BarBri - NY Exam - July 2014 Forum

[belowthelaw57]

just looked at the rule statements. voluntary intoxication IS a defense only if it prevents you from forming the requisite intent to commit the crime. so it's a little bit of everything that's been discussed. in other words, i think you'd have to be SO DRUNK that you literally cannot function. being just normal drunk lowers your inhibitions, so you can still intend to do something. think of every time you've danced on that table, you had the intent, it was just a very misplaced and bad intent.

Yea, that I realize, but how do I tell which is which? The fact that she "was so intoxicated that she remembered nothing the next day" is not enough?

I think you'd have to just remember that in the back of your head, and then evaluate the other answer choices. Was the correct answer "she's guilty" or was there another defense to pick from?

[plath]

just looked at the rule statements. voluntary intoxication IS a defense only if it prevents you from forming the requisite intent to commit the crime. so it's a little bit of everything that's been discussed. in other words, i think you'd have to be SO DRUNK that you literally cannot function. being just normal drunk lowers your inhibitions, so you can still intend to do something. think of every time you've danced on that table, you had the intent, it was just a very misplaced and bad intent.

Yea, that I realize, but how do I tell which is which? The fact that she "was so intoxicated that she remembered nothing the next day" is not enough?

I think you'd have to just remember that in the back of your head, and then evaluate the other answer choices. Was the correct answer "she's guilty" or was there another defense to pick from?

That's the thing... the answers were either "Yes, because she had the requisite intent for solicitation" or "No, because she lacked the requisite intent for solicitation"....

[belowthelaw57]

just looked at the rule statements. voluntary intoxication IS a defense only if it prevents you from forming the requisite intent to commit the crime. so it's a little bit of everything that's been discussed. in other words, i think you'd have to be SO DRUNK that you literally cannot function. being just normal drunk lowers your inhibitions, so you can still intend to do something. think of every time you've danced on that table, you had the intent, it was just a very misplaced and bad intent.

Yea, that I realize, but how do I tell which is which? The fact that she "was so intoxicated that she remembered nothing the next day" is not enough?

I think you'd have to just remember that in the back of your head, and then evaluate the other answer choices. Was the correct answer "she's guilty" or was there another defense to pick from?

That's the thing... the answers were either "Yes, because she had the requisite intent for solicitation" or "No, because she lacked the requisite intent for solicitation"....

Well then I think on the MBE it would have to be "yes, if the jury finds she had the requisite intent for solicitation" because otherwise the question would be putting you into the position of the trier of fact. The MBE can ask you if 2 drinks is "drunk enough," but can't ask you to determine if blacking out is "drunk enough" because it's too close of a call. If it was worded the way adaptibar phrases it on the MBE I think you have to have confidence it would be flagged for review and thrown out.

**This is all under the assumption that adaptibar is full of it about voluntary intoxication not being a defense to solicitation at common law.

[PennBull]

Naw the voluntary intox statement is correct, and the MBE will not ask you to parse that sort of bullshit

I agree that it'll probably be a "Yes, if the jury..." type answer.

[Guchster]

for negligent infliction of emotional distress...

does there need to be physical manifestation of any sort of symptom for the bystander or special relationship category? and for the bystander category, the parent/family member has to be in the "zone of danger" also right?

i know there needs to be a manifestation of symptoms for the near-miss. i didn't think there needed to be for the other categories, but i swear i came across a question recently where they said physical symptoms were necessary.

From my torts class, we definitely learned no physical symptom for the bystander/family member and we also learned that they had to actually see it/experience it (I think I remember a case where they heard the injury?), but not be in the zone of danger. From Barbri though, answers seem to have always require physical injury and always require being in the zone of danger.

We never learned this crap in my torts class but just based purely off my notes and outlines, you generally need physical symptoms (e.g., nervous breakdown, miscarriage, hear attack) even in the bystander case.

But note, the Barbri outline says with regard to the bystander category, "Most of these states still require physical symptoms, but the modern trend is to drop that requirement."

[PennBull]

For MBE, it's either physical injury and/or family member; family member need not be within "Zone of danger"

For NY, you need both AND zone of danger

[thetashster]

for negligent infliction of emotional distress...

does there need to be physical manifestation of any sort of symptom for the bystander or special relationship category? and for the bystander category, the parent/family member has to be in the "zone of danger" also right?

i know there needs to be a manifestation of symptoms for the near-miss. i didn't think there needed to be for the other categories, but i swear i came across a question recently where they said physical symptoms were necessary.

