BarBri - NY Exam - July 2014 Forum

[jets098]

For the essays, I'm assuming it's not important to know rule statements verbatim as long as we approximate the substance, right?

I would say this is true based on my practice essays with Barbri. I've rarely known the exact rule statements but if I was able to get it right in my own words they usually gave me a "good rule statement".

[enziguri]

For those of you that outlined essay question #19 today, I'm having a little trouble with part (3), and was wondering if someone could explain. P sued D for negligence regarding a car accident, and D moved for summary judgment on the ground that he had not suffered a "serious injury." I thought that under the NYS no-fault insurance rules, a tort action could only be brought if your expenses exceeded the yearly allowance of $50,000, or you suffered a serious injury. So, if there is no genuine issue if P suffered a serious injury as defined by the no-fault scheme, wouldn't the summary judgment motion be granted? The model answer only talks about it as a regular negligence claim, but I'm confused as to why the no-fault stuff doesn't apply.

[prs362]

For those of you that outlined essay question #19 today, I'm having a little trouble with part (3), and was wondering if someone could explain. P sued D for negligence regarding a car accident, and D moved for summary judgment on the ground that he had not suffered a "serious injury." I thought that under the NYS no-fault insurance rules, a tort action could only be brought if your expenses exceeded the yearly allowance of $50,000, or you suffered a serious injury. So, if there is no genuine issue if P suffered a serious injury as defined by the no-fault scheme, wouldn't the summary judgment motion be granted? The model answer only talks about it as a regular negligence claim, but I'm confused as to why the no-fault stuff doesn't apply.

This is actually an interesting question, which I didn't think about while I did the problem. The first paragraph of the CMR states "a plaintiff in a personal injury action must plead ast the no-fault threshold, i.e., there must have been a serious injury or a loss greater than basic economic loss."

[plath]

I'm not sure if I enjoyed these Freer and conflicts of law lectures so much because they were both good lectures, or if it is a result of 13+ hours of pure hell with EF.

Freer is a breath of fresh air after wills hell. Haven't got to CoL yet - but good to know it's not bad either.

[plath]

Starting to panic a little about the Ny subjects. I don't ever get more than 50% on a NYMC set and I feel like relying on the lectures alone isn't enough. But at the same time, I just don't think I can memorize the CMR for every topic. Argh. Anyone have any tips?

Memorizing the lectures is more than you'll ever need. I basically didn't touch anything but the lectures for the NY subjects -- I memorized them very, very carefully. I found day 1 to be much easier than I was expecting. You'll get there. It feels like there's not enouhg time but it'll come together at the end

But you have to begin narrowing your universe. At some point you just have to say, "okay, i'm learning this. i'm not going to worry about anything else." I ended up with 2 binders, one for MBE and one for NY. I don't think I even opened anything else (CMR, etc) for the last 1.5 weeks. I didn't even bring the CMR with me to NY to take the exam, just studied from my universe

I am about 2 days of lecture behind (I still need to watch 1 of the wills lectures and the fed jurisdiction one) - can I go ahead and not read the conflict of laws and fed jurisdiction CMR? anyone else skipping these CMRs towards the end?

I was told by the Barbri atty that I should skip all CMR for the NY rules if I don't have the time and that everything I need is in the handout. Hope I'm not setting myself for a fall but I really cannot keep up and I'd rather have more time to memorize than try to fit in more volume.

[Guchster]

Federal Jurisdiction was just straight up Civ Pro, and I personally found that the CMR was over-comprehensive compared to the lecture. But I would recommend revisiting portions of the CMR highlighted in the lecture because I found some of the nuances helpful.

For Conflicts, I would recommend reading the CMR first if you didn't take a Conflicts class to get a better gist of it. The lecture cuts right to BLL and can easily be watched at at least 1.5 speed if you have a handle on Conflicts principals.

I have to disagree with this advice on its face, but I think it could potentially be good advice in certain super rare cases.

