Questions, follow up, general comments October 22, 2008
Posted by j in Reflections.1 comment so far
Hi
I haven’t posted to this blog for a while – I got admitted ages ago and don’t really log back in!
Questions – if you post a comment with your reply email address I can reply back to you personally.
To answer some of the questions that some of you have:
- You can only get the Barbri audio files from Barbri itself – it’s supplied as a home teaching solution. There probably is a way to get it off an iPod but please note that Barbri says they have some protection measures in place that should you try to sync the iPod the whole iPod will erase and you will pay a large fee to get a replacement iPod with the lessons in it.
- How you study will depend on whether you think the distance option is good for you. I thought it was good for me to do it at my own pace and I am not into group studying so it didn’t matter whether I was in class or not. Although, it was good that I found a “study buddy” online (I was googling for others who was blogging about their NY Bar experience that winter) that I could share my grievances and stresses with.
- Ultimately a large element of the NY Bar exam relies on your exam technique. If you are good at pacing yourself, writing essays under an exam situation and don’t get too stressed, then you’re in a good position to pass.
- I know people who crammed the last 3 weeks, and didn’t have time to study much leading up to the NY Bar exam – and they passed. I know people who studied a lot more and failed. (These are all good lawyers coming from top tier firms going into white shoe/ magic circle firms in NYC . To give you a sense of what type of people I am talking about).
- I know people who didn’t do Barbri, they got notes and they passed. Barbri is good for those not disciplined enough to do it on their own, but there are plenty of materials online that can guide you. There is a link to those sites somewhere on this blog and you may wish to update it.
Preparing for exam day July 13, 2007
Posted by j in Reflections, The Exam.1 comment so far
Because this is the last weekend that you’ll have to maybe idle and procrastinate, here are a few things that you could do to constructively prepare.
- do a dry run to the examination centre, and time it (and allow for traffic jams etc) – this way you know exactly where it is. I recommend even trying to get in so you can see the room. Go right up to the entrance or walk around the building so you know where you’re actually going to in.
- book the car service/ mom/ dad/ friend/ gf/ wife to get you to the exam
- prepare your exam day bag – pens, highlighers, eraser, pencil, pencil sharpener, tissues, snacks, lunch (because you wont’ have time to buy it, in all likelihood), water, earplugs, watch (make sure it works)
You get about an hour in between each session. If you go to a large testing centre, it may take a while to get out and pick up your bag (at bag check). I took my notes to the exam just in case I wanted to look at it at lunchtime. My testing room was tiny and everyone left their stuff outside on racks so you could get your things easily and fast. If you’re lucky, maybe you can arrange for a friend to meet you there with all your notes and stuff.
I know that for a lot of people, they say there is no point in looking over your notes the day of the exam etc. But for me, it was great to have a safety blanket “just in case”, plus looking over at notes helped me remind myself that I DID know stuff. Just make sure that when you look at your notes during lunch that you’re not looking back at the topics that was covered in the morning going ‘oh shit i missed that point’. Once it’s over it’s over. So focus on the topics that were not covered in the morning’s session.
10 days to go… Ganbatte! July 13, 2007
Posted by j in Burnout, Reflections.add a comment
Ganbatte is what the japanese would say to encourage and say good luck.
It’s 10 days left to go – I’ve just been speaking to a friend and I hope that these words of encouragement and “advice” is helpful. You are probably stressed right now, reading this blog in procrastination, wondering why nothing is soaking in and being dismal at low scores that you’re getting in your practice questions and exams. (and if you are not, then that is awesome).
I found an email that Jeff Adachi sent me, after I asked what I should be doing in the last 10 days of the exam. He wrote “Memorization is key in the last 7 days. You should focus on memorization exclusively at this point.”
I could agree to that. In my last 10 days, this is what I did. I ditched the pace program that Barbri gave me (because it was stressing me out) and did the following:
Things to keep in mind:
- don’t panic
- you got through high school, college, law school and all those exams, you can do this again, just one more time
- you know more than you think you know
- if you did do most of the work in the paced program you are in good shape – you’ve come across a lot of the issues that will probably appear in the exam (if you didn’t then it’s too late to panic anyway)
Good luck, you’ve gotten this far, there is not much more to go!
Still a bit behind… January 24, 2007
Posted by j in Burnout, Distractions, Gripes, Reflections.1 comment so far
My brain is tired and I can’t seem to keep up with all the assignments. Sometimes I stare at ebay listings, out the window, watch TV, cook… mindless things not requiring the mind to think TOO much but things that I can do which achieve something other than stress and confusion (fixing my network/ computer aside).
Today I did the first contracts question where I confidently knew some stuff. Cool. I’m slowly catching up on the questions I misse. I looked at the Bar Exam Survival Kit and Jeff recommends that when you first do the essays, you do it open book. I did that, it was good to have a safety blanket but I was only using it to refer to one or 2 points. So maybe I did learn something.
Meanwhile, since Barbri didn’t bother to give us self-study schedule a lovely Paced Program (yeah considering that we paid so much more for the ipod, you’d think we’d get a personalised paced program for us as well), we had to swap around everything ourselves and the assignments are out of wack. So maybe it’s a blessing I am slightly behind. I emailed them with the timetable as altered literally and the STILL haven’t gotten back to me 
Back to the RP lecture I go.
