Themis Bar Review Hangout - July 2016 Forum

[ndp1234]

from Mixed PQ Set 6 (q about woman agreeing with bartender to beat up cheating boyfriend):

[+] Spoiler

A woman discovered that her boyfriend was cheating on her. She approached the bartender at her local bar, who she had heard was a member of a biker gang, and offered him $500 to beat up her boyfriend. The bartender agreed immediately. The bartender was actually an undercover officer, however, and he did not intend to beat up the boyfriend. The woman was arrested the next day and charged with solicitation, conspiracy, and assault. The jurisdiction recognizes the common law regarding these crimes. Are the charges against the woman proper?

Answers:

Yes as to solicitation, but no as to assault and conspiracy.
Correct Answer: Yes as to solicitation and assault, but no as to conspiracy.
Yes as to solicitation and conspiracy, but no as to assault.
No as to all charges.

Can someone explain why solicitation doesn't merge into the completed crime here ?

It doesn't merge because there is no agreement. Under CL, you cannot enter into a conspiracy with an undercover officer because there is no real agreement on the undercover cop's part to beat up the boyfriend.

Right, but you can have solicitation without an agreement or conspiracy. Solicitation is formed right at the moment the defendant encourages or commands another person to commit the crime, with that specific intent. My question is specifically about solicitation. I understand why there is no conspiracy.

[ndp1234]

from Mixed PQ Set 6 (q about woman agreeing with bartender to beat up cheating boyfriend):

[+] Spoiler

A woman discovered that her boyfriend was cheating on her. She approached the bartender at her local bar, who she had heard was a member of a biker gang, and offered him $500 to beat up her boyfriend. The bartender agreed immediately. The bartender was actually an undercover officer, however, and he did not intend to beat up the boyfriend. The woman was arrested the next day and charged with solicitation, conspiracy, and assault. The jurisdiction recognizes the common law regarding these crimes. Are the charges against the woman proper?

Answers:

Yes as to solicitation, but no as to assault and conspiracy.
Correct Answer: Yes as to solicitation and assault, but no as to conspiracy.
Yes as to solicitation and conspiracy, but no as to assault.
No as to all charges.

Can someone explain why solicitation doesn't merge into the completed crime here ?

[+] Spoiler

B/c assault can also be considered an attempted battery, so the solicitation wouldn't merge with the attempt

[+] Spoiler

I'm pretty sure you can still have solicitation for assault since it's considered a completed crime (even though the elements are considered as an attempted battery). I don't think you can have attempt, but you can still solicit an assault. But I'll verify with Themis.

[Rahviveh]

Does anyone have any tips for memorizing all of the civil procedure deadlines? I can't keep them all straight. :/

Honestly, here's where I'm at:
14 days for a jury trial demand (just sticks out in my head for some reason)
something about 1 year for a new trial or re-trial or something like that.
Maybe 30 days from final judgment to appeal>>??
then guess 21 days for a lot of other things- since that seems to be a common answer.

Honestly, there are so many of them- how can we realistically be expected to remember them? Its not like with other subjects where the rule makes some sort of inherent sense, so its easier to remember or deduce. I figure, its not worth my time trying to remember 15 different time frames. If I pick some of them up while studying, great, but I'm not going to spend hours trying to remember arbitrary time frames.

I figure I'm better of trying to tremember rules that actually make sense- and then just guess/b.s. on the time frames.

Then again, my civ pro overall percentage is 5% lower than my next lowest score, so who knows.

Ugh, I know. It just seems like so many of the civ pro questions depend on actually knowing the timelines.

The only theme/pattern/whatever I've noticed is that the response times for discovery stuff (rogs, RFPs, RFAs) are all 30 days.

The other one that sticks in my head is service has to be within 90 days of filing. The only reason I seem to know that is because that's the recently changed rule that affected the correct answer to a question on Milestone Exam #2.

Gahhhh!

Here's how I think about it. The MBE has 200 questions. 26 of them will be civ pro. Lets assume that 10% of civ pro questions you have to know an exact timeline to get right. Thats 2.6 questions. Out of 200 questions total= 1.3% of your raw MBE grade. Heck, lets double it- lets say that 20%- 1 in every 5 civ pro questions requires knowledge of the time line to get right- that's still only 2.6% of your total MBE grade. And that's assuming you don't guess any right.

Now, obviously, you could do this for every sub-topic- any sub-topic alone won't kill you- but if you ignore all of them, you will obviously fail. When I Took the NC bar back in 2013, I said screw RAP and screw the best evidence rule. I passed- i was fine. This time, I am saying still screw RAP and screw timeframes in civ pro (themis has somehow managed to teach me the best evidence rule- despite me not being able to pick it up in law school, studying for the bar the first time, or in 3 years of practice).

