BarBri Bar Review Hangout - February 2016 Exam Forum

[gtg]

Has anyone watched/listened to the MPT Workshop Lecture? Is it worth the 4 hours?

[barprepblues]

Has anyone ever received an essay score above 60 on any of the Barbri essays yet? I can't tell if they're purposely low-grading us or if I really am this bad at essays.

[jr6]

Can any re-takers comment on the difference between Barbri's MPQ sets and what we'll see on the real MBE? I've heard that they're substantially different but not really much as to how. Are the questions in the "Released MBE Sets" on Enrolled Student Center more like the real thing? My scores are fluctuating between the two, so I'm curious. TYIA. Hope everyone's having a productive week! Here's to another sober weekend at home alone.

My recollection of barbri questions was that you could almost always get it down to two possible answers, but eliminating the last wrong answer / picking the right answer from those two was where the difficulty lie. On the real MBE, I frequently found myself either unable to eliminate more than one (or any) wrong answers on my first run through, or, alternately, eliminating all four answers and having to start over.

100% agree with this sentiment. I highly recommend purchasing one of the OPE's from the NCBE website if you aren't using adaptibar to get a sense of what the questions are like. I did OPE 4 about a week and a half before the exam and I was surprised by the differences but glad I did it.

[BVest]

Has anyone watched/listened to the MPT Workshop Lecture? Is it worth the 4 hours?

I watched it in the summer. It was mildly helpful in giving you a game plan of the order in which to read stuff. Here were my takeaways (as posted in the Texas thread):

For the MPT, the two most important rules (both from barbri's lessons, but they rang very true:

(1) The question tells you what the issues are explicitly.* You should not vary from these issues.

(2) Read and outline for about 40-45 minutes total, then start writing.

BTW, NCBE has past exams on its website from a handful of years, plus it has a brief summary of all the questions for the past 5 years on its site so that you can see what all they've tested. Texas only does one of the two tests from each administration. In July it was the "In Re Bryan Carr" question. Here's the link: http://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt/preparing/




*For example, say the call of the question is "Please draft only the 'Body of the Argument' for our Motion for Summary Judgment arguing that Dodson owed no duty to Potter, on the grounds that 1) under the Franklin common law, a landowner owes no duty to maintain a safe premises for trespassers, and 2) the open front door and 'welcome' sign on the front of a residence do not, by themselves, change a trespasser to that of a licensee." In that case, you should just go ahead and type up your two main issue headings as:

A. Under the Franklin common law, a landowner owes no duty to maintain a safe premises for trespassers.

B. An open front door and "welcome" sign on the front of a residence do not, by themselves, change a trespasser to a licensee.

You can change them slightly to be grammatically correct or use subheadings as necessary, but the question asked for those two issues and doing anything else is not answering the question asked.

Also, the lecture isn't 4 hours as it gives you time to work on the practice MPT, so a lot of time is just a blue screen with timer.

[jackbauer10]

100% agree with this sentiment. I highly recommend purchasing one of the OPE's from the NCBE website if you aren't using adaptibar to get a sense of what the questions are like. I did OPE 4 about a week and a half before the exam and I was surprised by the differences but glad I did it.

Did not know the OPE's were a thing. I'll definitely be purchasing one. Thank you for the tip!

[gtg]

Has anyone watched/listened to the MPT Workshop Lecture? Is it worth the 4 hours?

I watched it in the summer. It was mildly helpful in giving you a game plan of the order in which to read stuff. Here were my takeaways (as posted in the Texas thread):

For the MPT, the two most important rules (both from barbri's lessons, but they rang very true:

(1) The question tells you what the issues are explicitly.* You should not vary from these issues.

(2) Read and outline for about 40-45 minutes total, then start writing.

BTW, NCBE has past exams on its website from a handful of years, plus it has a brief summary of all the questions for the past 5 years on its site so that you can see what all they've tested. Texas only does one of the two tests from each administration. In July it was the "In Re Bryan Carr" question. Here's the link: http://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt/preparing/




*For example, say the call of the question is "Please draft only the 'Body of the Argument' for our Motion for Summary Judgment arguing that Dodson owed no duty to Potter, on the grounds that 1) under the Franklin common law, a landowner owes no duty to maintain a safe premises for trespassers, and 2) the open front door and 'welcome' sign on the front of a residence do not, by themselves, change a trespasser to that of a licensee." In that case, you should just go ahead and type up your two main issue headings as:

A. Under the Franklin common law, a landowner owes no duty to maintain a safe premises for trespassers.

B. An open front door and "welcome" sign on the front of a residence do not, by themselves, change a trespasser to a licensee.

