Themis Bar Review Hangout - July 2014 Exam Forum

[Gotti]

Passed NY with 164.7 scaled

[Bigbub75]

I passed NY with Themis, and I would definitely recommend it. I finished maybe 65% and only supplemented it with lean sheets and smart bar prep for the essays. I stopped following their schedule a few weeks out and just used the materials to focus on the areas I needed to work on. I had my issues with the program, but overall I just don't see the value in paying twice as much for Barbri when you can get the same results and save a few grand in the process.

[sparty99]

I passed NY with Themis, and I would definitely recommend it. I finished maybe 65% and only supplemented it with lean sheets and smart bar prep for the essays. I stopped following their schedule a few weeks out and just used the materials to focus on the areas I needed to work on. I had my issues with the program, but overall I just don't see the value in paying twice as much for Barbri when you can get the same results and save a few grand in the process.

What issues did you have with Themis? How did you manage studying the New York law? I mean there is so much stuff. Did you spend a lot of time on that? And did you focus on memorizing the BLL? How do you memorize all the rules?

[Bobo1]

Themis/Adaptibar

I also used a combo of Themis and Adaptibar. I started out in purely Themis, but halfway through added Adaptibar and at that point used only Adaptibar for my MBE practice questions. I passed Florida with a 148(FL) and 168(MBE).

First, there was a lot of overlap in the two question sets with identical questions. The difference, and why I preferred Adaptibar, was that the explanations were much better in Adaptibar. The reasoning was clear and made the practice questions a better learning experience than doing the same questions in Themis.

Overall I thought Themis lectures were generally good with a few exceptions. I also thought Themis essay prep was good. I didn't actually write out answers or even outlines of answers beyond maybe 10 questions, but I did print and read all the sample answers.

But Themis just sucked for Florida multiple choice preparation. The questions were odd, the explanations worse, and as I went through practice sets I kept getting the same questions over and over on certain topics. They clearly didn't have enough questions on those topics.

Regardless, I passed and am done with this forever. I thought that was the case 5 years ago when I passed NY but I was silly enough to move to Florida where you have to start from scratch. Even the MPRE.

[notedgarfigaro]

passed NY with a scaled MBE of 150.1 (and a broken finger on my dominant hand)...I was pretty satisfied with Themis, especially the essay grading and the sample essay responses they provided. I had some issues with certain lecturers, but I'm sure most of that comes down to things that irk me personally. I'd recommend it for people that paying for prep themselves that aren't comfortable with self-study (I personally need some structure due to my procrastinating nature).

[bport hopeful]

I think Themis was solid. Worth the price cut. Thought the essay grading was harsh in a good way. My friends taking Barbri all had super high essay averages and I dont think that that is helpful.

I dont know what my MBE score means comparatively so I dont know how to comment on that. Didnt feel good about the MBE on test day though.

[Bigbub75]

I passed NY with Themis, and I would definitely recommend it. I finished maybe 65% and only supplemented it with lean sheets and smart bar prep for the essays. I stopped following their schedule a few weeks out and just used the materials to focus on the areas I needed to work on. I had my issues with the program, but overall I just don't see the value in paying twice as much for Barbri when you can get the same results and save a few grand in the process.

What issues did you have with Themis? How did you manage studying the New York law? I mean there is so much stuff. Did you spend a lot of time on that? And did you focus on memorizing the BLL? How do you memorize all the rules?

My two major issues were 1). The schedule. I thought the amount of essays they assigned was overkill and it took me a while to abandon their schedule and focus on the areas I needed to. 2). The Handouts. Some of the lectures didn't follow the format of the handout so they were tough to fill out. Also I found that when I was focusing on filling out the forms I wasn't really absorbing the information. SO I asked for completed versions of the handouts and Themis staff gave me a hard time. At first they said no, it was against their policy, etc. I thought was ridiculous because not only am I a paying customer, I'm an adult. If I think I would learn better with the completed handouts, take my word for it. They finally sent me the completed versions for 2 subjects, but made me promise not to share them with other Themis students. The whole thing was over the top.

