We have an answer!

Join us for a FREE LawTutor’s Bar Exam Workshop.

When: Saturday, May 22, 2010   12 noon -2pm

Where: LawTutor’s Brookline Office (1674 Beacon St)

Who: Anyone who is a bit curious about what they can do differently for a second bar, or first time takers that want to make sure they study effectively.

What: Get tips and advice on how to how to study differently than you have before, how to study more effectively, how to apply the law and not just memorize it and much more!  For instance, learn how to tackle MBE questions by learning from your mistakes, how to “track” MBE questions, and the benefits of learning from your past essays!  Also, learn how to look at the law through a “Big Picture” so you do not get overwhelmed!

For more information or to sign up call 617-738-4800 or email info@lawtutors.net

This seminar is FREE, but will not be held if less than 8 people RSVP. You MUST RSVP to attend.

Myth Buster: You Are Not Stupid

Trust me on this. I have had so many students come to me stating that they are stupid due to the fact that they failed the bar. Maybe they missed it by 25 points, maybe by 2. Either way, they are not stupid. And you have to trust me, since I WILL tell students when they are performing below expectations. I am not a “rah rah you can do it” if I feel you are not performing, but I am going to tell you that it is a MYTH, a downright dirty one, that students who fail the bar on the first try are somehow less able to practice law than their colleagues who passed on the first try.

The thing is, the bar exam does not test intelligence. In part, it tests your test taking ability. That is NOT the same as intelligence, as many really smart people just don’t take tests all that well.

Please remember that many successful attorneys did not pass the bar on the first try, and it does not impact their performance as a lawyer. The important thing is that you can’t let this affect your confidence. (I know, easier said than done, right?) But I’m quite serious when I say that if you think you are stupid, if you think you will fail, if you think you will do less than your best, it really DOES hurt your chances of success. Instead, pick yourself up after this and tell yourself you are going to go kick the butt of the bar exam. Fake the confidence if you have to, but you NEED to begin the study process with that confidence. You can not start out from a place of defeat. Wipe the slate clean.

The pass rate in Massachusetts this past February was 62% overall! That’s down a considerable amount from what it normally is, so if you were not successful this time, that is something else to consider – you are not alone. In fact, 38% of test takers are in the same boat!

After you tell yourself you are going to kick butt – find a NEW way to study, don’t fall back on the same old habits. And then go pass the second, or third, or fourth time around – I’ll be happy to welcome you as a colleague!

1. Equal Protection and Due Process are different.  Sure, they overlap a lot, but you absolutely need to understand the difference. When we classify people, by any classification (race, alienage, hair color, profession) we are in equal protection territory. If, however, you are dealing with something that applies to everyone, and is a “right”, we are dealing with Substantive Due Process (ie, abortion).  Sure, there can be overlap – with the issue of same sex marriage, we have equal protection issues (sexuality) and rights (marriage), but you STILL have to take one issue at a time.
2. Know your scrutinies. Don’t paraphrase them, know them, memorize them, tattoo them on your forehead. Strict scrutiny means that the government has the burden of proving the statute is narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest. Intermediate scrutiny means that the government has the burden of proving that the statute is substantially tailored to meet an important government interest. In rational basis the plaintiff has the burden of proving that the statute is NOT rationally related to a legitimate government interest. Know who has the burden, make a chart to when these apply and memorize it.
3. Don’t dismiss an issue.  A lot of my students fail to bring up certain issues because they think the plaintiff will not prevail. This is not a good idea. For instance, they see someone classified based on hair color, correctly assume that, in that case, rational basis would apply, then never bring up equal protection since the government would most likely win. This may be very true, however, I am almost certain your professor STILL wants you to bring up the claim, and explain WHY the plaintiff would not win.
4. Congress can’t do anything it please.  Know that Congress has limited powers, namely the power to regulate interstate commerce and the power to tax and spend. If you see a fact pattern where Congress is acting, make sure they actually have the power to do so.
5. Don’t invent rights. We honestly don’t have that many, so don’t make them up.  I would make a chart, outlining the rights we DO have (the fundamental rights, like the right to privacy, to marry and to vote) and then highlight those rights with examples from cases you read in class.  Don’t assume we have rights that were NOT mentioned in those cases.

Above all else, do not be afraid to ARGUE. That is mostly the point of training to be a lawyer!

But then stop. And realize this is not the worst thing that could ever happen to you. And realize that there are PLENTY of people in the same boat as you, and ALL of you will do just fine.

I know this because most of the students that come to me for private tutoring are repeat takers. And those students end up passing the bar. And they end up getting jobs, and then no one cares that they failed, or how many times they failed. You just have to pull yourself up by your boot straps, realize that you need to do something differently, and try again. I had a student take the bar 13 times, come to me for the 14th, and finally pass. Talk about dedication! If he can tough it out, so can you!