You can change them slightly to be grammatically correct or use subheadings as necessary, but the question asked for those two issues and doing anything else is not answering the question asked.

Also, the lecture isn't 4 hours as it gives you time to work on the practice MPT, so a lot of time is just a blue screen with timer.

Thanks a lot! You've been a real help with all your valuable input.

[NY_Sea]

BVest for MVP

[MrMustache]

Constitutional lecture is the worst one so far, I have no idea how people were able to write down walls of text while watching the lecture in real-time.

[fadedsunrise]

Has anyone ever received an essay score above 60 on any of the Barbri essays yet? I can't tell if they're purposely low-grading us or if I really am this bad at essays.

Maybe I just got lucky but I think my graded assignments so far have been helpful. They gave me a 65 for the graded PT and a 60 for the graded evidence essay, and after reading the comments I think I'd agree for the most part. My 65 had the majority of the details of the model answer but I didn't use enough headings and had long paragraphs. My 60 missed some issues and I got some of the analysis wrong[like going into not authenticating the husband's card when it should have come out the other way], also with not enough headings.

Their comments are also pretty detailed, if nitpicky. I got notes on not having the most complete rule statements more than a few times.

[MrMustache]

Has anyone ever received an essay score above 60 on any of the Barbri essays yet? I can't tell if they're purposely low-grading us or if I really am this bad at essays.

I got a 55 for my torts essay, with detailed comments about what I was doing incorrectly. Today I got my evidence essay back and got a 65, after using suggestions from my torts essay,

[fadedsunrise]

Constitutional lecture is the worst one so far, I have no idea how people were able to write down walls of text while watching the lecture in real-time.

Chemerinsky, right? His voice drones but I'm oddly fascinated by his encyclopedia like knowledge of con law and am able to pay attention because of it.

[MrMustache]

Constitutional lecture is the worst one so far, I have no idea how people were able to write down walls of text while watching the lecture in real-time.

Chemerinsky, right? His voice drones but I'm oddly fascinated by his encyclopedia like knowledge of con law and am able to pay attention because of it.

Yeap, that's the one. It's hard to pay attention when I have to constantly pause and rewind to write down what he said Also, he has got to be reading off of a teleprompter, otherwise it would be freaky just how well he has his outline memorized.

[lawst_]

Saw Barbri's message about the mini review on the MBE topics. Have any of the second time takers previously done this? Is it worth it?

[MrMustache]

Hey guys, could any of you help me out with a torts question?

Torts Set 4, Question 15

A patient needing an ankle surgery signs consent forms and liability waivers. Due to an emergency, her original surgeon asks the head of orthopedic surgery, who is also the leading authority on ankle surgery, to replace him. The patient was sedated so she couldn't consent to the switch. He performs the operation and it's a complete success. Patient sues for battery.

I don't know if my brain is fried from a long day of study, but I cannot figure out how this is harmful [operation was a complete success], or offensive [original surgeon replaced by an even better surgeon] contact. Official explanation states that it's harmful or offensive because she did not consent to this particular surgeon.

What confuses me is that she couldn't consent at the moment even if she wanted to, and only learned about what happened after the fact.

Am I thrown off by False Imprisonment which requires that the plaintiff must either know of the confinement or be harmed by it?

Should I assume from this point on that if there is no consent, whether real or implied, then contact is automatically offensive?

[FinallyPassedTheBar]

Constitutional lecture is the worst one so far, I have no idea how people were able to write down walls of text while watching the lecture in real-time.

Chemerinsky, right? His voice drones but I'm oddly fascinated by his encyclopedia like knowledge of con law and am able to pay attention because of it.

Yeap, that's the one. It's hard to pay attention when I have to constantly pause and rewind to write down what he said Also, he has got to be reading off of a teleprompter, otherwise it would be freaky just how well he has his outline memorized.