I think it's decent if you aced the mock MBE and feel like you have a good grasp on memorizing most of the NY material. If you are in the boat of most other people (~98% of us), and feel overwhelmed by what you have to learn and memorize, I’d completely ignore this advice and instead put your time to learning something that will actually matter (according to Smart Bar Prep, FJ has only been tested 2% of the time for all bar exams and CoL has been tested 5%). At this point, adding another little box on your checklist of shit to do is going to cause more stress than help your bar exam score.

Barbri has mentioned multiple times in different lectures and videos to skip the NY CMR reading if you need to, and when I called Barbri to help me manage the material in light of the frequency of testing certain topics, they recommended that I do not read the NYCMRs and instead focus on the lecture handouts almost exclusively and consult the CMR if I didn’t understand something.

This has been echoed on this board by people who passed the bar (with a similar strategy) as well as personal friends who took it the past few years. I've used the CMR to supplement my flash cards and outlines for unclear areas for me, but I will not be reading the NYCMRs from cover to cover because it's just not good judgment for someone in my position.

But if you are on top of your shit and need something to do to try to score a high passing score you might want to consider it.

[5ky]

Starting to panic a little about the Ny subjects. I don't ever get more than 50% on a NYMC set and I feel like relying on the lectures alone isn't enough. But at the same time, I just don't think I can memorize the CMR for every topic. Argh. Anyone have any tips?

Memorizing the lectures is more than you'll ever need. I basically didn't touch anything but the lectures for the NY subjects -- I memorized them very, very carefully. I found day 1 to be much easier than I was expecting. You'll get there. It feels like there's not enouhg time but it'll come together at the end

But you have to begin narrowing your universe. At some point you just have to say, "okay, i'm learning this. i'm not going to worry about anything else." I ended up with 2 binders, one for MBE and one for NY. I don't think I even opened anything else (CMR, etc) for the last 1.5 weeks. I didn't even bring the CMR with me to NY to take the exam, just studied from my universe

I am about 2 days of lecture behind (I still need to watch 1 of the wills lectures and the fed jurisdiction one) - can I go ahead and not read the conflict of laws and fed jurisdiction CMR? anyone else skipping these CMRs towards the end?

I was told by the Barbri atty that I should skip all CMR for the NY rules if I don't have the time and that everything I need is in the handout. Hope I'm not setting myself for a fall but I really cannot keep up and I'd rather have more time to memorize than try to fit in more volume.

As I said, I never really used the CMR for NY subjects at all and thought the NY day was pretty easy.

[Guchster]

Just got my scores back from Barbri. Got a 149 and I'm absolutely shocked by it. I think it was a coincidence of getting lucky on many questions and also getting tested on topics I had reviewed quite thoroughly.

This calms my nerves down by an INSANE margin; at this point, I'm searching in the bottom of my purse for a fuck to give about the MBE and I can't find one, so I'm going to focus hardcore now on NY topics unless the paced program tells me otherwise.

I have done almost zero work up until the MBE outside of the paced program--but I've stuck to it pretty religiously. This past week I've been making flash cards and drilling NY topics/Critical Pass, but I'm starting to question if I should deviate from Barbri's recommendations as its programming is clearly working for me. I've always been horrible at MC (and even avoided classes in law school because I knew they had MC exams), so this really eased up a TON of anxiety I was under this summer.

I'm going to stick to the paced program and try to get it all done before 2-3p. After that I'm going to do my own thing and drill NY rules.

[Helpful]

Great job. I'm happy with my sim results as well but still going to deviate from the paced program a bit (only going to do the lectures) because I know my biggest gap/place I can make up the most points right now is drilling NY stuff. Just get the SmartBarPrep core down before I do anything else. Don't want to do full essays if I don't know the law. There are some days when I haven't been pulling off 8-10 hours. I'm hoping that doesn't catch up with me.

[AP-375]

How are you guys using the SmartBarPrep chart, exactly? I have really been devoting way more energy to the MBE, so I just kind of freaked out today thinking about how much NY stuff I have to review/learn/memorize. Do you think it is a good strategy to just really focus on the bolded topics and know them inside and out, and then not worry too much more about the other stuff?

[Helpful]

Not going to "forget" about the non-bolded stuff, but certainly going to learn the bolded first. But when a non-bolded topic has like 80 sub-rules I do start to contemplate whether my time is better spent elsewhere.