I did it again…. January 21, 2007
Posted by j in Reflections.add a comment
I can hear one of our partners’ critism in my head… again.. I just got my essay back, the one I did in a rush in an attempt to try and not use my notes and just work off what I learnt.. also tried not to look at the back of the book at the answer. So I didn’t do really well.. just short of a pass which is bad. But I think I understand why I got the mark I got – I need to jump through all the hoops and support it with the facts in the question!
I can just hear the partner, and some law lecturer’s voices/ feedback… I sometimes just rush through to the answer and forget to go back to all the steps, to help the reader get there too. According to an experienced lawyer mate of mine, it’s partially because I used to work in -house and there we never really care too much about ALL the steps, because the business side just wants the answer. And clients are always getting back to us asking us for the answer, not the 20 million essays that went behind it. And partially it’s my permanent impatience. Oh well. So now I know!
Bah…. very behind January 18, 2007
Posted by j in Lectures, Reflections.1 comment so far
I finally worked out how to effectively make Finepoints work for me. Notes from each subject actually amounts to 30 pages of typed notes…. which was daunting. It took me ages to do up NY Practice, but basically, I’ve been using the Main Headings in Fine Points as the big heading of a table, then each subject gets a column… so, what I effectively have is a ‘What’/ Elements & Rules/ [NY Distinction]/ Commentary
NY Practice took ages, because I LOATHE civil procedure. There is a good reason why I am not a litigation lawyer!!!
btw, is there anyone out there who isn’t a litigation lawyer/ judicial clerk who is blogging?!
Because I’ve had computer issues and stressing about it I’ve been a bit behind on the study. I’m working frantically to get the tables/ Finepoints summary AND keeping up the lectures. So I have lagged behind on the work. It’s a bit stressful… oh and of course this post is pure procrastination. 
Phew.. another week over! January 12, 2007
Posted by j in Lectures, Reflections.add a comment
Well lectures that is.
Contracts and Fed Con surprisingly ok. When they mentioned Hadley & Baxendale I had to laugh. … Is this the one case that every transactional lawyer harps on about?! [Indeed I have many a time, written pages of opinion on H & B...]
In the contracts lecture they were saying that you should just go back, review and learn so you are comfortable with it and move on, and spend the last 2 weeks cramming and memorising. Hmm I havne’ tbeen doing that. I’ve been revisiting each of the lectures in my spare time, so apart form some lyricless music that I am listening to, I am just listening to barbri lectures. Never in my life have I been so tied to a portable music player (yes, not even my beloved walkmans..) I’ve also been going back to my notes regularly, just skimming over the little details over and over again. It has taken me ages to come up with a super condensed set of notes for Criminal Law but I now get finepoints. I’ve got it up as a table and chart now, rather than little dot points.
Woops.. wrong program January 8, 2007
Posted by j in Lectures, Reflections.add a comment
I realised on the weekend i’d been looking at the Manhattan paced program and not the out of town one! Just in time. So I gotta swap NY Practice around with Contract Law.
In other updates, I did some of the NYT questions and realised there were whole chunks of questions I couldn’t answer. I think, with best I am still scraping in with something like 5/10 JUST.. which is bad. I admit I am aided partially by some referring of the notes and I am not at that stage of reciting elements of anything like a text book yet
Reflection after week 2 January 6, 2007
Posted by j in Reflections.2 comments
Well, I havne’t done any questions on NY practice yet – but it’s ok.
Thoughts on Criminal Law and Criminal procedure:
I think the multiple choice questions will be ok, generally. There were a few things that I didn’t quite get, namely (and I am listing this so I can dispose of my little note):
- Entrapment (NY distinction)
- Arson (NY)
- Faciliation (NY)
- Where the state provides counsel in cases of indigence, it may then seek reimbursement from convicted D who subsequently becomes able to pay. Cannot recover if it was apointed against D’s will and in violation of right to self representation. [Was this even in the book - did not even ring a bell]. this was question 29 in the Intermediate Crim questions in the MPQ.
The NYT question 77 we had to do was hard! Or namely, I forgot/ didn’ t know:
- the requirements for warrant for wiretapping (it wasn’t written in any of my lecture notes). [Requirement - surveillance, describe targed conversations, inlcude a time limit - without such requiremtns it is not obtained in good faith, and following the this the NY rule is that the good faith exception does not apply to illegally issued warrant]
- NY – conspiracy convcition of one D is allowed to stand when the alleged co-conspiracy is acquited in a separate trial (I ddn’t know this was no tthe “traditional” view and assumed this position to have been the case anyway .. so there loses a fraction of a point for not pointing out the NY distinction]
So I needed to borrow from my notes a bit for this question. In any case I think I may have scraped in narrowly with a 5 out of 10 perhaps but I have to do better.
It’s back to re-reading the NY distinctions in the CMR. Again!!
ps I also realise that years of assuming a keyboard as my hand has resulted in a bad case of doctor’s handwriting. I hope my handwriting at the bar exam will resemble the handwriting sample I submitted for the exam….