From my torts class, we definitely learned no physical symptom for the bystander/family member and we also learned that they had to actually see it/experience it (I think I remember a case where they heard the injury?), but not be in the zone of danger. From Barbri though, answers seem to have always require physical injury and always require being in the zone of danger.

We never learned this crap in my torts class but just based purely off my notes and outlines, you generally need physical symptoms (e.g., nervous breakdown, miscarriage, hear attack) even in the bystander case.

But note, the Barbri outline says with regard to the bystander category, "Most of these states still require physical symptoms, but the modern trend is to drop that requirement."

For MBE, it's either physical injury and/or family member; family member need not be within "Zone of danger"

For NY, you need both AND zone of danger

thanks so much, guys!

http://i.imgur.com/q3e87zR.gif

[klankenburger]

Does anyone else feel like either the StudySmart MBE questions are harder than full-day the practice MBE ones were? As a matter of percentage, I'm definitely doing worse on StudySmart than I did on the practice MBE. If Barbri is intentionally giving us harder questions now, I find it really annoying. I get trying to get us to study harder, but at a certain point the freak-out factor outweighs the added incentive to study. I really want an accurate gauge of how I'm likely to fare on the MBE questions.

[jets098]

Does anyone else feel like either the StudySmart MBE questions are harder than full-day the practice MBE ones were? As a matter of percentage, I'm definitely doing worse on StudySmart than I did on the practice MBE. If Barbri is intentionally giving us harder questions now, I find it really annoying. I get trying to get us to study harder, but at a certain point the freak-out factor outweighs the added incentive to study. I really want an accurate gauge of how I'm likely to fare on the MBE questions.

I'm approaching Set 5 and Set 6 in Studysmart as just practice and not as an indicator of how I'm actually doing. I find a lot of them turn on judgment calls, very very minor details, or obscure rules. However, that is easier said than done because they are frustrating to do

[Guchster]

Does anyone else feel like either the StudySmart MBE questions are harder than full-day the practice MBE ones were? As a matter of percentage, I'm definitely doing worse on StudySmart than I did on the practice MBE. If Barbri is intentionally giving us harder questions now, I find it really annoying. I get trying to get us to study harder, but at a certain point the freak-out factor outweighs the added incentive to study. I really want an accurate gauge of how I'm likely to fare on the MBE questions.

I'm approaching Set 5 and Set 6 in Studysmart as just practice and not as an indicator of how I'm actually doing. I find a lot of them turn on judgment calls, very very minor details, or obscure rules. However, that is easier said than done because they are frustrating to do

I do not look at 5 or 6 as anything but learning to deal mentally with hard questions and toss-ups as well as a chance to go over parts of law I may not have visited in a while.

With the exception of a few topics, I've scored between 20-25% below my score on the practice MBE and mixed question sets and I think I know much more now than I did then. Knowing the real MBE is going to be a gradient of very easy to impossible toss-ups/judgment calls, I look at my performance on Set 5 and 6 as how I'll handle the small percentage of very challenging questions.

My only concern is this. After learning about an obscure carve-out exception to a carve-out on Set 5/6, I get easier questions wrong because I over think them or notice that the "best" answer throws me off because it is a technical misstatement of law (or too vague or overbroad) and I don't pick it. In other words, at some point for me, knowing too much can really hinder my performance on the easier and moderate questions and Barbri needs to be careful about that too. At this point that's my bigger concern about the MBE.

[klankenburger]

Okay, it's a relief that I'm not the only one who's found these more difficult than the practice MBE. Honestly, Barbri is really annoying. I find it extremely paternalistic to constantly be giving us excessively difficult questions to scare us into studying. For me at least, there is a real sense in which confidence is an important part of doing well, and they really seem to have no hesitation about taking away confidence.

[5ky]

FYI -- I kept a log of all of my question set results and then an estimate of what I got on the real thing based on my scaled score.

This isn't a full list, just the ones towards the end. As you can see, for the last few days I just did ones from the strategies and tactics book, but I'm not sure if I would recommend that or not. You will see that my real score essentially approximated what I averaged over the multiple 50 question mixed sets I did, but I know people for whom that was not the case.

I also did much worse on the Half Day and Simulated Final Exam than I did on the real thing.

I did very well on the Simulated MIdterm because I tried to frontload my MBE studying as much as possible. I did try to do a set of MBE questions every day, but beyond doing that and reviewing my wrong answers, I did not do a whole lot of MBE studying the last few weeks.




I am confident that my best subjects were Evidence and Crim. My worst were Contracts and probably Conlaw. Property were the hardest, but I think I did okay on that relative to others.

