yeah, I've been doing adaptibar like a madman trying to familiarize myself with the types of questions. I wish there was an adaptibar-type program for state multiple choice questions. In Florida, the second half of the Florida portion is multiple choice.