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Spent more time than I care to admit slogging through the BarBri AMPs today. Granted I just started my bar prep, but is there a TLS consensus on AMP (I searched and didn't find anything, I think AMP is relatively new). I really don't want to do these fucking things for the next 2 months if I don't have to. It seems like useless bullshit but I am hesitant to deviate from the Paced Program, even though it seems like whatever marginal benefit I am getting is not even close to the time investment it takes. Thoughts?

I def. share your view on the AMPs. It seems more like a chore rather than me actually learning anything. I've talked with numerous people who took BarBri and passed. Half of them said it helped somewhat and they did them all, the other half said that they stopped doing them after a while and felt like it did nothing for them. I feel like it would be more productive to memorize the law and do practice questions instead of doing the AMPs. They're basically making us do it when we don't even know what the law is.

Helpful but unless something as changed it's too much work for the benefit

Here's another observation about AMP. In the introduction lecture the lady said that the long outlines (MS I think) are to only be used as a reference when we get confused. Well in the "additional learning" part of the AMPs, there is shit in those that are ONLY in the long outlines and NOT in the Conviser Mini Review. Why the hell AMP is focusing on very specific details in the long outline that I thought we didn't need to know is something I don't understand.

AMP only hits the highlights of the CMR/lecture and maybe 15% of their questions will pull directly off of AMP. I found it was better to actually read/study the CMR and then rip right through AMP as a general review or if I was too tired to do another question set, but did not want to do anything.

I can't stress enough that the BarBri lectures are an absolute waste of time and their line of you can pass the MBE solely from the lecture/lecture outlines is dubious at best. Slog through the CMR and memorize from there. You will perform better on the question sets by studying straight from there although they still pull questions from the long outline book that aren't covered in the CMR. But you will do better on the question sets and that will give you the false sense of security you need to feel "prepared" for the MBE - which is substantially different than Barbri and other prep test companies' questions save Adaptibar which uses released MBE questions and even there the MBE is a different beast.

The $85 I spent on CriticalPass MBE flashcards was the best money I spent on bar prep. They take the CMR and break it down by subject and it saves you countless hours of having to make and color code the subjects.

I thought doing AMPs before lectures (when they told you to do them) were a waste, but doing them after the lectures was helpful. It also took 1/5th of the time doing them after the lectures, because I was familiar with the material. I used them as sort of a way to help imprint the lecture in my head, as I memorized pretty well by answering questions.

I disagree about the lectures, I think they have far more than enough. I rarely used the CMR because I didn't like it. I thought it was organized poorly and unnecessarily detailed.

For the bar, I am a huge proponent of knowing 80% of the material really, really well, instead of 95-100% of it only okay. (when I say knowing the material, I just mean of what Barbri expects you to learn. Even they admit the big books are not to actually be used)

get it to x wrote:AMP only hits the highlights of the CMR/lecture and maybe 15% of their questions will pull directly off of AMP. I found it was better to actually read/study the CMR and then rip right through AMP as a general review or if I was too tired to do another question set, but did not want to do anything.

I can't stress enough that the BarBri lectures are an absolute waste of time and their line of you can pass the MBE solely from the lecture/lecture outlines is dubious at best. Slog through the CMR and memorize from there. You will perform better on the question sets by studying straight from there although they still pull questions from the long outline book that aren't covered in the CMR. But you will do better on the question sets and that will give you the false sense of security you need to feel "prepared" for the MBE - which is substantially different than Barbri and other prep test companies' questions save Adaptibar which uses released MBE questions and even there the MBE is a different beast.

The $85 I spent on CriticalPass MBE flashcards was the best money I spent on bar prep. They take the CMR and break it down by subject and it saves you countless hours of having to make and color code the subjects.

Eh I looked at the CMR like 5 times

rad lulz wrote:

get it to x wrote:AMP only hits the highlights of the CMR/lecture and maybe 15% of their questions will pull directly off of AMP. I found it was better to actually read/study the CMR and then rip right through AMP as a general review or if I was too tired to do another question set, but did not want to do anything.

I can't stress enough that the BarBri lectures are an absolute waste of time and their line of you can pass the MBE solely from the lecture/lecture outlines is dubious at best. Slog through the CMR and memorize from there. You will perform better on the question sets by studying straight from there although they still pull questions from the long outline book that aren't covered in the CMR. But you will do better on the question sets and that will give you the false sense of security you need to feel "prepared" for the MBE - which is substantially different than Barbri and other prep test companies' questions save Adaptibar which uses released MBE questions and even there the MBE is a different beast.

The $85 I spent on CriticalPass MBE flashcards was the best money I spent on bar prep. They take the CMR and break it down by subject and it saves you countless hours of having to make and color code the subjects.

Eh I looked at the CMR like 5 times

Do you mind sharing what you did focus on? I am trying to pass using BarBri doing the absolute minimum amount of work. Did you only use the lecture handout things?

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I thought AMP was solid for reviewing stuff later on in my study. And I agree with the poster who said Barbri's line that you can pass based solely on the lectures is dubious. The lectures try to hit the things they think are regularly tested, but they skip a lot of testable material. Sure, if you know the lecture material down pat you'll do fine on the test, but if you can only recall like 70-80% of the lecture material on test day you could get screwed when there's an essay question about something off the wall like the indentured servitude clause of the 13th Amendment on the test.

So, I want to start my prep a few days early. Are there instructions anywhere for Barbri. I literally have no idea what to start with. I don't see an instruction sheet anywhere.

jaydizzle wrote:So, I want to start my prep a few days early. Are there instructions anywhere for Barbri. I literally have no idea what to start with. I don't see an instruction sheet anywhere.