[5ky]

How are you guys using the SmartBarPrep chart, exactly? I have really been devoting way more energy to the MBE, so I just kind of freaked out today thinking about how much NY stuff I have to review/learn/memorize. Do you think it is a good strategy to just really focus on the bolded topics and know them inside and out, and then not worry too much more about the other stuff?

There's still a ton of time. At this point I hadn't learn much/any NY law. Just memorize the handouts and you're golden. Seriously.

[nygrrrl]

There's still a ton of time. At this point I hadn't learn much/any NY law. Just memorize the handouts and you're golden. Seriously.

I'm living by this.

[jd20132013]

How are you guys using the SmartBarPrep chart, exactly? I have really been devoting way more energy to the MBE, so I just kind of freaked out today thinking about how much NY stuff I have to review/learn/memorize. Do you think it is a good strategy to just really focus on the bolded topics and know them inside and out, and then not worry too much more about the other stuff?

There's still a ton of time. At this point I hadn't learn much/any NY law. Just memorize the handouts and you're golden. Seriously.

what as your memorization method?

[belowthelaw57]

How are you guys using the SmartBarPrep chart, exactly? I have really been devoting way more energy to the MBE, so I just kind of freaked out today thinking about how much NY stuff I have to review/learn/memorize. Do you think it is a good strategy to just really focus on the bolded topics and know them inside and out, and then not worry too much more about the other stuff?

There's still a ton of time. At this point I hadn't learn much/any NY law. Just memorize the handouts and you're golden. Seriously.

what as your memorization method?

I think all this panic about memorizing, for the most part is overblown. Barbri teaches you a lot of BS that very rarely will come up on an exam. And rightly so--they want to have their asses covered in case it does. But those really really fine points are really just MC questions. Try some essays, especially the actual released ones in the back and you'll see it.

The questions always give you 3 or 4 subparts. I think it's probably very rare that you won't know be able to spot any of the issues or rules presented in the facts. Just try writing them out--if you've been studying all this time you probably can do it. Usually even when you're "stumped" you know 2 or 3 of the issues and probably can guess the last one pretty spot on even if you're not 100% sure. A lot of times if you answer another part, and go back later in the question you'll see something in the facts to jog your memory or you'll have a better idea of the rule to apply. Rote memorization of everything is not as effective. On essays they test on the big concepts.

You won't be perfect but you'll get the basic gist and you'll be roughly on track comparing your answers to the released passing answers that are demonstrative of "good" work, which is all that counts.

[5ky]

How are you guys using the SmartBarPrep chart, exactly? I have really been devoting way more energy to the MBE, so I just kind of freaked out today thinking about how much NY stuff I have to review/learn/memorize. Do you think it is a good strategy to just really focus on the bolded topics and know them inside and out, and then not worry too much more about the other stuff?

There's still a ton of time. At this point I hadn't learn much/any NY law. Just memorize the handouts and you're golden. Seriously.

what as your memorization method?

Everybody memorizes differently, so you really just have to find what works best for you.

But towards the end of July, I would memorize two subjects a day. I picked a 'big' one and a 'smaller' one to try to keep things even.

e.g. Wills/Trusts, NY Practice/PR and Domestic Relations/Corporations. The other ones I considered minor, less impt and memorized them even closer to the end.

I basically just sat down with my outlines and read them, memorizing in my head as I went. I did this for every outline I made and every class in law school, so it wasn't something new to me. The first pass probably took like, 4-5 hours for a major subject (Wills/NY Practice/Domestic Relations). THe minor subjects took less -- 3 hours (Trusts, PR, Corps). Then the same day I went through them again to drill it in. By that point I had most of the main stuff memorized. The next day I moved on to my next 'pair.' Then I basically just did that and cycled through them day by day. 2 a day, review, etc. It got faster and faster as I had memorized them, so I was able to fit in more and more practice essays and MBE stuff.

The day before the exam I went through every NY subject. By that point things were like muscle memory so it only took me about 6 hours for all of the subjects, including all of the unimportant ones (agency/partnership/secured transactions/etc). By this point I had essentially memorized each lecture handout word for word.

