Post
by bartaker15 » Fri Oct 16, 2015 3:00 pm
Used Themis for the July 2015 bar exam. In my opinion, it was a very good experience. They provide you with daily checklists of assignments which make it seem much more manageable. I have a few suggestions, but do what's right for you, which you can only figure out once you actually start prepping.
In the beginning, I was making notecards for every MBE subject after I finished the day's lecture videos. It was taking up a huge chunk of my day, and when I should have been getting done my day in about 4-6 hours, it ended up going closer to 8-10. Never looked at the cards once. I mean literally not once. I stopped after civil procedure, I believe, and realized the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze for me. I had done notecards all throughout law school, so it was risky, but I realized I couldn't maintain that speed without sacrificing my sanity. Spoke with a lot of people who made their own outlines and did notecards and continued all throughout prep. They were much more stressed out and pressed for time then I was. When I ditched the notecards, I was able to spend more time doing practice questions and essays.
As for practice multiple choice questions, unless it was just the adrenaline of the day or the chaos generally, I thought there were very few questions on the actual test that looked like the questions I had been taking throughout the summer. The real benefit of the questions, now looking in hindsight, is the explanations that accompanied them. If I were doing it again, I'd spend 60-70% of my time in the last few weeks just focused on multiple choice questions and their explanations. While the questions weren't particularly similar, there were certain patterns which I picked up over the course of doing the MC questions which I think helped me the day of when I was stuck between 2 choices.
Take at least one full day off a week. I didn't do it in the beginning, but I should have and was going crazy by the second week of June. If you're working full time, start earlier on with the lectures, see if you can grab 3-4 hours of studying/questions/essays a day after graduation during the workweek, but take a break. Seriously, don't let this thing take over your life entirely, as it can easily do. If you begin watching the lectures and filling out lecture outlines on weekends in November with the goal of completing the lectures by Christmas, that gives you roughly two months to focus on the subject matter and practice. You'll be good. OH, and definitely watch the lectures at at least 1.5 speed. It's really the only way they sound normal.
Finally, and this was key for me, don't listen to anybody who wants to tell you how much they're studying. They may be putting in incredible hours, they may be lying. Either way, it's useless for you. You probably won't listen to me, as the temptation to compare is always going to be there, but I did the best I could to never listen to people in law school and it helped keep me sane. Remember, the people telling you how much they're doing or that bar prep is dominating their lives are doing it to make themselves feel better and feel you out to see if they're doing enough. I literally talked to only one person from law school during bar prep, everyone else I had to ice out.
Best of luck! You're in good hands with Themis.