NY Bar Feb Exam: Support Group Forum

[sd5289]

Congrats to all who passed! I'd been following this thread recently because two of my colleagues failed the July '15 exam (most of coming into the office had passed). I was desperately hoping that they'd pass, and one did, but one didn't. We really have no idea what to say to this person, and our office vastly restricts what you're allowed to do if you fail a second time. The whole thing sucks.

[NY_Sea]

Congrats to all who passed! I'd been following this thread recently because two of my colleagues failed the July '15 exam (most of coming into the office had passed). I was desperately hoping that they'd pass, and one did, but one didn't. We really have no idea what to say to this person, and our office vastly restricts what you're allowed to do if you fail a second time. The whole thing sucks.

Yeah, the general rule I've heard from firm life is that you get two shots and then you're out. It sucks. I have a few friends who were taking for the second time as well and weren't successful... Only thing I can do is lend support. I don't really know what to say, because I sort of know what they're going through, but also don't. I failed once, but not twice, so our situations are different enough for me not to know how to go about it.

[Nybar2015]

All I can say is, it's not worth working for such firms. Clearing exam does not mean one is a great lawyer. Looks like you have too much pressure working and studying. Take a break or lighter job and study for 3-4 months consistently and You can clear it as it's a doable exam.

[winwin25]

Congrats to all who passed! I'd been following this thread recently because two of my colleagues failed the July '15 exam (most of coming into the office had passed). I was desperately hoping that they'd pass, and one did, but one didn't. We really have no idea what to say to this person, and our office vastly restricts what you're allowed to do if you fail a second time. The whole thing sucks.

NYU, Fordham, or Columbia? I heard that students from those three have very high passing rate. Don't know if they graduated from one of those three.

[workandwork]

I am a bit lucky as I passed the NYB with my first attempt. I am a foreign educated student and a full time worker in China (the group with 29% passing rate). I studied my JD in HK so I didn't need to take LLM in US to take the Bar exam and have no US law background (indeed it was my first time to visit US in this Feb). As I am so busy at work so my office would only allow me to 1.5 month leave to study.

Like many other foreign educated students, I decided to take the barbri course and felt frustrated when I received the books and just put it aside for the first few months. When I picked up the personal study plan from barbri website in Jan, I felt even more frustrated as I was left behind for at least 20%. I decided to listen to all the lectures and practice the MBE questions. Unfortunately, I could only manage to get around 50% of the questions correct (for cons it's even lower than 40%).

Then I realized I should pay more attention to the essay part and the NY portion which warranty me 60% of my marks for the exam. I started to go through every questions which are released from the official website (as you may aware we don't' actually have the official MC questions but we do have the official essay questions). I passed with a relative low score for MBE, lower than mean, but I passed the bar exam.

Not sure would this approach fits you as it is a quite different bar exam revision approach suggested by the bar review course. In any event, the new UBE will be adopted so the bar exam preparation course would be able to offer more revision tool to it. All the best to all of you.

[sd5289]

Congrats to all who passed! I'd been following this thread recently because two of my colleagues failed the July '15 exam (most of coming into the office had passed). I was desperately hoping that they'd pass, and one did, but one didn't. We really have no idea what to say to this person, and our office vastly restricts what you're allowed to do if you fail a second time. The whole thing sucks.

NYU, Fordham, or Columbia? I heard that students from those three have very high passing rate. Don't know if they graduated from one of those three.

None of the above. Penn.

[John_Luther1989]

Anyone have any idea how different prep for UBE will be?

Probably much easier and less overwhelming. You can pretty much forget about studying for Trusts/Estates, Corp., Family Law, No-Fault Insurance, etc. PLUS all those quirky NY exceptions. . . .

Just know your basic common law for the tested MBE subjects and you should be good to go.

One of my friends was a pro bono scholar and took the NH UBE this past Feb. It tested 3/4 things you mentioned (including a left-field question on power of attorney) and didn't include CivPro, which had basically been tested in every MEE since the dawn of time. Study everything. EVERYTHING.

[nyfailedjuly2015]

Anyone else a bit annoyed with how so many jobs (even basic monkey work like doc review) require you to be sworn in? Even though once you've passed the bar, it can take a while to be sworn in. And the bar itself takes 2-3 months to be graded.