I will note that I am an extremely good rote memorizer and used the above process from HS on. If it doesn't come easily and naturally to you, it will be more difficult.

[plath]

Could someone please explain how come the answer to question 1 in the NY CoL MC is NOT New York?
I was applying the NY approach in torts (aka Neumeier rules): when Π and Δ are domiciled in different states, apply the law of the place of injury (=NY)
the answer does not mentions that, but rather provides an analysis based on fairness (?) (where did that come from?)
Even following the general interest analysis, both states seem to have an interest here, and in case of a true conflict NY applies its own rules.

[legalbeagle56]

Could someone please explain how come the answer to question 1 in the NY CoL MC is NOT New York?
I was applying the NY approach in torts (aka Neumeier rules): when Π and Δ are domiciled in different states, apply the law of the place of injury (=NY)
the answer does not mentions that, but rather provides an analysis based on fairness (?) (where did that come from?)
Even following the general interest analysis, both states seem to have an interest here, and in case of a true conflict NY applies its own rules.

There is an exception when there is a true conflict between one state that has a Dram Shop Act (NY) and another state that does not. NY uses the standard interest analysis in that case and applies the law of the other state without the Dram Shop Act. It's on page 7 of the conflicts CMR outline, but he didn't talk about it at all in the lecture.

[plath]

Could someone please explain how come the answer to question 1 in the NY CoL MC is NOT New York?
I was applying the NY approach in torts (aka Neumeier rules): when Π and Δ are domiciled in different states, apply the law of the place of injury (=NY)
the answer does not mentions that, but rather provides an analysis based on fairness (?) (where did that come from?)
Even following the general interest analysis, both states seem to have an interest here, and in case of a true conflict NY applies its own rules.

There is an exception when there is a true conflict between one state that has a Dram Shop Act (NY) and another state that does not. NY uses the standard interest analysis in that case and applies the law of the other state without the Dram Shop Act. It's on page 7 of the conflicts CMR outline, but he didn't talk about it at all in the lecture.

Thanks.
So much for studying only from the lecture handouts (as was suggested by a Barbri rep)...

[mr_toad]

tagged

[peanut123]

Anyone else anxious about the NY MC? It is only 10% of our score but Barbri says a typical passing student scores 30/50 correct. The sample questions tend to test obscure and highly specific things. I was kind of counting on being able to know the general basics and BS-ing through the essays, but I'm doubting that strategy now.

[Helpful]

Anyone else anxious about the NY MC? It is only 10% of our score but Barbri says a typical passing student scores 30/50 correct. The sample questions tend to test obscure and highly specific things. I was kind of counting on being able to know the general basics and BS-ing through the essays, but I'm doubting that strategy now.

I have almost always done worse than 50% on these, so I am just hoping to make up for it with an above average MBE (and maybe essays if I'm lucky). Don't know if that's the best strategy, but I don't feel like there is time to do much else than at most study the distinctions mentioned in the CMR/lectures, and hope my general NY essay prep carries over.

[pizzasodafries]

What are you people doing about the MPT's. I have yet to look at it really and I feel like I will neglect that as we get closer to exam. Is that something that truly doesn't need much reviewing?

[Helpful]

The only thing I am worried about with the MPT is if we get a weird/unusual format. But it seems like the majority of the time they pretty much outline the format for you. Does anyone know if it's worthwhile to memorize some of the more obscure MPT formats?

[bluecrab5448]

Anyone else anxious about the NY MC? It is only 10% of our score but Barbri says a typical passing student scores 30/50 correct. The sample questions tend to test obscure and highly specific things. I was kind of counting on being able to know the general basics and BS-ing through the essays, but I'm doubting that strategy now.

I have almost always done worse than 50% on these, so I am just hoping to make up for it with an above average MBE (and maybe essays if I'm lucky). Don't know if that's the best strategy, but I don't feel like there is time to do much else than at most study the distinctions mentioned in the CMR/lectures, and hope my general NY essay prep carries over.

I've been getting less than half right each time. It's not like the MBE where you can kind of narrow it down to two good answers. It's basically unless you studied or read the particular point they're testing on, you're not getting the question right.