looongtimelurker wrote:
We were starting from different points, though: I just took the JD bar prep course, which did not change over time, so no confusion here. I assume you also took the LLM package, about which I cannot say anything.
yes, i am not familiar with their JD program. mine was called LLM advanced 1&2.
Therefore, I quickly gave up on reading the Themis outlines.
im sorry i didnt read this 6 months ago, cause i've lost a whole month on this without much progress. it felt like reading chinese at the time.
That may have made all the difference, as my workflow developed into: watch the lectures (also mostly at higher speed), modify that friend’s outline according to my lecture notes, and then get into MBE questions. I carefully revised the MBE answer explanations / essay model answers, and made further additions to my friend’s outline whenever something novel popped up.
roughly i did the same thing. the problem i had with this process is that this form of studying - where you only learn new things by taking the tests - proved to be too time consuming. i also ended up with scattered notes everywhere and/or had to make my own outline by including all the model answers tricks into what i thought was a coherent outline before that.
(That being said, I did go back to the Themis outlines from time to time, and I can't say I spotted any omissions. At least for the parts I checked, I seem to remember I found ALL the information from the MBE practice sets in the outlines, too. I just wasn't able to digest the long outlines at once, but that's another story.)
nope, there were plenty that were not covered or they were not there in that form. to be fair, i probably would have had way less problems with this if i had actually graduated from a JD program. being on an unknown turf is struggling as it is, but studying without having the whole picture being painted in a coherent and connected manner is additional stress. granted, this is a bar prep course and not lawschool, but if you compare their handouts with the mbe questions and answers, you can see that their handouts cover only 30-40% of what you need for the mbe. if that's the point, okay. but there was no point then for me to waste my time on their lectures and handouts, i should have gone straight for the mbe questions and learn as my score rises.
As regards the quality of the lectures, I would beg to differ. I thought at least the following were good and well-structured: Con Law, Contracts, Advanced Sales, Criminal Law, Evidence (even though the lecturer has a salesman air to him), Property, Torts, Trusts, Wills, Corporations, Partnerships.
with all due respect, i am not even sure if you have watched all these lectures. trusts and wills were full of mistakes and corrections, because the guy (although nice and pleasant) could not keep his focus for longer than 5 minutes. property guy spent 1/3 of his lectures drinking water and telling us how he is drinking water because he lives in the desert. as for criminal law, thank to themis i was exposed to 2 different lecturers so (and 2 more for crim pro) so i am failing to remeber who was who. i think the chick that covered the videos in course 1 that got killed had the life force of a house brick, though. others were okay, except the corporations guy who was great. so, yeah we will disagree on this.
@llmeuro: Sorry to hear you had such an awful time! Apart from their outlines, I was actually pretty happy with Themis, and with that qualifier will recommend it to friends - not least because it also felt good to be working with a bar prep that wasn’t ripping me off as blatantly as barbri.
you do have a point there regarding the price.
however, that price is still not ohmygodafreelunch so from that perspective their help desk was terrible. every time i would report an issue (like, there was a time when some of the essays just would not be submitted through their site), it would take them 2-3 emails just to understand what i am talking about. typical convo was something like
- hi, my administrative law essay cannot be uploaded, i keep getting rerouted to the home page
- hi, we just checked, your agency law essay has been uploaded. have a great day!
fuck that shit x days before the bar.