I memorized the law 3 ways: Flash cards (which I eventually abandoned because it was too time consuming); Reading and re-reading the handouts over and over again, and; I made a word document with the rule statements for all the questions I got wrong when I did practice questions. Themis usually would state the rule in the answer explanations, so I would just cut and paste them into a document and then revisit them every other day.

Smartbarprep was clutch for the NY essays. Took the guesswork out of how to start an essay or state a rule. I memorized the areas with the highest probability of being tested.

Also, I know a few people who supplemented Themis with Adaptibar & Kaplan qbank for MBE study. For financial reasons I couldn't, so I only did Themis MBE questions and my MBE score ended up being 147.3. Not the highest score but it got the job done.

[blue920]

NJ's out - another pass And I only took the NY Themis course. I figured I would pay a little extra attention to the NJ civ pro (particularly Wednesday night review) but I really didn't. Yay!

[ioezeigbo]

Passed Maryland bar!!! Completed 86% of the course, did not supplement with Adaptibar, and it all worked out!
Thank you so much, Themis! I will be sure to recommend you to all my friends! Excellent customer service, great price, and solid results. Themis for the win!!!!!!

[Burgstaller04]

Took the TX exam. Results coming out Wed or Thurs. Any reason I shouldn't get obliterated drunk this afternoon?

[jigglypuffdreams]

Passed Michigan! Not sure what my MBE breakdown is so I might come back when I find that out but I completed 100% of Themis. I supplemented slightly by reading and reviewing "Michigan Bar Exam Essay Deconstruction" and I bought into Barmax's MBE bank and did maybe 200-300 of those. I thought about Adaptibar pretty seriously but BarMax was a compromise between my cheapness and anxiety, because it was "all official NCBE questions" and only 100 bucks. Not the best supplement if you want great explanations of why you're getting the questions wrong and an awesome intuitive interface, but decent if you just want to look at MBE questions again.

I gave up on doing Themis fill-in-the-blank notes from lectures a few days in, I did lectures on 1.5 speed . I mostly read the long outlines to study. I eventually relistened to lectures for subjects I thought were important/decent when my eyes started to glaze over from reading too much. Idk, there were definitely some points where I worried about doing things the wrong way, but at the end of the day you're the only one who knows your own study methods.

[notthatgirl14]

Passed Texas! Would definitely reccommend Themis. (I supplemented a bit with Lean Sheets...but that was more because of my own poor time management than anything)

[DavidB]

I used Themis and passed Texas with lots of breathing room. I believe my final completion percentage was 98% or 99%--I was just short of the entire course. I watched most of the lectures on 1.5x, and used 2.0x for the extra slow speakers. I outlined all the assigned practice essays then simply compared my outline to the model answers. I only composed full answers for the graded essays. I completed every MBE question available since I felt that was my weakest skill.

I spent lots of time outside the Themis course reviewing all the BLE-provided model answers from prior exams. These were great at setting expectations on what kind of answers received a good score.

I asked earlier in this thread about any correlation between Themis MBE results and actual MBE results. Just for future TLS reference, I ended the course with an average of 66% correct across all the subjects (which was slightly above the Themis-displayed national averages), and received a 150.5 on the actual July MBE (where 141.7 was the national mean).

[jigglypuffdreams]

So I promised I'd come back with my MBE score and I'm delivering. 143. My Themis practice MBE score was 131 if you want to do a correlation type thing. My essay scores were all over the place, but I ended up with 104 points raw and 138 converted. Michigan averages those two together and says you needed a 135 to pass, so I ended up passing by 5 points. So a win's a win. I do wonder exactly how the converted essay score works since it's brand new, but I'm posting my data for anyone who's willing to figure that out.

[bport hopeful]

I wish NY would give me my overall. Still curious.

[northwood]

I wish NY would give me my overall. Still curious.

easy- no score, perfect essays for you.