Honestly, I jsut feel like the hours you would have to spend memorizing all of them can be better spent elsewhere.

But, I mean, if you've got the time and a good method, go for it.

This makes sense but why say screw the best evidence rule? The rule is basic and easy to learn and pick up points on.

[xfer999]

from Mixed PQ Set 6 (q about woman agreeing with bartender to beat up cheating boyfriend):

[+] Spoiler

A woman discovered that her boyfriend was cheating on her. She approached the bartender at her local bar, who she had heard was a member of a biker gang, and offered him $500 to beat up her boyfriend. The bartender agreed immediately. The bartender was actually an undercover officer, however, and he did not intend to beat up the boyfriend. The woman was arrested the next day and charged with solicitation, conspiracy, and assault. The jurisdiction recognizes the common law regarding these crimes. Are the charges against the woman proper?

Answers:

Yes as to solicitation, but no as to assault and conspiracy.
Correct Answer: Yes as to solicitation and assault, but no as to conspiracy.
Yes as to solicitation and conspiracy, but no as to assault.
No as to all charges.

Can someone explain why solicitation doesn't merge into the completed crime here ?

[+] Spoiler

B/c assault can also be considered an attempted battery, so the solicitation wouldn't merge with the attempt

[+] Spoiler

I'm pretty sure you can still have solicitation for assault since it's considered a completed crime (even though the elements are considered as an attempted battery). I don't think you can have attempt, but you can still solicit an assault. But I'll verify with Themis.

Hi, I'm delurking because your civ pro deadline hints were awesome.

[+] Spoiler

Isn't the key that the question asks about charges, not convictions/punishment? So merger doesn't apply, because the prosecutor throws all possible greater & lesser charges at the jury and see what sticks. But if the jury somehow finds the defendant guilty of both, I think the defendant can only be punished for the assault, not both solicitation and assault. (Although maybe the jury verdict form is more like, "did they assault? if not, did they solicit?" etc.)

Meanwhile, I think I missed this question because I hadn't appreciated that assault is aka "attempted battery" (for which the solicitation was a substantial step.) Ugh.

[alicen]

at 69% and yet still feeling like i haven't successfully memorized anything...

[1down1togo]

from Mixed PQ Set 6 (q about woman agreeing with bartender to beat up cheating boyfriend):

[+] Spoiler

A woman discovered that her boyfriend was cheating on her. She approached the bartender at her local bar, who she had heard was a member of a biker gang, and offered him $500 to beat up her boyfriend. The bartender agreed immediately. The bartender was actually an undercover officer, however, and he did not intend to beat up the boyfriend. The woman was arrested the next day and charged with solicitation, conspiracy, and assault. The jurisdiction recognizes the common law regarding these crimes. Are the charges against the woman proper?

Answers:

Yes as to solicitation, but no as to assault and conspiracy.
Correct Answer: Yes as to solicitation and assault, but no as to conspiracy.
Yes as to solicitation and conspiracy, but no as to assault.
No as to all charges.

Can someone explain why solicitation doesn't merge into the completed crime here ?

It doesn't merge because there is no agreement. Under CL, you cannot enter into a conspiracy with an undercover officer because there is no real agreement on the undercover cop's part to beat up the boyfriend.

I get why no conspiracy (need 2 people to agree under CL), but I don't get why assault would be charged. Doesn't the intended target (boyfriend) have to have a reasonable apprehension of imminent harm? The facts seem to indicate that the Bartender never went forward with the act of beating up the boyfriend.

I had the exact same thought process of you. Civil/tort assault requires reasonable apprehension. Criminal assault is reasons le apprehenaion OR attempted battery- regardless of apprehension. I got that one wrong too- and felt like you. Now that answer is stuck in my head

[Mr. nobody]

i hate crimpro

[NaeDeen]

Question: In condensing your own outlines, how in the world do you get the material down for each subject to anything less than 2-3 pages? Cause if I did that I'd simply be left with headings and elements.

19 subjects total and my outlines so far range from 4 to 25 pages.

