Everyone knows someone who didn't take a prep class and still passed. I know a guy who did it for va and that's one of the harder ones supposedly. Of course one time I was like "yeah like you have contributory negligence in va" and he was like lolwat.

Someone like Karak who is looking at non lawyer jobs for his career right now is probably in the best spot to take the risk of failing. But failing really really sucks. It just puts you really behind. No one wants to hire someone who hasn't passed ITE. In a legal position or otherwise.

"Thank you for the referral sir, I washed it just for you."

I'm not looking for non-lawyer jobs. Failing the bar would be very, very bad.

What's killing me in the Barbri 'preview' is that I mentally cannot skip a Q that I don't know. I will sit there for ten minutes trying to derive the rule and have never once finished a practice section on time. That and I tend to sleep through the morning sessions.

this is normal. i always felt rushed and had lots of practice exams where i would run out of time. even on the real thing i barely got through the questions and had virtually no time to go back and review. and this is coming from someone who would finish LSAT sections with 5 mins to spare and walk out of law school exams an hour early. what's brutal about the bar exam is that you either know the answer or you don't; don't waste time of the crap you don't know.

I just can't imagine regretting having spent too much time studying for this if I pass comfortably.

(I probably would have if I spent a bunch of time prepping for the MPRE and passed by 50 points, because failing it one time was just no big deal.)

Oh my bad Karak. The exam really is so much learning how to take the exam and structure. Black letter stuff ends up being secondary.

Wow really? I had the opposite experience but came away with the same lesson: pick the best answer, don't bother second-guessing yourself, and move on. I finished the actual MBE with over a half hour to spare, and I doubt I ever walked out of a law school exam early.

I seemed to finish one half with five or ten minutes extra and the other with like two. Other people seemed to have similar experience. One just seemed harder. Or more questions with more extremely fine distinctions. Skipping a question I didn't know after eliminating some answers is like SAT/LSAT 101. I didn't like it for bar questions initially, but once you force yourself to do it you'll get used to it. Also get into the mindset of "well I suck at property anyway so there's a high chance I get this wrong no matter what" and focus on making sure you get correct stuff you know. Kinda like question EV calculations.

Well I did pass Property with the same attitude.

I did not take a bar prep class. I just bought the BarBri and Kaplan books off Craigslist and made a deal with myself where if I studied straight from 9-5 Monday through Friday I could do anything I wanted on nights and weekends. Worked great for the first three weeks, then I went to the beach for a conference for the non-profit I had worked for during 3L, which basically turned into a two-week bender where nary a book was cracked. Went another week or two without doing any studying when I got back, and finally went into panic mode around July 15 (exam was the 24th-25th I think) and got back in the groove.

I passed, but it was definitely a sweat. I still think a prep class would have been a waste of time/money for me personally, but agree that the cost/benefit for most people makes it worthwhile (not that I'm some kind of genius or anything, I'd have probably just spent the whole class surfing the web on my laptop and not gotten anything out of the lectures).

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I liked the lectures (BarBri for multistate, Widener program for DE essays and Themis for PA essays) because they were necessarily more focused. I never just sat there churning through those massive outlines - instead I would use them as reference materials, either to follow along with while listening to the lectures or to compare with the explanations of answers on the MBE questions. I did bring the Conviser MiniReview around with me toward the end to flip through whenever I was somewhere that involved waiting, but that was the extent of reading through outlines. My bar review course allowed us to borrow iPods with the BarBri MBE lectures over the weekend, and since the office was closed on Fridays I would pick up an iPod after work on Thursday and return it on the way to work Monday morning. Reading the full outlines cover to cover seems to me agonizing and inefficient.

This is mostly for the 1L and 2Ls, but IMO the best bar prep I had was crushing law school, particularly the MBE subjects. As a result, bar review was much more of a refresher as opposed to having to "learn" anything, except for the subjects where I hadn't taken the class.

I've now passed two bars (both full two-day exams, several years apart) and I haven't taken any courses. They are unnecessary, especially for people who've spent the last three years teaching themselves the law. A lot of people say they need the structure to keep them in check. Like, they wouldn't/couldn't do the work otherwise without the pressure of knowing they have classes. I guess I'll take their word for it.

Most people study too much, but like someone else said, there's no such thing as knowing this stuff too well. You'll appreciate putting in the effort now when you walk into and out of the exam knowing you're going to pass.

My advice for anyone studying on their own--start asap. Don't wait until July or end of June or hell even middle of June. That's retarded. I don't care how many people you've heard of that totally passed after they didn't crack a book until July. You're opening yourself up to variance (burning out, freaking out on the day of the exam because you didn't study enough, minor problems turning into major problems because they consume time you don't really have to spare, etc.) and you face the very real possibility you don't have enough time to learn the material sufficiently. On top of that, if you wait too long before you study, the first time you study, say, commercial paper, I guarantee you will regret it and hate yourself

Start early. If you start early enough, you'll never need an eight-, ten-, 12-hour day. All you need is 3-4 hours a day doing multiple choice questions and reading essay answers. This is stupid easy if you don't have anything to do over the summer. Of course if you're already doing barbri/pmbr, three hours of your day is spent listening to someone drone on while your attention floats away, but hey, if that's how you learn, so be it. My summer after third year was awesome. Usually done studying by noon. Bam, whip out the alcohol, or video games, or go to the gym, or masturbate the day away, or do a second/third round of studying if you want a couple days to do something without bringing books.

yeah yeah coolstory. If anyone wants any advice on studying, PM me. I studied for my last bar exam while working full time, and I turned efficient studying into an art.

meh, for me the MBE was more about reading all answers very closely and taking way more time than I thought, and then picking the right answer. It seemed like the questions were pretty nuanced and the OBVIOUSLY WRONG one would sometimes be right if you weren't careful.

By the way, re: Commercial paper. In Texas, all of the old essays seemed to have the same types of responses and were easily identifiable. I kind of memorized the pattern of which answers went with what type of questions and the buzz words required. On the actual test, I literally had NO IDEA what I was talking about, but I had identified the proper buzz words, did the whole irac element things, and must have done just fine.