[bport hopeful]

I wish NY would give me my overall. Still curious.

easy- no score, perfect essays for you.

I was actually hoping to score exactly passing haha

[cooperlaserpup]

I never actually said where Themis got me, woops! If it helps anyone, I passed MD and scored a 148 on the MBE. I was getting about 70-75% correct on the practice questions by the end of Themis so that is a little low, but plenty to pass. MD does not release essay scores but this means I would have had to get at least a 40 or so, but I'm guessing I did better than that.

I did about 94% of the Themis course and nothing else besides reviewing on my own time. I'm using Themis again for NY this february.

I'm all about Themis!! No need to pay for Barbri in my opinion!

[AVBucks4239]

Passed Ohio Bar with 31 points to spare.

Did 80% of the Themis Course.

My comments:

(1) I'd definitely recommend Themis to anybody taking the bar. Could I have done it with Adaptibar/old outlines/notecards? Maybe. But Themis was a good course.

(2) Stay on schedule, but use Flex-Study and adapt to your own study style. For example, Themis's study schedule recommended doing practice essays immediately after learning a particular subject. This wasn't helpful for me because I didn't know the material yet. So I instead focused on reviewing, outlining, etc. and then did the essays when I had a decent grasp on the material.

(3) Do not fall behind on the lectures.

(4) No need to actually do all the practice essays. Use half for simple issue/spotting, use the other for actual practice.

(5) I bought MBE flashcards, and they were a great reference.

(6) For other Ohio test-takers: don't become obsessed with the MBE. Unlike other jurisdictions, it's only worth 1/3 in Ohio. If you average 4s on the essays, you only need a 53-54% raw score on the MBE to pass. So really focus on dominating the essays and you're golden. I know a person who got about 65% on the MBE, but really did poorly on the essay only subjects (Secured Transactions, BA, etc.) and she didn't pass. You really need to make sure you have a decent grasp on all the essay subjects to avoid 1s and 2s. Do that, and you'll pass.

[bport hopeful]

Honestly, if I were going to give one suggestion to anyone using Themis, it would be to abandon the schedule as soon as you feel comfortable enough with the workload to pace yourself.

[MACK]

I'm planning to take the February 2014 IL bar exam and will use Themis as my bar prep course. For those of you who passed the July exam, I have some questions (and would appreciate any additional tips):

1. How many hours a day should one devote to studying?
2. Did you read the long outlines and were they beneficial, or is it better to just use the shorter outlines?
3. When is the bset time to start outlining and making flashcards?
4. When should one start doing practice MBE and MEE questions?
5. How far out before the exam should one start memorizing?
6. How much time needs to be devoted to studying for the MPT?
7. Do you suggest using any material outside of Themis to prepare for the bar? (people earlier mentioned preparing with Lean Sheets outlines and Critical Pass flashcards, along with Adaptibar for the MBE - how useful were those? could you do without them?)

Thanks in advance!

[jigglypuffdreams]

Everyone's answers are probably going to be completely different, but I passed in Michigan.

1. Depends on when you start. Honestly I averaged 6-8 every day, but I started pretty early.

2. I loved the long outlines, especially for state-specific subjects. They're more detailed than what you learn in the lectures and condensed outlines, but they're definitely not excessive.

3. Really didn't do much outlining and flashcarding. I flashcarded... Michigan evidence distinctions and maybe Michigan tort distinctions, but I wasn't really ambitious enough to do much. I kinda did a pseudo outline where I copied and pasted Themis outlines and made them shorter I guess.

4. Whenever Themis tells you to, although I wish I tried reading the outline and watching the MBE videos a little more carefully at first. I kind of went through the motions in the beginning and my MBE practice question scores stayed below the national average for a long time as a result.