[goodolgil]

Two points from a July 2013 taker

People freaked out about the NY essay stuff should do themselves a favor and look at the essays from the July 2013 exam if they haven't already. The general consensus was that these were surprisingly easy, and certainly much easier than BarBri's fake essay questions. Look at how simple the Wills essay was compared to some of the stuff that BarBri stressed. From what I remember, there was really only 1 issue that came up that wasn't blatantly obvious (something about worker's comp and the "grave injury" exception), and you certainly could easily pass the essays while completely missing this point. Of course part performance does not guarantee future results, etc...

The actual MBE questions are significantly easier than BarBri's questions, but it will not feel that way when you leave the test. Everyone walked out of the test feeling like they failed the MBE (particularly the PM section for me, but I think people had different versions). This is almost assuredly because you cannot check your answers right away as you can with BarBri practice. I thought I did very poorly, and I ended up scoring 177.8 scaled (I had like a 137 on the simulated MBE).

[AJS30]

For Secured Transactions are you guys just memorizing attachment, perfection and self-help? From what I saw from the essays that ST has appeared on it just asks who has priority, where the model answers just say first in time, first in right. Do you think it's worth memorizing the 6 characters BIOC, GUC, etc and w/e else she talked about in the lecture...

I figure ST is not so important, but since they removed commercial paper for this exam, I was thinking this may be thrown in.

[PennBull]

For Secured Transactions are you guys just memorizing attachment, perfection and self-help? From what I saw from the essays that ST has appeared on it just asks who has priority, where the model answers just say first in time, first in right. Do you think it's worth memorizing the 6 characters BIOC, GUC, etc and w/e else she talked about in the lecture...

I figure ST is not so important, but since they removed commercial paper for this exam, I was thinking this may be thrown in.

The priorities aren't hard to conceptualize so I did. The order of priority makes sense as far as who SHOULD have priority, but that might just be me.

[Guchster]

Two points from a July 2013 taker

People freaked out about the NY essay stuff should do themselves a favor and look at the essays from the July 2013 exam if they haven't already. The general consensus was that these were surprisingly easy, and certainly much easier than BarBri's fake essay questions. Look at how simple the Wills essay was compared to some of the stuff that BarBri stressed. From what I remember, there was really only 1 issue that came up that wasn't blatantly obvious (something about worker's comp and the "grave injury" exception), and you certainly could easily pass the essays while completely missing this point. Of course part performance does not guarantee future results, etc...

The actual MBE questions are significantly easier than BarBri's questions, but it will not feel that way when you leave the test. Everyone walked out of the test feeling like they failed the MBE (particularly the PM section for me, but I think people had different versions). This is almost assuredly because you cannot check your answers right away as you can with BarBri practice. I thought I did very poorly, and I ended up scoring 177.8 scaled (I had like a 137 on the simulated MBE).

Guys, in the home stretch posts like yours and 5ky's are so awesome and much needed/appreciated.

Keep 'em coming!

[pizzasodafries]

quick question that my outline is not clear on, for Intentional Infliction of Emotional distress, if its a "just miss" case then you need to have negligence by driver, forseeability to create a risk of physical injury, zone of danger AND you need physical symptoms. For the bystander you need to have witnessed the accident to a close family member and must be in zone of danger.

My question is do you also need physical manifestations to recover for the bystander witness scenario?

[thetashster]

quick question that my outline is not clear on, for Intentional Infliction of Emotional distress, if its a "just miss" case then you need to have negligence by driver, forseeability to create a risk of physical injury, zone of danger AND you need physical symptoms. For the bystander you need to have witnessed the accident to a close family member and must be in zone of danger.

My question is do you also need physical manifestations to recover for the bystander witness scenario?

hey! so i asked this yesterday as well. i'm going to quote the convo below. btw, intentional infliction of emotional distress is different from negligent. for intentional, you have to say/do something continuous that would be found absolutely terrible/depraved by normal people or you target a weak class (like a pregnant woman, an older person, or a kid). negligent infliction of emotional distress is the near-miss, bystander, and special relationship category. anyway, here's the convo from yesterday. hope it helps!

for negligent infliction of emotional distress...

does there need to be physical manifestation of any sort of symptom for the bystander or special relationship category? and for the bystander category, the parent/family member has to be in the "zone of danger" also right?

i know there needs to be a manifestation of symptoms for the near-miss. i didn't think there needed to be for the other categories, but i swear i came across a question recently where they said physical symptoms were necessary.