It seems that in other professions they'll give you the results of a licensing test before you even complete the test if you get a sufficient number of questions correct. they're actually trying to help you get licensed and get working if that's what you want.

But in law, it seems like they don't really give a shit about helping you get on your feet. Am I alone on this? What do you guys think?

[1styearlateral]

Anyone have any idea how different prep for UBE will be?

Probably much easier and less overwhelming. You can pretty much forget about studying for Trusts/Estates, Corp., Family Law, No-Fault Insurance, etc. PLUS all those quirky NY exceptions. . . .

Just know your basic common law for the tested MBE subjects and you should be good to go.

One of my friends was a pro bono scholar and took the NH UBE this past Feb. It tested 3/4 things you mentioned (including a left-field question on power of attorney) and didn't include CivPro, which had basically been tested in every MEE since the dawn of time. Study everything. EVERYTHING.

Yeah, it's already been established that I was incorrect.

[John_Luther1989]

Anyone else a bit annoyed with how so many jobs (even basic monkey work like doc review) require you to be sworn in? Even though once you've passed the bar, it can take a while to be sworn in. And the bar itself takes 2-3 months to be graded.

It seems that in other professions they'll give you the results of a licensing test before you even complete the test if you get a sufficient number of questions correct. they're actually trying to help you get licensed and get working if that's what you want.

But in law, it seems like they don't really give a shit about helping you get on your feet. Am I alone on this? What do you guys think?

I feel you. They could give you your MBE score basically right away and then just make you wait for the essays. At least that way people would more/less know if they passed significantly sooner. I really doubt most people who didn't marginally pass/fail don't have a very good idea of how they did on the essays right away.

[1styearlateral]

Anyone else a bit annoyed with how so many jobs (even basic monkey work like doc review) require you to be sworn in? Even though once you've passed the bar, it can take a while to be sworn in. And the bar itself takes 2-3 months to be graded.

It seems that in other professions they'll give you the results of a licensing test before you even complete the test if you get a sufficient number of questions correct. they're actually trying to help you get licensed and get working if that's what you want.

But in law, it seems like they don't really give a shit about helping you get on your feet. Am I alone on this? What do you guys think?

Some states do C&F first, so by the time you hear back whether you passed, it's inly a matter of days or a week and you're sworn in. That's just the way it is in NY.

I suspect that it is this way because so many people take the NY exam, and since a good amount fail, the appellate departments don't want to waste their time doing C&F if most won't be passing.

[Stressedout2016]

So I wanted to share what I did to pass on the second try for the NY bar exam. I admit that I wasn't prepared on my first attempt because I was working full-time (took only 2.5 weeks off before the exam), skipped many NY lectures that Kaplan had in their course and was studying on my own. I thought I knew what I was doing but apparently not when I received my scores.

My second time around, I quit my job, signed up with a private tutor, listened to ALL of Kaplan's lectures, and signed up with Adaptibar. This time around, I had the TIME I needed to study. I listened to ALL the lectures from Kaplan, I did about 50 MBE questions everyday, and I did a lot of reviewing of past essays. In addition, I had a tutor who went over my essays and MPTs; he was a life saver.

Basically, there's no easy way to study for the bar; the straight forward answer is you have to study, ALOT, and put in a lot of TIME. I was studying everyday for 3 months from 7AM to 7PM. I focused on my weaknesses, essays, and strengthen what I was good at, MBE; I went from a 132 to a 144 on it.

You'll have to sacrifice your personal time and treat studying for the bar as your life but it's definitely rewarding; I would recommend praying a lot too. lol If anybody has any questions, let me know. Good luck!

[nybe16]

I also want to share what I did to pass the NY Bar exam on my second try. I took it for the first time in July 2015, I work full time and I was very worried about how to manage work and studying, specially because I am a foreigner and I had the extra problem of not being from an English speaking country. In July, I took Barbri and as a complement I took Barwrite for Essays and MPT. I did not have enough time to practice lots of MBE questions, I did only around 500 practice questions. I did not pass.

