Thursday, July 28, 2011

Bar Exam Postmortem

I don't think I exaggerate when I say the first day of the bar exam was one of the ten worst days of my life. If I fail, I might upgrade it to one of the five worst. I broke the seal on my essay test booklet and felt a little sicker every time I turned a page. The questions seemed calculated to expose my blind spots, and I certainly deserve to fail that part of the test. I might have failed it by a substantial margin.

Fortunately, a strong multiple choice score can whitewash a bad essay score. I wrote in an earlier post that the essays account for just 25% of one's score, but that wasn't quite accurate. The essay and performance tests combine to make up 50%, but I don't know how they are weighted against each other. In any case, multiple choice counts for the other 50%.

So my future in the legal profession boils down to whether I aced the multiple choice test. That means anything could happen. I answered perhaps a quarter of the questions with confidence. The rest were more or less educated guesses between two or three plausible responses. This is consistent with the way my practice tests went. If my hit-to-miss ratio on the real thing was at least as good as my ratio on the practice tests, I have a fighting chance at getting that law license.

Results are made public in five weeks.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I Took the Arkansas Bar Exam

I'll write something about the bar exam experience after my blood cools. For now, there is only this: I feel like I should demand my money back because, in two hundred questions, I was never asked about the rule against perpetuities.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Bar Prep Summary

I had eight weeks to prepare for the bar exam. I did not take a commercial prep course. This is what I did instead:
  • Reviewed 570 pages of commercial outlines (about 70% BarBri and 30% Emanuel, just because that was what I could get free or cheap; I preferred BarBri's outlines)
  • Answered 1,028 multiple choice questions (735, or 71%, correctly)
  • Wrote 42 practice essays (15,600 words total)
  • Wrote 5 practice performance tests (3,900 words total)
  • Invested 180-200 hours altogether
By most standards this is lax preparation, but I feel like it should be enough. I broke my back to get good grades for the last three years, so I shouldn't have to cram here at the end. My practice work adds up to roughly five bar exams. Number six will count.

Inventory


This is the kit I'm bringing with me to the bar exam.
1. Laptop (essays are on day one).
2. Two pencils, two pens, and two highlighters. No sense risking being caught without the right writing implement.
3. Eraser. I probably won't need this until day two (multiple choice), but I might as well pack it now.
4. Soda. Because I think the stress-reducing effects of a swig of sugar water will outweigh any loss of time that results from extra bathroom breaks.
5. Earplugs. I never used these for law school tests, but the bar exam will probably be more crowded and louder.
6. Gum. The all-purpose stress reliever.
7. Origami paper. Applicants have been instructed to take their seats thirty minutes before test time. I'll need something to pass the time.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Essay Reality Check

I just answered the essay questions from the February 2011 Arkansas bar, and the results improved my disposition immensely.

Previously, I had written some two dozen practice essays. After comparing those to the model answers, I felt like I was just riding the line between passing and failing. The beauty of the February exam questions is that I have no model answers to compare to. Instead, the State Board of Law Examiners publishes the top answers by actual applicants. Now I see what the graders really expect, and these answers are just as rushed and sloppy as mine. Of the six questions on the test, I only really blew it on one. I'll take that in a heartbeat.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

There Are No Right Answers

I've been getting my multiple choice practice from old BarBri books, but today I decided to mix things up with a hundred questions out of an Emanuel book at the library. Emanuel and BarBri obviously base their practice questions on a common set of released bar questions, because many of the Emanuel questions were substantially identical to questions I had already seen in my BarBri books. Only names and minor details were changed.

But here's the thing: in at least two cases, the Emanuel and BarBri books had opposite answers. Opposite! Contrast this passage from BarBri's answer key:
The general rule is that one who possesses an animal not customarily domesticated in that area is strictly liable for all harm done by the animal . . . . For trespassers, however, strict liability is not imposed against landowners.
with this passage from Emanuel's:
. . . the skunk will be considered a wild animal, making Householder strictly liable for damage it creates. As a result, Walker's status as a trespasser will not relieve Householder of liability.
Why must you mess with my head, Emanuel? I don't need this cognitive dissonance a week before the exam, so I'm just going to assume that the rule I learned first (BarBri's) is right.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Printing on My Own Dime

Of all the things I miss about being a law student, I may be most nostalgic for those sweet, sweet library printing privileges.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Improving

As planned, I have started targeting my study at a few problem areas. The early results are promising: my last two hundred practice questions yielded a 74% success rate. That's not ideal, but I'll take it. I'd love to hit 80%, but I'll be satisfied if I can keep my average in the 70s from now until exam day.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Undertaught and Overtaxed

I'm annoyed when I come across a point of law that is heavily tested on the bar but somehow got little or no coverage in the relevant class. Couldn't the contracts professor have spared a few days to teach contract assignments and third party beneficiaries? Did the Torts professor really think we'd learn conversion in fifteen minutes? Those topics are killing me.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Bar Review as Math Problem

I've answered 528 practice multiple choice questions to date, and I just can't seem to get my average past 66%. That means I've put down more than 150 wrong answers so far.

I decided to mine that data by putting it in a spreadsheet. I made a list of every rule of law I got wrong, sortable by subject. It took six or eight hours to type it all up, but I am happy with the results. I came up with seventeen legal principles that I botched at least twice. Six of those got me three or more times. Altogether, these repeat offenders accounted for forty-four of my wrong answers, or more than a quarter of the total.

Now my path is clear: if I can master these seventeen rules--no more than a few pages of notes, really--I should see a marked improvement in my multiple choice scores. That's the theory, anyway.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Performance Preparation

The "performance" part of the bar exam consists of ten or fifteen pages of cases, statutes, depositions, evidence, or what-have-you and instructions to draft a document using them. It isn't really possible to study for a test that supplies all the applicable law, but I gave it a go. I took four mock exams over two days. The documents called for in my practice tests were a closing argument, a brief, a memo, and a demand letter. I did well at assignments like this in school, but mostly because I spent a lot of time on them. The documents I put together in ninety minutes looked rather incomplete. Hopefully that is what the graders will be expecting. At any rate, now that I have a feel for what the test is like, I'm setting it aside. The rest of my study time is going to be devoted to getting my multiple choice scores up.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

No More Essays

I downloaded the 2006 bar exam essays from the National Conference of Bar Examiners website. After answering six questions and comparing my responses to the model answers, I am satisfied that I would have passed, if barely. Barely is good enough for me, so I don't plan to look at the essay subjects again until just before the exam.

Three weeks to go.