So, why did you fail and what can you do differently?

1) Didn’t put in enough time. This is rarely why students fail. Trust me. Most of my students put in PLENTY of time the first time, and I’m sure you did as well. But, on the off chance that you feel you just didn’t work hard enough, work a bit harder next time. (but please trust me when I say this is RARELY the case).
2) Did not study effectively. You might have put in HOURS and HOURS and HOURS in the library, on your couch, and everywhere else, but perhaps you were doing the wrong thing. I had a student who literally spent 12 hours a day in the library reviewing outlines her first time. Didn’t pass. Why? She was JUST reviewing outlines. Nothing else. This is not effective studying. You need to be doing something active, and merely reviewing outlines time and time again won’t cut it.
3) Your bar review didn’t work for you. Everyone learns differently. There is no “right” way to learn, and thus, no one size fits all bar review. Maybe you need more hands on, one on one help. Maybe you need live lectures instead of a video, or vice versa – maybe you need a video or dvd you can rewind. Maybe you need to spend more time doing questions and less time listening to lectures.

Those are the common themes I see, and most often it’s #2 and #3 that are the problem. How to change?

1) Capitalize on what has worked for you in the past. No, that doesn’t mean that studying for the bar exam is exactly the same as studying in law school. But you know yourself well enough to know what works.
2) Find our how you study best. Are you a visual learner? Audio? Do you need to draw lots of charts and graphs? Figure this out and then run with it. If you’re not sure, then seek out a private tutor (they can also help you figuring out where you went wrong – one read of my student’s essays, and I can figure out how to direct them)
3) Most importantly – DO SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY. The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. No one needs insane lawyers, so do something different! Shake it up – find a new bar review, find a tutor, find a new place to study, find new books, try to do more practice questions and less reviewing of your outline.

Whatever you decide, the important thing is to not give up. You can and will succeed.

I often stress that memorization is not the key to succeeding on the bar exam, and I still stand by that. You need to know the law, and ANALYZE it, in order to pass. However, there are still some things you need to memorize. Memorizing rules of law is not easy for everyone, but sometimes it’s necessary. Hopefully I can impart some memorization tips!

1. Understand the things you memorize: First and foremost, strive to understand the things you need to memorize. Not only will you remember things with greater ease when you fully understand what you are memorizing, but you can not analyze something (remember, the most important part!) until you understand it!

1. Memorize in short time bursts: Plan your memorization time in short bursts of 5 or 10 minutes. Perhaps take some time out to memorize in between MBE questions, or in between practice essays. Bust out your flashcards in line at Starbucks. Sure, people will give you funny looks, but you won’t care after you pass! If you spend too long trying to memorize something, your brain just shuts down and you cease to be effective. No point in studying if you’re not being effective!

1.  Memorize in short material bursts: See, your brain tends to remember the first and last things it takes in. If you shorten the amount of information you are taking in, it’s more likely to “stick”. This means pick one subject, and even one subtopic, to memorize at a time. For instance, you know you need to memorize the scrutinies for constitutional law. Start with strict scrutiny, and know that you will memorize JUST that first, and save the other scrutinies for the next memorization session. This tip goes well with the short time bursts; pick one scrutiny per commercial break!

1. Be vocal: Teach rules of law to your significant other, your roommate, your mom or your cat. Trust me, your cat needs to know what all the hearsay exceptions are, and will thank you later. Vocalizing something, even if you are just talking to yourself, helps with memorization.

Employing these techniques will not only help you spend your time memorizing effectively, but will also help you with your analysis. Good Luck!

Ok, to be fair, even studying effectively you probably are still living the hermit life. That’s ok, it’s only 5 more weeks. Say it with me, 5 more weeks – you can do this! Trust me. Would I lie to you?

Clearly, studying for the bar exam is not the most fun thing you can imagine doing. Though, if doing MBE questions just for kicks is your idea of a good time….who am I to judge?  For those of you that don’t get your kicks from MBE questions, since I can’t make the studying more fun, at least I can tell you how to make it more effective.

Essays: Practice your essays with your notes, looking up rules of law. I know, this sounds like cheating, but I’m not suggesting you do it ON the day of the exam, I’m suggesting you do it during practice. Also, the bar exam is actually testing your ability to analyze, and looking up rules in your outline will not help you there. But, it WILL help you learn the correct rules, which is the first step. Plus, it is more effective then trying to memorize rules by reading outlines again and again, or even flashcards for that matter. If you look up rules as you write, you are actively applying facts to those rules, and practicing your writing, in addition to learning the rules, since you are copying them down. This is all active learning; the doing rather than just passively reading.  When given the choice, active learning is always more effective. 

Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE write out your practice essays. Thinking about them in your head, or just drafting outlines, will not help you. You’ve heard practice makes perfect? It’s a cliché for a reason, and now is the time to put that cliché to the test. Write out as many essays as you can in the next 5 weeks. Using your notes, of course.

MBE: As with the essays, you want to be actively learning from the MBE practice questions. If you do not learn from every MBE question you do, you are wasting your time, and just doing that MBE question for fun. As I said before, I won’t judge….but the general feeling is that MOST people have other things they like to do in their spare time. How does one learn from doing an MBE question? Do one at a time, check the answer, and then figure out what you did wrong.

You might have went wrong on substance; forgetting some element of the rule, or just being confused on the black letter law. In that case, now is the time to review our outlines/flashcards/charts, to brush up on the black letter law.

You might have had a reading comprehension problem, reading the call of the question or a certain fact the incorrect way. If that’s the case, take a mental note and be sure to read a bit more carefully in the future.  Having said that, make sure you are consistently paying attention to the call of the question; variations such as “which is the least likely outcome” often throw students off course if they are not paying attention.

Perhaps you were torn between A and C, and don’t quite understand why C is the better answer, since they both seem ok to you. In that instance, read the explanation in the back of the book, re-read the question, consult with a tutor, do what you need to do to assess why one answer was the “best” out of all options. Sometimes the way to do this is to figure out why the other three options are incorrect. Remember an answer has to be both factually and legally correct, and never only a little bit legally correct.

What all of these things boil down to is learning from your mistakes, something your mother has been telling you to do since you were just a wee thing. The types of questions asked, as well as the rules tested, are often repeated, which means you are likely to see them again and again – so what better way to master them then to learn from each question?  Remember merely tallying your score and shrugging, moving on to review an outline without knowing where your weaknesses are, will not help improve your score. You have to know where you went wrong. You have to learn FROM the questions, and I can not stress that enough.

Having taken this all into consideration, perhaps you might have time, after studying EFFECTIVELY, to actually see your friends in the next 5 weeks. But only once or twice J

1. I graduated law school with a 3.5 therefore, I shouldn’t have to take the bar exam.

Comment: Where to begin with this contention? For starters, there could be a lot of reasons as to why you achieved a 3.5 and more importantly why you have to take this exam. One reason that you achieved a 3.5 could be because you flat out deserved it, and this grade point average is indicative of your skill and work ethic. Too bad you still have to take the thing. Another reason that you achieved a 3.5 is because the curriculum and your class schedule was soft. Another reason that you achieved a 3.5 is because the academic semester was more conducive to your preferences ie., work schedule, or finances. Who knows? But for now, this standardized approach of the MBE taken with essay writing is the best option on the board (no pun intended) until mind reading and ethical fortune-telling are made available.

2. I practiced 2500 multiple choice questions, took three practice exams, and studied 8 hours a day.

Comment: Yawn. This exam is not about studying hard. This exam is about studying smart. Sure, by doing more multiple choice questions, this may allow the opportunity for your brain to become accustomed to the format style of the questions as well as the various ways in which a fine point of the law can be tested. For that I say, the more the merrier. However, one must be careful in setting large goals as they sometimes do not account for each student’s needs. In other words, the student’s desire to answer too many questions can easily overshadow the quality of takeaways that one should yield from each question. One LawTutors’ recommendation that addresses the takeaways and which has proven useful is for the student to analyze each possible answer to the degree: “I chose Answer A because…..” This is valuable because is regimented reinforcement. Too often, while reviewing assignments with students, we find out that the student’s answer selection by letter choice was correct, but the rationale behind it was wrong. With incorrect rationale, the examinee is building false misunderstanding of black letter application.

3. My law school did not require these subjects therefore why should this be on the bar exam?

Comment: Your law school gave you choice. Hence, that is why these choices are called electives. Another angle the bar examiners are testing is your ability to work under pressure and to undertake a vast breadth of material. As words of encouragement, your understanding of the subjects tested on the MBE should pay dividends on the essay portion of the exam.

4. I was on law review/law journal but still received 3′s across the board on the essay portion of the bar exam.

Comment: There is certainly little doubt that the selected student for these organizations possesses analytical ability. However, there are a few aspects or commonalities that may make students more susceptible to the format of the bar exam. As you already know, much of what is subject to academic articles can be esoteric or involve much on opinion or can provide as an analytical overview of jurisdictional trends over a particular subject. Also, there is a good chance that what you are writing or analyzing in these activities pertains to an area of the law or subject matter in which the student is interested. In a lot of ways, as the author of this scholarly article you can control the direction and format of what is to be written. The bar exam format is much different. It covers areas of the law that perhaps involve subject matter that you never studied in law school let alone that you are interested. Moreover, successful bar exam writing is often the result of disciplined commitment to the IRAC or CREAC method.

