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Just signed up for barbri and took a look at the topics for the NY bar. Now I'm really nervous.

I did not take any of the following classes in law school:

Jurisdiction
Fed Courts
Evidence
Criminal Procedure
Trusts/Estates
Admin
Corporations/Partnerships
Family Law
Secured Transactions

Also, my law school does not teach Erie in civ pro and the ethics class I took was pure fluff.

I know people say Barbi will teach you everything you need to know but that seems like a lot to learn in two months...

Should I be nervous? Anything I can do?

You will be ok. I was a foreign examinee and never even studied american law before this. Main advice is to make good notes on the lectures and to practice the MBE. Make sure to practice practice practice those questions. And then learn your notes for the essays. Its not an easy undertaking but it is not impossible.

The very best of luck.

Barbri has a early bar prep program. Look into it.

gnuwheels wrote:Just signed up for barbri and took a look at the topics for the NY bar. Now I'm really nervous.

I did not take any of the following classes in law school:

Jurisdiction
Fed Courts
Evidence
Criminal Procedure
Trusts/Estates
Admin
Corporations/Partnerships
Family Law
Secured Transactions


Also, my law school does not teach Erie in civ pro and the ethics class I took was pure fluff.

I know people say Barbi will teach you everything you need to know but that seems like a lot to learn in two months...

Should I be nervous? Anything I can do?

lol 1/9 here

You'll be fine. I took Admin and Evidence, but none of Agency/Partnership/Secured Transactions/anything else related to finance/corporations/business, or Wills/Trusts or Family Law. I passed just fine. (at least 3 of my essays were super sad, but doesn't matter now.)

Just here to echo what was stated above. You will absolutely do fine.

"Am I going to fail?"

Probably not, but maybe.

Unless you're in CA, in which case, probably, but maybe not.

Hahah, no, not if you study hard and get your essay style nice and clean.

Like you, I hardly took any of the classes outside the mythical *** MBE SEVEN *** in my law school career. Still, I just took for the first time in February and (apparently) had no problem passing with Kaplan. I had a small panic attack when I saw how much material there is to cover, too. Just sit down and take it all one page at a time. Many of those additional topics are straight-forward enough to pick up what you need to know in the time the bar prep companies give you to study. As an example, I literally didn't know the first thing about corporations before starting bar prep, but by the end, I was comfortable enough with the topic to score reasonably well on some practice essays that were assigned to us.

I also would recommend taking a look at how frequently some topics appear, as New York clearly has a preference for testing some particular issues over others.

Edit: Anecdotal, but maybe a bit of a comfort to you- My good friend took Barbri and she also did not take many of the 8,732 class topics covered by the NY bar during law school. She passed without issue on her first go as well. Although we'll never know what our essays scored like, I'm convinced her's were better than mine simply because of how much better she seemed prepared for the NY-specific topics.

I took only bar tested classes in law school, and even though I had taken every class that was tested, I still felt like I was re-learning. It doesn't matter. You forget what you learned by the time the bar rolls around.

Anastasia Dee Dualla wrote:Just here to echo what was stated above. You will absolutely do fine.

This^^