Go to "Enrolled Student Center>" at the top or on the left-hand side. Then hit "> Bar Review Materials." Then hit "Paced Program," and you can see your assignments for the upcoming weeks. Alternatively, also under "> Bar Review Materials," you could do "Early Start Bar Review," but I would probably just get started on the Paced Program since you will end up doing that anyways.

ph14 wrote:

jaydizzle wrote:So, I want to start my prep a few days early. Are there instructions anywhere for Barbri. I literally have no idea what to start with. I don't see an instruction sheet anywhere.

Go to "Enrolled Student Center>" at the top or on the left-hand side. Then hit "> Bar Review Materials." Then hit "Paced Program," and you can see your assignments for the upcoming weeks. Alternatively, also under "> Bar Review Materials," you could do "Early Start Bar Review," but I would probably just get started on the Paced Program since you will end up doing that anyways.

Ugh wtf. Technically class does not start until Tuesday, but they wanted me already to do a practice exam and all of these AMP questions. Apparently I am a few days behind even though class did not start. Is this rubbish and should I just try to keep up with the Paced program rather than doing a dumb diagnostic when I know nothing as well as AMP questions when I haven't even studied?

jaydizzle wrote:

ph14 wrote:

jaydizzle wrote:So, I want to start my prep a few days early. Are there instructions anywhere for Barbri. I literally have no idea what to start with. I don't see an instruction sheet anywhere.

Go to "Enrolled Student Center>" at the top or on the left-hand side. Then hit "> Bar Review Materials." Then hit "Paced Program," and you can see your assignments for the upcoming weeks. Alternatively, also under "> Bar Review Materials," you could do "Early Start Bar Review," but I would probably just get started on the Paced Program since you will end up doing that anyways.

Ugh wtf. Technically class does not start until Tuesday, but they wanted me already to do a practice exam and all of these AMP questions. Apparently I am a few days behind even though class did not start. Is this rubbish and should I just try to keep up with the Paced program rather than doing a dumb diagnostic when I know nothing as well as AMP questions when I haven't even studied?

I would skip the AMP if I were you... I did some of the Ks ones and I wasted many hours on them, and I seriously do not understand the point of them and barbri is doing us a huge disservice by including them and making it sound like they are important to learning the BLL. I would read the Conviser Mini Review instead.

MoneyMay wrote:

jaydizzle wrote:

ph14 wrote:

jaydizzle wrote:So, I want to start my prep a few days early. Are there instructions anywhere for Barbri. I literally have no idea what to start with. I don't see an instruction sheet anywhere.

Go to "Enrolled Student Center>" at the top or on the left-hand side. Then hit "> Bar Review Materials." Then hit "Paced Program," and you can see your assignments for the upcoming weeks. Alternatively, also under "> Bar Review Materials," you could do "Early Start Bar Review," but I would probably just get started on the Paced Program since you will end up doing that anyways.

Ugh wtf. Technically class does not start until Tuesday, but they wanted me already to do a practice exam and all of these AMP questions. Apparently I am a few days behind even though class did not start. Is this rubbish and should I just try to keep up with the Paced program rather than doing a dumb diagnostic when I know nothing as well as AMP questions when I haven't even studied?

I would skip the AMP if I were you... I did some of the Ks ones and I wasted many hours on them, and I seriously do not understand the point of them and barbri is doing us a huge disservice by including them and making it sound like they are important to learning the BLL. I would read the Conviser Mini Review instead.

Thanks for the heads up. I don't see any point in doing a cold diagnostic and AMP questions before class starts.

I actually thought that the cold diagnostic, and that crazy red heads review was useful. Some may disagree, but I think it was just good to see what the MBE Qs look like.


But I do agree that using AMP has been kind of useless so far.

Q: Do I need to be doing the Early Start Bar Review? The lectures are basically redundant with the course lectures, right? Not seeing them on the Paced Program, either.

jarofsoup wrote:I actually thought that the cold diagnostic, and that crazy red heads review was useful. Some may disagree, but I think it was just good to see what the MBE Qs look like.


But I do agree that using AMP has been kind of useless so far.

I think there is a marginal benefit to them, but as someone said above, it's not even close to being worth the massive time investment (if you do them the way you're supposed to, and not just memorize answers to get through it, there is no way it can take you less than 90 minutes at the least... unless you somehow remember 1L subjects to a high degree of detail).

MoneyMay wrote:

jarofsoup wrote:I actually thought that the cold diagnostic, and that crazy red heads review was useful. Some may disagree, but I think it was just good to see what the MBE Qs look like.


But I do agree that using AMP has been kind of useless so far.

I think there is a marginal benefit to them, but as someone said above, it's not even close to being worth the massive time investment (if you do them the way you're supposed to, and not just memorize answers to get through it, there is no way it can take you less than 90 minutes at the least... unless you somehow remember 1L subjects to a high degree of detail).

There was a lot of guessing. Especially when your 1L professors have some strange view of the law.

Uh...how many sets are there in each AMP? I just got to set 4 and wanted to throw my computer off the bed.

AMP is flame.

Read CMR --> do MBE questions --> review answers. Rinse and repeat until you ace the questions.

I hated the MBE the least in prepping for the bar because I could see objective gains and knew that I could do well enough to give me a cushion on the essays. I didn't feel like my essays would be bad, but the grading is more subjective and you dont know what subjects will be tested. The MBE is much more bang for your buck (especially so because the subjects are double tested as essays).

I am starting to think BarBri itself is a flame. Towards the end of week 1, the only thing I feel helps me actually learn anything is old fashioned reading the outlines they gave us, with the lectures being marginally useful and everything else a complete waste.

So far I'm digging the AMPs, got through 3 tort modules today. Maybe I'm just a simpleton, but I like getting questions right. Beats just staring at an outline hoping I'm learning.