[xdeuceswild81xx]

Can't say this irl to anyone, but maybe anon's on here would understand/think it's somewhat funny


Of the guys I live with, 3 are not taking a commercial course. They're trying to just "independent study" w/o paying themis/barbri/kaplan by reviewing notes and doing practice mbe questions from this massive book they purchased together. It's a genius plan, right? Anyways, yesterday they texted me asking if there was a word limit on the essay. Like, they said they are continuing to max out the word limit on the essays and each one was taking them near 90 minutes- 2 hours to complete....Think about that for a second. How out of touch with studying/prep do you have to be to think you're going to max out the word count on these quick essays? (I believe it's 46k characters fwiw) We are all freaking out in here, trying to figure out how to cut essays down to 45 min and panicking bc we are getting 55% on MBE or whatever, but there will inevitably be people out there like my roommates trying to figure out the max word count bc they keep going near 2 hours lol.


tl;dr: Stay calm, we all gonna make it

[1down1togo]

Can't say this irl to anyone, but maybe anon's on here would understand/think it's somewhat funny


Of the guys I live with, 3 are not taking a commercial course. They're trying to just "independent study" w/o paying themis/barbri/kaplan by reviewing notes and doing practice mbe questions from this massive book they purchased together. It's a genius plan, right? Anyways, yesterday they texted me asking if there was a word limit on the essay. Like, they said they are continuing to max out the word limit on the essays and each one was taking them near 90 minutes- 2 hours to complete....Think about that for a second. How out of touch with studying/prep do you have to be to think you're going to max out the word count on these quick essays? (I believe it's 46k characters fwiw) We are all freaking out in here, trying to figure out how to cut essays down to 45 min and panicking bc we are getting 55% on MBE or whatever, but there will inevitably be people out there like my roommates trying to figure out the max word count bc they keep going near 2 hours lol.


tl;dr: Stay calm, we all gonna make it

Haha thanks, that makes me feel better . I always have a hard time believing there are people that don't take a course. Like, you have poured your heart and soul into becoming a lawyer for 3 years, and there's one more step you need to take. And you're going to wing it now? It just blows my mind.

[Nebby]

My gf is in town and I've taken two days off of studying to hang with her, and it's been a nice break but I'm starting to get antsy. Thankfully she's putting up with my neurosis and we're going to hit up a coffee shop today so I can study a bit

[Rahviveh]

RE: Supplemental jurisdiction and intervention.

The outline says that SJ doesn't apply to intervenors for diversity cases "if the exercise of jurisdiction would be inconsistent with the requirements of diversity jurisdiction." Then it gives an example of an intervenor busting complete diversity. My understanding of SJ is that it's there to fix AIC problems. So does SJ work for intervenors if there is an insufficient AIC to the intervenors claim?

[TLSModBot]

RE: Supplemental jurisdiction and intervention.

The outline says that SJ doesn't apply to intervenors for diversity cases "if the exercise of jurisdiction would be inconsistent with the requirements of diversity jurisdiction." Then it gives an example of an intervenor busting complete diversity. My understanding of SJ is that it's there to fix AIC problems. So does SJ work for intervenors if there is an insufficient AIC to the intervenors claim?

I thought plaintiff intervenors never get SJ in diversity, period. The point of SJ is to keep cases and parties arising out of the same transaction together, and prevent injustice done to non-parties. Since you can't use estoppel against plaintiffs who could have intervened, they have the ability to bring their case separately if they don't get in to the present one, so there isn't really a reason to give SJ to them.

[Nebby]

RE: Supplemental jurisdiction and intervention.

The outline says that SJ doesn't apply to intervenors for diversity cases "if the exercise of jurisdiction would be inconsistent with the requirements of diversity jurisdiction." Then it gives an example of an intervenor busting complete diversity. My understanding of SJ is that it's there to fix AIC problems. So does SJ work for intervenors if there is an insufficient AIC to the intervenors claim?

I thought plaintiff intervenors never get SJ in diversity, period. The point of SJ is to keep cases and parties arising out of the same transaction together, and prevent injustice done to non-parties. Since you can't use estoppel against plaintiffs who could have intervened, they have the ability to bring their case even if they don't get in, so there isn't really a reason to give SJ to them.

Yeah. Supplemental J doesn't apply to plaintiff intervenors

Example: X, a citizen of Ohio, sues Y, a citizen of Michigan, in federal court under diversity jurisdiction. Z, a citizen of Michigan, seeks to intervene (as of right or permissively) pursuant to Rule 24. Z cannot intervene because she would destroy diversity jurisdiction in the action. If Z were a citizen of any state other than Michigan, then she could intervene, provided the requirements for intervention under Rule 24 were established.

In addition, AIC would act in the same way. Plaintiff intervenors must have $75k+

None of this matters if Subject J is Fed question

[Easy-E]

Back to the grind today. My focus isn't 100% there yet, so I might just try and plow through my last lectures today and review my outlines against my missed PQs.

Happy 4th

[kiwi06511]

Does anyone have any tips for memorizing all of the civil procedure deadlines? I can't keep them all straight. :/

I group them by type of document, and a rationalization for each so I can remember.