I saw his lecture live a few years back...no teleprompter.

[BVest]

Hey guys, could any of you help me out with a torts question?

Torts Set 4, Question 15

A patient needing an ankle surgery signs consent forms and liability waivers. Due to an emergency, her original surgeon asks the head of orthopedic surgery, who is also the leading authority on ankle surgery, to replace him. The patient was sedated so she couldn't consent to the switch. He performs the operation and it's a complete success. Patient sues for battery.

I don't know if my brain is fried from a long day of study, but I cannot figure out how this is harmful [operation was a complete success], or offensive [original surgeon replaced by an even better surgeon] contact. Official explanation states that it's harmful or offensive because she did not consent to this particular surgeon.

What confuses me is that she couldn't consent at the moment even if she wanted to, and only learned about what happened after the fact.

Am I thrown off by False Imprisonment which requires that the plaintiff must either know of the confinement or be harmed by it?

Should I assume from this point on that if there is no consent, whether real or implied, then contact is automatically offensive?

You are likely getting thrown off by the requirement of knowledge/harm from FI.

Replacement surgeon without consent is always battery unless there's an emergency on the patient side of things, not the surgeon side. That is, if the consented-to surgeon is no longer able to do the surgery for whatever reason, you must then ask whether the surgery needed to go forward at that instant. For example, here it's ankle surgery, and though she was already sedated, they could have stopped sedation and done the surgery later (either with the original surgeon or after getting consent). If, however, the surgery were to repair a ruptured aorta and the original surgeon could not do it, there's no time to wait for patient to wake up and ask for consent for the new surgeon. (The emergency example also applies to the original surgeon, such as if patient is unconscious).

This appears in two different sections of the Restatement. 892A (formerly 52) says consent must be had by the actor. 892D (formerly 62) provides a defense for when consent may not be reasonably obtained and the action is necessary to prevent harm to the individual on whom the would-be tort is perpetrated. Since its copyrighted I won't paste stuff here, but take a look at the illustrations in those two sections.

Note: They do also provide an exception to the rule: If the patient has consented to the hospital's care rather than that of a particular physician, the the replacement physician may be covered by the original consent.

[BVest]

it would be freaky just how well he has his outline memorized.

I saw his lecture live a few years back...no teleprompter.

I would have been surprised if he had a teleprompter. He is the preeminent Con Law scholar. My Con Law prof -- who was not Chemerinsky -- did the entire class without notes verbatim with the outline that had been handed down from year to year.

[rcharter1978]

it would be freaky just how well he has his outline memorized.

I saw his lecture live a few years back...no teleprompter.

I would have been surprised if he had a teleprompter. He is the preeminent Con Law scholar. My Con Law prof -- who was not Chemerinsky -- did the entire class without notes verbatim with the outline that had been handed down from year to year.

Chemreinsky is a boss (even if I can't spell it). He had the only relatively boring lecture where I didn't leave angry. But I still think his Con Law casebook is just one of the best, and I can't imagine who he gets competition from. He must roll around naked on a bed of money every night....like that movie with Demi Moore/Woody Harrelson.

[barprepblues]

are you guys still working open book on some of the subjects? or are you all in for closed book?

[barprepblues]

Has anyone ever received an essay score above 60 on any of the Barbri essays yet? I can't tell if they're purposely low-grading us or if I really am this bad at essays.

Maybe I just got lucky but I think my graded assignments so far have been helpful. They gave me a 65 for the graded PT and a 60 for the graded evidence essay, and after reading the comments I think I'd agree for the most part. My 65 had the majority of the details of the model answer but I didn't use enough headings and had long paragraphs. My 60 missed some issues and I got some of the analysis wrong[like going into not authenticating the husband's card when it should have come out the other way], also with not enough headings.

Their comments are also pretty detailed, if nitpicky. I got notes on not having the most complete rule statements more than a few times.

Has anyone ever received an essay score above 60 on any of the Barbri essays yet? I can't tell if they're purposely low-grading us or if I really am this bad at essays.

I got a 55 for my torts essay, with detailed comments about what I was doing incorrectly. Today I got my evidence essay back and got a 65, after using suggestions from my torts essay,

which bar are you guys? ny?

