Top Law Schools

Hi,

I am a Canadian lawyer looking to take the July 2016 NY bar. As I'm not at all familiar with the U.S. system, I was hoping I could ask a bunch of questions for my own edification. If you have any answers to any of these questions, that would be amazing!

1. If I were to do self-study, could I use UBE materials from any other UBE jurisdiction, or is there something NY-specific I have to worry about?
2. I understand that US law school probably prepares you, somewhat, for US bar exams. I self-studied for the LSAT and got a pretty lazy 167. As a foreign lawyer, would I get relatively more value from courses vs. self-study? If so, given that self-study is my preferred mode of learning, would you guess the extra value would justify the cost?
3. Is there a particular set of resources that does a really good job of providing the following? Is there a thread on this forum or another site that provides a comparison of resources aimed at the following?
   • A way to learn the substantive information I need for the exam (black letter law, but also ethics, etc.), and
   • a way to validate that I have attained that knowledge.

Links to other posts are welcome as answers.

Thanks in advance!

PS - I could also use some help with these less-important questions:

1. What are some of the major differences between the BarBri and Kaplan books?
2. What are some of the major differences between the Kaplan QBank and the BarBri questions?
3. What are people's general feelings about http://www.leansheets.com and http://baroutlines.com in terms of their role in self-study exam prep? Can they be a replacement for the BarBri / Kaplan books, or are they too superficial?