From my torts class, we definitely learned no physical symptom for the bystander/family member and we also learned that they had to actually see it/experience it (I think I remember a case where they heard the injury?), but not be in the zone of danger. From Barbri though, answers seem to have always require physical injury and always require being in the zone of danger.

We never learned this crap in my torts class but just based purely off my notes and outlines, you generally need physical symptoms (e.g., nervous breakdown, miscarriage, hear attack) even in the bystander case.

But note, the Barbri outline says with regard to the bystander category, "Most of these states still require physical symptoms, but the modern trend is to drop that requirement."

For MBE, it's either physical injury and/or family member; family member need not be within "Zone of danger"

For NY, you need both AND zone of danger

thanks so much, guys!

<a class="vglnk" title="Link added by VigLink" rel="nofollow" href="http://i.imgur.com/q3e87zR.gif"><span>h ... </span></a>

[5ky]

Two points from a July 2013 taker

People freaked out about the NY essay stuff should do themselves a favor and look at the essays from the July 2013 exam if they haven't already. The general consensus was that these were surprisingly easy, and certainly much easier than BarBri's fake essay questions. Look at how simple the Wills essay was compared to some of the stuff that BarBri stressed. From what I remember, there was really only 1 issue that came up that wasn't blatantly obvious (something about worker's comp and the "grave injury" exception), and you certainly could easily pass the essays while completely missing this point. Of course part performance does not guarantee future results, etc...

The actual MBE questions are significantly easier than BarBri's questions, but it will not feel that way when you leave the test. Everyone walked out of the test feeling like they failed the MBE (particularly the PM section for me, but I think people had different versions). This is almost assuredly because you cannot check your answers right away as you can with BarBri practice. I thought I did very poorly, and I ended up scoring 177.8 scaled (I had like a 137 on the simulated MBE).

I co-sign everything in this post, especially freaking out about the MBE after. There was so much "oh barbri/kaplan/themis did a terrible job, the MBE was so much harder than our practice Qs" after it, but it was just a total overreaction. Judging from the curve it was slightly harder than normal, but it's scaled accordingly to account for that. Not being able to score your test immediately after makes such a huge difference, it's pretty incredible. You'll only remember the 50 questions you weren't sure on, which feels like a lot, but then you end up dominating the thing.

[pizzasodafries]

Thanks, i obviously meant Negligent, I'm an idiot!

FWIW I really don' think the Bar Examiners will test us on whether Physical Symptoms MUST be present in bystander cases since they know the law is not exactly settled in that regards. Don't think they want to "trick" us when the law is not settled, since everyone will just get that Q wrong and it won't count anyways. Just my two cents.

[jets098]

Anybody that is taking NJ also have any info on the grading? In the Barbri NY Supplement it says that you can't "bank" either portion of the exam if your score is above 135 (scaled) on that portion. Does that mean that a high MBE score (say around 150 scaled) doesn't really help offset a below average essay section? I'll call Babri about this tomorrow but if anybody has any info it would be appreciated.

[thetashster]

Anybody that is taking NJ also have any info on the grading? In the Barbri NY Supplement it says that you can't "bank" either portion of the exam if your score is above 135 (scaled) on that portion. Does that mean that a high MBE score (say around 150 scaled) doesn't really help offset a below average essay section? I'll call Babri about this tomorrow but if anybody has any info it would be appreciated.

Not sure if this helps, but I'm also taking MA and the MBE and Essays are 50%. I was told that a lower score will be offset by a higher score somewhere else, but I wasn't told anything about banking. They said I have to get 125 Raw on MBE and 4-5 out of 7 on the essays to pass.

Let us know what BarBri says though!

[gtrwanka]

Quick question: Mechanical Pencils with #2 lead OK???

[turquoiseturtle]

Quick question: Mechanical Pencils with #2 lead OK???

Maybe and no.

From the NY bar's security policy http://www.nybarexam.org/Docs/secpolicy.pdf, they could fall under "No.2 pencils" and be allowed, but I bet they mean real pencils and anything not listed is prohibited.

But from the NCBEX mechanical pencils are specifically not allowed on MBE day. --LinkRemoved-- It's on page 5, instructions for test day.

[peanut123]

Question on Essay 9, if anyone might have thoughts. Is there a reasonable argument that the company being profitable is a condition precedent to the obligation to repurchase shares, thus making the statement an exception to the PER? It's not in the model answer and not in either of the student answers, but I made the argument and am just wondering if I have some gross misunderstanding of conditions. (Probably).