[727law]

Hey guys, could any of you help me out with a torts question?

Torts Set 4, Question 15

A patient needing an ankle surgery signs consent forms and liability waivers. Due to an emergency, her original surgeon asks the head of orthopedic surgery, who is also the leading authority on ankle surgery, to replace him. The patient was sedated so she couldn't consent to the switch. He performs the operation and it's a complete success. Patient sues for battery.

I don't know if my brain is fried from a long day of study, but I cannot figure out how this is harmful [operation was a complete success], or offensive [original surgeon replaced by an even better surgeon] contact. Official explanation states that it's harmful or offensive because she did not consent to this particular surgeon.

What confuses me is that she couldn't consent at the moment even if she wanted to, and only learned about what happened after the fact.

Am I thrown off by False Imprisonment which requires that the plaintiff must either know of the confinement or be harmed by it?

Should I assume from this point on that if there is no consent, whether real or implied, then contact is automatically offensive?

The consent element is a factor, I wouldn't always assume there is no consent because if I was drunk playing Russian roulette with you, my consent would be in question (intoxication) but if we were sober and you shoot me in the arm, I cant say the contact was offensive because I consented. I kind of look at it like I assumed the risk to a harmful or offensive conduct by consenting.

SO I believe in this question, the new doctors conduct offensive because we couldn't have consented unless they woke us up and let us know whats up. I believe the offensiveness is supposed to be based on a reasonable person standard, and in this case, a reasonable person wouldn't have consented (I think I disagree with the examiners in this case). However I took issue with this question mainly because there is another similar question which sort of contradicts the explanation. The other question involves a patient who is going into surgery or something and they don't inform her of a 1% risk of death is involved. She finds out later she could have died and sues for battery. The question makes it pretty clear the doctor didn't tell her about the risk, etc. The answer states that the doctor is not liable because a reasonable person wouldn't consider the 1% to be much of a risk. Personally (I think I'm a reasonable person) would be less offended by unknowingly consenting to the superstar ankle surgeon over the 1% of death. I guess there's an element of risk to every surgery so that's why the second scenario isn't a battery? When you come across the second question, check out the explanation and see if it helps you or confuses you more. Not sure if this helped, but I just wouldn't suggest overlooking the consent element.

[BVest]

Hey guys, could any of you help me out with a torts question?

Torts Set 4, Question 15

A patient needing an ankle surgery signs consent forms and liability waivers. Due to an emergency, her original surgeon asks the head of orthopedic surgery, who is also the leading authority on ankle surgery, to replace him. The patient was sedated so she couldn't consent to the switch. He performs the operation and it's a complete success. Patient sues for battery.

I don't know if my brain is fried from a long day of study, but I cannot figure out how this is harmful [operation was a complete success], or offensive [original surgeon replaced by an even better surgeon] contact. Official explanation states that it's harmful or offensive because she did not consent to this particular surgeon.

What confuses me is that she couldn't consent at the moment even if she wanted to, and only learned about what happened after the fact.

Am I thrown off by False Imprisonment which requires that the plaintiff must either know of the confinement or be harmed by it?

Should I assume from this point on that if there is no consent, whether real or implied, then contact is automatically offensive?

The consent element is a factor, I wouldn't always assume there is no consent because if I was drunk playing Russian roulette with you, my consent would be in question (intoxication) but if we were sober and you shoot me in the arm, I cant say the contact was offensive because I consented. I kind of look at it like I assumed the risk to a harmful or offensive conduct by consenting.

SO I believe in this question, the new doctors conduct offensive because we couldn't have consented unless they woke us up and let us know whats up. I believe the offensiveness is supposed to be based on a reasonable person standard, and in this case, a reasonable person wouldn't have consented (I think I disagree with the examiners in this case). However I took issue with this question mainly because there is another similar question which sort of contradicts the explanation. The other question involves a patient who is going into surgery or something and they don't inform her of a 1% risk of death is involved. She finds out later she could have died and sues for battery. The question makes it pretty clear the doctor didn't tell her about the risk, etc. The answer states that the doctor is not liable because a reasonable person wouldn't consider the 1% to be much of a risk. Personally (I think I'm a reasonable person) would be less offended by unknowingly consenting to the superstar ankle surgeon over the 1% of death. I guess there's an element of risk to every surgery so that's why the second scenario isn't a battery? When you come across the second question, check out the explanation and see if it helps you or confuses you more. Not sure if this helped, but I just wouldn't suggest overlooking the consent element.