5. Considering I excelled on the LSAT, I had no reason to think otherwise with respect to the bar exam. I have always done well with standardized tests.

Comment: The LSAT, in lot of ways, is used as a prognosticator on how well the candidate will perform in law school. The bar exam, in lot ways, measures how well the candidate for admission to the bar did in law school. That being said, the LSAT’s approach is to measure certain cognitive and analytical skills within the environment of a multiple choice question. Is it perfect measurement? Are the results of the LSAT necessarily a dispositive indicator on how one will achieve in law school and ultimately the bar exam? No, of course not, but see # 1 above. Another distinction between the two exams is that the bar exam is measuring more towards what the examinee actually learned over the course of three years and recently in the past eight weeks leading up to the exam.

6. The format for the exam just isn’t fair.

Comment: There is obviously much debate and study on fairness interplayed with standardized test taking. Believe it or not, I am not going to make an opinion one way or another. This is reality, and the more excuse-making that goes on is negative energy and interference.

7. My commercial material doesn’t exactly mesh with the law school outline that my Professor approved. I am going to defer to my law school outline.

Comment: I would like to make the suggestion that you should choose whichever you prefer. However, this doesn’t go without saying a few comments first. Several of the commercial entities out there have either been specializing in bar preparation for decades or are accompanied by an entourage of legal authors, professional test takers, and professors. That being said the commercial outlines are terrific for picking out repeated questions, trends, and proclivities that the Multi-State drafters and Board of Bar Examiners will test. Sometimes I have found it helpful that if there is a particular area that you find yourself disproportionately weak or feel that you require further review that those outlines and hornbooks may be used in a supplementary capacity.

8. Because I have been a law clerk for now three years, that practical experience ought to give me an advantage over the people that have just been going to school.

Comment: Doubtful. Jobs are breeding grounds for misunderstanding and misapplication of black letter. After all, who doesn’t plead waiver, estoppel, and laches not knowing the difference. You may need to know these types of distinctions on the bar exam.

9. Well, last time I took it, my MBE score was well above the average so now I am just going to focus on the Essays.

Comment: I dare you to make the mistake.

10. This time I am going to spend a week studying Future Interests.

Comment: One common thread between law school preparation and bar exam preparation often comes down to time management. Why allocate 1 week of eight to a topic that could only amount to 5 percent of the questions on the exam doesn’t make a whole lot of sense? This could be more judiciously spent in other areas.

So, you might be asking, how DOES one prepare for the bar exam? And how does one do so without losing their mind? Or becoming a crazy recluse, cutting off all ties from friends and family, only to appear at some point in August looking very pale, over caffeinated and bearded. (yes, I’m looking at you too ladies! Who has time for waxing when the bar exam is around the corner?!?!)

First things first, realize this summer will NOT be fun. I don’t say that to scare you, but if you buckle down over the next couple months you will never have to do this again. Secondly, don’t pay attention to what your friends are doing. Everyone has a method that works for them.

Once we’ve gotten that out of the way, there are some things that can make the summer a bit more smooth, and make your chances of passing the bar a bit higher.  Practice, for one. Yes, that seems a bit obvious – why wouldn’t you practice? But many students want to spend a ton of time reviewing your outlines, and memorizing black letter law. While you DO need to know the black letter law, simply reviewing it for months will not get you where you need to be.  Don’t wait to practice, start right away!  Learn from each MBE question you practice, this is key. The MBE won’t ask you to define battery. Instead, they will give you an odd ball fact pattern, and ask you what the plaintiff’s chances of success will hinge on. This means that you need to know MORE than the black letter law, and the only way to do this is to practice more and more MBE questions. Having said that, don’t JUST practice. If you aren’t learning something from EACH MBE question you do, you are wasting your time. I teach bar review, in fact, my whole life centers around the bar exam and even I can find better things to do than MBE questions just for fun.

As for your essays, again, you need to practice. I know, I’m not really coming up with a new rocket science here, you’ve all been told to practice before.  However, despite that, so many students fight me on practicing. Use your notes to practice essays – it’s better than writing wrong law!  Take your time and practice technique! Don’t start testing yourself right away.  The more essays you practice, and not just outline, the easier exam day will be.

If you have taken the bar before, and failed, you know that you need something different. You know that you need a program that fits you.  Don’t look any further. The solution is finally here.

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