Scant Progress

Three weeks after graduation and five weeks before the bar exam, I have finished my first pass through the multiple choice test topics. My performance to date on practice questions is 283 out of 428, or 66%. That's weak. The conventional wisdom I've heard is that one should be able to hit 80% consistently on practice tests before taking the bar.

Even so, I have to put the multiple choice stuff down for now. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to spend a week or two writing practice essays. Maybe the multiple choice questions will look easier when I have fresh eyes.

Developing a Study Plan

I don't know what my colleagues are doing in their Barbri and Kaplan classes, but here is the pattern I've slid into as I review for the multiple choice portion of the bar exam:

I spend six or eight hours going through a subject outline, taking notes (these are duplicative of notes I already have, but note-taking is the only way I can force myself to read slowly and carefully). After each outline, I take a sixty- to seventy-five-question practice test on that subject. The test takes about two hours, so by the time I review the questions I missed I've spent about ten hours on each subject. With six subjects tested by multiple choice (constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, evidence, property, and torts), I'm on a pace to get through a complete review in sixty hours of study time.

After that, I'll spend some time prepping for the essay and practicum portions of the test, then go back for more multiple choice practice in July.

Bar Prep Begins

My first efforts at studying for the bar exam have been demoralizing. This week I took practice exams in the areas of constitutional law and contracts. I scored 73% and 59%, respectively, and that was after several hours of review. I obviously need to improve my study methods if I want to get up to speed in two months.

Graduation

Speeches were spoken, hands were shaken, and I collected a handsome diploma cover (sans diploma--that will have to wait until the last round of exams are graded). For the graduates, I think the best part about graduation may have been the opportunity to scope out one another's regalia. Students rarely talk about their GPAs, so most of us were finding out for the first time who would or wouldn't graduate with honors.

After the ceremony, someone asked me if I felt any different. I said, "ask me again after the bar exam." By itself, a juris doctorate doesn't amount to much. As one wag at the ceremony observed, as if it isn't bad enough that we can't practice law, we can't even make people call us "doctor."

Tax Policy Exam

My last (ever) exam was a barn burner. The Tax Policy professor asked some devilishly specific questions about readings that were assigned weeks ago. I reckon I handled it okay. Even if I didn't, this late in the game anything but an F qualifies as a success.

And that's that. The only thing standing between me and a juris doctorate is the formality of picking up my diploma.

Secured Transactions Exam

It was impossible to fully prepare for the Secured Transactions exam. We covered an absurd amount of material in the last fifteen weeks (UALR Law Student summed up the prevailing sentiment pithily at his blog). Add my complete lack of motivation to study here at the end of my 3L year, and I was expecting the worst.

It wasn't too bad. The essay portion of the test was exactly what the professor had told us to expect, so I think my answer was competent, if a little rushed. About an hour after the exam I remembered a statute that made part of my response dead wrong, but that shouldn't be enough to sink the whole essay.

The multiple choice questions worry me. They add an element of chance to an exam that I'm never comfortable with. Your typical law-school multiple choice question is about half a page long, and you only have to misread one word to botch the answer. Since half the points on the test came from the multiple choice questions, anything could happen.

Open Book

I have two exams this semester, and both are at least partly open book. Since I'm about to graduate and have a pretty casual attitude toward my grades, this open book business is a nuisance to me. For a closed-book exam, I would probably just read through my notes a few times and take my chances. With an open-book exam, expectations will be higher; now I feel like I have to spend time organizing my notes, writing cheat-sheets, putting tabs on things, and what-have-you. After the thousands of hours I've sunk into my legal education, these last few dozen feel like too much to ask.