It's not. See above explanation.

[DueProcessDoWheelies]

I'm doing fine on most Barbri MBE questions but I'm finding their Crim Law questions to be very, VERY difficult. There was one question about a guy tricking a gas station clerk into giving him gasoline in exchange for sunglasses, but in fact he had taken the sunglasses from that gas station. I thought the answer was larceny by trick because he tricked the clerk into giving him POSSESSION of the gasoline. But the answer was he was guilty of false pretenses, because you apparently have TITLE to gasoline. Since when is that the case? I thought false pretenses only applied to stuff like pretending youre a beneficiary of life insurance proceeds, or stuff like that.

[NY_Sea]

I'm doing fine on most Barbri MBE questions but I'm finding their Crim Law questions to be very, VERY difficult. There was one question about a guy tricking a gas station clerk into giving him gasoline in exchange for sunglasses, but in fact he had taken the sunglasses from that gas station. I thought the answer was larceny by trick because he tricked the clerk into giving him POSSESSION of the gasoline. But the answer was he was guilty of false pretenses, because you apparently have TITLE to gasoline. Since when is that the case? I thought false pretenses only applied to stuff like pretending youre a beneficiary of life insurance proceeds, or stuff like that.

You're confusing that last part with Embezzlement... You're guilty of embezzlement if you take money that you already had legal possession of (trustee, stock broker, something like that) and then take it with intent to deprive the rightful owner (beneficiary) of the property.

I assume the gasoline question is false pretenses because possession implies just that, possession, not necessarily use. It's kind of hard to give back gasoline, so once you have it, it's kinda yours (and thus title).

[MrMustache]

Hey guys, could any of you help me out with a torts question?

Torts Set 4, Question 15

A patient needing an ankle surgery signs consent forms and liability waivers. Due to an emergency, her original surgeon asks the head of orthopedic surgery, who is also the leading authority on ankle surgery, to replace him. The patient was sedated so she couldn't consent to the switch. He performs the operation and it's a complete success. Patient sues for battery.

I don't know if my brain is fried from a long day of study, but I cannot figure out how this is harmful [operation was a complete success], or offensive [original surgeon replaced by an even better surgeon] contact. Official explanation states that it's harmful or offensive because she did not consent to this particular surgeon.

What confuses me is that she couldn't consent at the moment even if she wanted to, and only learned about what happened after the fact.

Am I thrown off by False Imprisonment which requires that the plaintiff must either know of the confinement or be harmed by it?

Should I assume from this point on that if there is no consent, whether real or implied, then contact is automatically offensive?

The consent element is a factor, I wouldn't always assume there is no consent because if I was drunk playing Russian roulette with you, my consent would be in question (intoxication) but if we were sober and you shoot me in the arm, I cant say the contact was offensive because I consented. I kind of look at it like I assumed the risk to a harmful or offensive conduct by consenting.

SO I believe in this question, the new doctors conduct offensive because we couldn't have consented unless they woke us up and let us know whats up. I believe the offensiveness is supposed to be based on a reasonable person standard, and in this case, a reasonable person wouldn't have consented (I think I disagree with the examiners in this case). However I took issue with this question mainly because there is another similar question which sort of contradicts the explanation. The other question involves a patient who is going into surgery or something and they don't inform her of a 1% risk of death is involved. She finds out later she could have died and sues for battery. The question makes it pretty clear the doctor didn't tell her about the risk, etc. The answer states that the doctor is not liable because a reasonable person wouldn't consider the 1% to be much of a risk. Personally (I think I'm a reasonable person) would be less offended by unknowingly consenting to the superstar ankle surgeon over the 1% of death. I guess there's an element of risk to every surgery so that's why the second scenario isn't a battery? When you come across the second question, check out the explanation and see if it helps you or confuses you more. Not sure if this helped, but I just wouldn't suggest overlooking the consent element.

It's not. See above explanation.

Thank you BVest and 727law. I think I got it now.