So on my second try I knew I had to improve my MBE score. I decided to continue with Barbri and also did Barwrite 6-day course for MBE. I did around 2500 MBE practice questions, and for each question I would not only read the answer but also write down in a flash card the rule applying to that question. Apart from Barbri books I used the following books to improve my MBE score: Emanuel "Strategies Tactics for the MBE", Kaplan "MBE Practice Questions & Answers", Adaptibar, and I also bought Critical Pass flash cards (which I would read on my commute or at the gym). Kaplan's book and Adaptibar are really helpful!

If you have to improve your MBE score, I would recommend practicing questions by sub-topics too. For example: if I thought I wasn't doing well in contract formation, every day I would practice around 15 questions on this topic, in addition to other assignments I had. Kaplan's book has an Index where the questions are organized by sub-topics, that seems silly but is actually really helpful (Adaptibar also has this tool).

For the essays, I memorized a lot of rules. I find it easier if I know the rules by heart so I don't waste time during the exam trying to come up with the right words (useful for non-native speaker). If you have difficulties with certain rules, write them on a post-it and stick them to your mirror so you read them every day.

For the bar exam you need not only to know the rules, time management is key. So practice, practice and practice!

Good luck to all of you that will take it in July!

[Stressedout2016]

So I wanted to share what I did to pass on the second try for the NY bar exam. I admit that I wasn't prepared on my first attempt because I was working full-time (took only 2.5 weeks off before the exam), skipped many NY lectures that Kaplan had in their course and was studying on my own. I thought I knew what I was doing but apparently not when I received my scores.

My second time around, I quit my job, signed up with a private tutor, listened to ALL of Kaplan's lectures, and signed up with Adaptibar. This time around, I had the TIME I needed to study. I listened to ALL the lectures from Kaplan, I did about 50 MBE questions everyday, and I did a lot of reviewing of past essays. In addition, I had a tutor who went over my essays and MPTs; he was a life saver.

Basically, there's no easy way to study for the bar; the straight forward answer is you have to study, ALOT, and put in a lot of TIME. I was studying everyday for 3 months from 7AM to 7PM. I focused on my weaknesses, essays, and strengthen what I was good at, MBE; I went from a 132 to a 144 on it.

You'll have to sacrifice your personal time and treat studying for the bar as your life but it's definitely rewarding; I would recommend praying a lot too. lol If anybody has any questions, let me know. Good luck!

I forgot to mention I also used Critical Pass flash cards.

[Carly12]

Hi NY Bar passer - for those of you who have submitted their application to be admitted, when do you think we will hear back?

[1styearlateral]

I already got my letter in the mail giving tentative dates. Mid-July.

[starryski]

I already got my letter in the mail giving tentative dates. Mid-July.

what department?

[1styearlateral]

First.

[NY_Sea]

First.

Wait... Mid-July? When is your next swearing in ceremony? The 3rd Dept. has one scheduled for June 22... The letter we got in March said that you have to hand in your application by this Friday to be in the June 22 ceremony.

[1styearlateral]

Each department runs differently. First and Second departments are notorious for being lengthier processes because they simply just have more applicants.

Pretty sure that admission is done on a rolling basis, and a partner at my firm, who is good friends with a 1st Dep't justice, said he might be able to have my application pushed through quicker and have my swear-in date moved up. We'll see.

[NY_Sea]

Each department runs differently. First and Second departments are notorious for being lengthier processes because they simply just have more applicants.

Pretty sure that admission is done on a rolling basis, and a partner at my firm, who is good friends with a 1st Dep't justice, said he might be able to have my application pushed through quicker and have my swear-in date moved up. We'll see.

Oh ok... I just did a little research and apparently they don't have a specific ceremony like in the Third. We have a big ceremony in Jan and June where they just admit a whole bunch of attys. Makes sense that they can't do that for NYC.

[1styearlateral]

Yeah my admission process requires three separate days. One day for the interview, one day for the training sesh, and one day for the swear in. I believe the second department operates the same way (from what other associates in my class have told me). Notably, one of the girls who passed in July and is being processed through the first department still hasn't been sworn in. It just takes time depending on how long it takes them to review your app.

[z0rk]

Just submitted my paperwork for admission today.

I am curious, anyone speak with NY BOLE about whether/when it will post the essays and answers for the February 2016 exam? After all the agonizing over recalling what was on the exam, I would not mind having a chance to read it over once.