21 days - Most initial responsive pleadings, motions based on the pleadings, motion to dismiss. Basically anything that the defendant uses to respond to plaintiffs. Answers to counterclaims count as an initial responsive pleading because it's a new claim. Beginning of discovery is 21 days before scheduling order because it's the initial step of discovery.

14 days - Jury trial, other motions that aren't the first responsive document to the complaint). Just think they need less time to think because they already know a lawsuit is in action.

30 days - Most 30 day time limits are related to discovery. Just think it's longer because it takes time to discover information, rather than just formulating a response. But objections are just a response to discovery so that's 14 days.

I realize this is very barebones, but I think it's a good starting point.

This is super helpful, thank you! I also love the idea of making a timeline.

[Easy-E]

I feel liked these secured transaction lectures are an immense waste of time. It's all completely new to me, so it's not refreshing my memory or anything, and I'm certainly not learning shit from this.

[Nebby]

I feel liked these secured transaction lectures are an immense waste of time. It's all completely new to me, so it's not refreshing my memory or anything.

I remember some of the basics. However, I have already forgot how to "perfect" a security interest

[Easy-E]

I feel liked these secured transaction lectures are an immense waste of time. It's all completely new to me, so it's not refreshing my memory or anything.

I remember some of the basics. However, I have already forgot how to "perfect" a security interest

That's what I'm covering now and it's just in one ear, out the other. I never covered any aspect of this in LS. I'm just trying to plow through it for now and then just review the guide to bullshitting it.

[ndp1234]

LOL @ Themis listing all the states that accept common law marriages in their outline like we're going to memorize them for the test.

[Easy-E]

Which of the following statements regarding the priority rules for PMSIs is FALSE?

B Correct Answer: A PMSI in inventory will take priority over all other security interests if the secured party perfects within 20 days of delivery to the debtor and the secured party sends an authenticated notification to other secured parties.

C You Selected: If there are two or more competing PMSIs, the first to file or perfect rule generally governs priority.

I don't understand this secured transactions assessment question. C is false because a seller PMSI beats a lender, then you go to first in time rule. So no, the first in time rule does not generally govern priority. I get that B is also false, and I guess it's the better answer. And that it's an assessment question so who actually gives a shit.

[1down1togo]

Which of the following statements regarding the priority rules for PMSIs is FALSE?

B Correct Answer: A PMSI in inventory will take priority over all other security interests if the secured party perfects within 20 days of delivery to the debtor and the secured party sends an authenticated notification to other secured parties.

C You Selected: If there are two or more competing PMSIs, the first to file or perfect rule generally governs priority.

I don't understand this secured transactions assessment question. C is false because a seller PMSI beats a lender, then you go to first in time rule. So no, the first in time rule does not generally govern priority. I get that B is also false, and I guess it's the better answer. And that it's an assessment question so who actually gives a shit.

I think the word "generally" makes C not false. GEnerally- the general rule- is in fact, with regard to PMSIs, first to file or perfect wins. Now there are exceptions and specific instances that make this not true- but it says generally. And that is the general, default rule with regard to PMSIs and priority.

[Vantwins]

Question: In condensing your own outlines, how in the world do you get the material down for each subject to anything less than 2-3 pages? Cause if I did that I'd simply be left with headings and elements.

19 subjects total and my outlines so far range from 4 to 25 pages.

19 subjects for MD? Why do I just have 15????

crap...I'm supposed to read the bulk transfers outline but we've got no lecture for it?

what else? fabulous.

edited to add: the bulk transfer outline is only 4 pages long, so I guess I understand no lecture!

[Easy-E]

Which of the following statements regarding the priority rules for PMSIs is FALSE?

B Correct Answer: A PMSI in inventory will take priority over all other security interests if the secured party perfects within 20 days of delivery to the debtor and the secured party sends an authenticated notification to other secured parties.

C You Selected: If there are two or more competing PMSIs, the first to file or perfect rule generally governs priority.

I don't understand this secured transactions assessment question. C is false because a seller PMSI beats a lender, then you go to first in time rule. So no, the first in time rule does not generally govern priority. I get that B is also false, and I guess it's the better answer. And that it's an assessment question so who actually gives a shit.

I think the word "generally" makes C not false. GEnerally- the general rule- is in fact, with regard to PMSIs, first to file or perfect wins. Now there are exceptions and specific instances that make this not true- but it says generally. And that is the general, default rule with regard to PMSIs and priority.

I guess that makes sense. Seems like the handout/lecture should have worded it different, like, the general rule is first in time, but, exception for seller vs. lender.

[bigbossman]

Man, these MBE practice questions become goofier and goofier as you go along. Questions about niceties of the the 21st Amendment? Really?