5. A month away from the exam you should start to get in memorization mode. One fault I have for Themis as far as scheduling things is that it won't tell you to review things much, and when it does, it'll tell you to review MBE subjects. I disobeyed Themis a lot in the end and focused on memorizing for the state specific essays. Luckily I did pretty well on the essays and I think that's part of why I passed. I get where they say that memorizing con law is important because it shows up on both the MBEs and some essays, but sometimes you just gotta learn secured transactions for the first time and it's going to take a bit more effort. (yeah, we got a secured transactions question and that was the ONE bar prep class I didn't take in law school. Luckily I got a 7/10 on it so I think Themis does a decent job teaching you essay topics as long as you put the effort in.)

6. No clue.

7. I bought BarMax questions, it was basically a collection of all the NCBE released questions available on an ipad app for 100 bucks. One thing that I didn't anticipate is that there was a ridiculous amount of overlap with Themis questions. Themis uses a lot of NCBE questions and sometimes alters them to reflect the modern standard. But I went through a lot of BarMax questions after going through most of the Themis questions, and I got an eerie sense of deja vu with most of them. I don't think they were that helpful because it was basically like reviewing the same questions. I felt overly confident because I still remembered the answers. I think if I had to do it again, I wouldn't obsess over having as many NCBE released questions as possible because there's only so many. Maybe I would've focused on reviewing questions I already did. Or give Kaplan's MBE bank a shot.

[kapital98]

1. I spent about 4-6 hours a day studying. I don’t count down time or breaks into this schedule. I don’t count the time I clicked on Facebook or saw a funny youtube video. This was pure work. I scheduled significant breaks during the day. Lunch would be around 1-2 hours. I spent about half as much time studying on Saturday and usually took Sunday off.

It was really easy to put in the time considering the video lectures would take 2-3 hours a day, MBE practice would take another 1-2 hours, and then the rest of the time was spent on essays or studying outlines. I was essentially a part-time studier but I was dedicated and didn’t goof off.

2. I first read the long outlines. I then stopped reading the long outlines halfway through the course. The exception being topics I thought were especially important for state specific reasons (ex: Family Law, Wills). There were some outlines which are a very small part of the exam and had huge outlines (Ex: NY Civ Pro). I said “screw that” and completely blew them off. The video lecturers were enough.

3. If you plan on doing this full time, start at around 8-10 weeks out. I started with 8 weeks left and felt a little rushed at the end. I also felt a little burnt out (Fear of burning out was why I did so little work). I never strayed from my schedule. I continued to take the weekends mostly off, even at the end, but I also didn’t take holidays off either. I completely ignored the Themis schedule after the first week.

4. Maybe 6 weeks out? You want to do excellent on the MBE section. I had to work really hard 2-4 weeks away from the test to pull my MBE scores from the mid 50’s into the high 60’s. On test day I did awful on the MBE (130 scaled). I’m sure that if I hadn’t put in this time to improve my scores I probably wouldn’t have passed the exam. There is only so much the essays can cover for a bad MBE score.

5. The first day you start studying. Get the general rules down. Eventually memorize them. This will make recalling the rule easier later when your primary focus should be on memorizing new areas of the law. The schedule is pretty unforgiving in this way. You’re expected to memorize new law every week in ~15 different subjects. This is really tough work. The good news: You don’t have to have much law memorized for the exam. You just have to be able to argue really well. Knowing the rules cold is just a way to rack up points and insure that you pass.

6. I spent one day specifically studying the MPT. I rocked the practice MPT and outlined another two MPT’s to make sure I was on the right track. I thought I rocked the real MPT on exam day. This is about 10-15 hours of work. Maybe 20 if you are not familiar with the different ways MPT’s can be designed.

7. I really loved Adaptibar. It made me feel secure by using all real MBE questions. The explanations were amazing. It significantly helped my MBE score. With that said, the MBE on the 2014 exam looked very different than past exams. I was really stumped. I’d say get Adaptibar if you are unsure about your MBE performance after using Themis for a while. If you’re doing well with Themis then it is unnecessary.

Good luck!

[bport hopeful]

I have no idea how I did on the MPT.. Could have smoked it, could have gotten smoked.

[bport hopeful]

The next time Im not playing Halo, Ill do a little write up like that. Its going to be really different than that one haha