346 umm...

2008-07-31T08:35:00.002-04:00

well the good part is that its all over, for now at least.

day 2 sucked. in my opinion, the MBE questions were a bit ridiculous. but now the only thing to do is wait it out.

hopefully i can adjusted back to 'normal' life now. i hope every can get some much deserved rest and take a few days to relax.

i'll report back in a few weeks. win, lose or draw.

one down, one to go

2008-07-29T18:06:00.000-04:00

freedom is only one day away.

not to go into any specifics, but i thought today went well. for the most part, i felt the questions were pretty fair and straight-forward.

rock on, kids.

good luck, guys

2008-07-28T19:51:00.002-04:00

tomorrow is the big day. as kevin said in one of my favorite old movies, 'home alone' -- 'this is it. don't get scared now'.

you've studied hard all summer. you know this stuff. go in to the exam tomorrow with confidence and a clear mind.

best of luck to everyone.

don't panic

2008-07-24T21:34:00.004-04:00

see that button to the left? don't push it!

in response to a few questions - i don't have any idea what you need to 'average' on your essays or mbe to pass. my take is... 346 points is my goal, no matter how i get em. i am fairly resigned to the fact that my MBE score is going to be woefully average (if that!).

but regarding essays, i suppose a goal is to average between 6 and 7 points per essay.

read this next sentence carefully - there is going to be at least one essay question that you are totally, absolutely stumped on.

what do you do? don't panic. say there is a question you just bomb, and you only get 2 points on. well there's probably going to be another question you nail and get between 8 and 10 points on... what does that average out to - a 5 or 6?

one, maybe even two poor essay questions will not fail you if you can keep your focus and make up those points elsewhere. on the other hand, if you let one essay question get you upset, you're not going to do as well as you otherwise would.

plan for the worst, hope for the best.

quick time out

2008-07-24T16:30:00.002-04:00

6 days and counting!

okay, this is not bar related, but anyway... i couldn't stand it any longer. i was trying to hold out until after the bar to see it, but last night i took a break from studying to see "the dark knight".

i don't know what i can say about it that hasn't been said elsewhere, but that movie kicked so much ass. heath ledger should definitely be getting a well-deserved oscar nomination.

righty-o, now back to the uniform commercial code.

hot dogs

2008-07-20T20:56:00.003-04:00

just a little over a week before the exam. on one hand, i would like more time to go over things that i probably put off for too long, while on the other i am just ready for this misery to be over.

i think studying for the bar is a little like making hot dogs. hot dogs are yummy, but you never want to see them being made or you would never want to eat another (so i here). being a lawyer will be awesome, but this crazy process of studying for the bar is something I never want to go through again.

anyway, keep your chin up, guys (the whole 3 people who may read this). it will all be over soon.

i've got a golden ticket

2008-07-16T11:49:00.002-04:00

so i actually did receive my admissions ticket in the mail today. so start checkin' your mailboxes.

and, yes, the ticket actually is yellow.

edit: also included with my ticket were directions on where/when to go... e.g. typers are in "Exposition Center" and handwriters are in the "Jim Graham Building". this info will probably be put on the ncble.org web site soon.

2006 mbe

2008-07-15T17:03:00.005-04:00

don't know how helpful this will be this late in the game, but i came across a free copy of the actual 2006 mbe exam.

Link: 2006 Multistate Bar Exam - google doc; or (.doc format)
edit: duh, the answers may be helpful - 2006 MBE Answers

and, um, for legal reasons, i suppose, this is only for studying purposes. don't be a douche like pmbr or bar/bri and try to profit from selling this to panicked classmates, ha!

no ticket

2008-07-15T16:59:00.003-04:00

so someone asked if i'd gotten my admissions ticket yet. nope. but i found out today, per the ncble.org website this info:

"Admission Tickets will be mailed the week of July 14, 2008.

All incomplete applicants are to report to the Exposition Center for check-in. There will be a separate check-in table designated by the appropriate signage.

PLEASE NOTE: Please do not call the office in regard to your admission ticket. If your application is incomplete, you will be notified by letter listing all items necessary for the completion of your application. You may bring any items needed to complete your application or supporting documentation on the day of the exam.

If your application is complete but you do not receive your admission ticket before the exam, please do not panic, there is a form called the Sworn Statement at each check-in table that you may fill-out the morning of the exam that will act as your admission ticket.

It is extremely important that you read and follow the Code of Conduct. The list of items that are prohibited are located on the Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct will be enclosed with your admission ticket or your incomplete letter. It is also located on our website.

No food or beverage will be allowed but coffee and water will be provided."

So if I don't get my ticket you don't think I'm gonna panic? Trying to get it the day of the exam will be a nightmare. But isn't it nice to know that my $600+ application fee will go toward providing me with water and coffee?

mbe strategery

2008-07-11T09:46:00.004-04:00

Still having trouble with those tricky multiples? (I am)

This book, Strategies & Tactics, is by the same Emanuel that has all those law school outlines. It is really helpful, and it shows you... drumroll.... strategies and tactics to maximize points on the MBE.

The book isn't real cheap - around $50 - but it has a lot of sample MBE questions (unlike the weird PMBR and Bar/Bri ones)... and for what it's worth, this book is supposedly what people used before there even was a PMBR or a Bar/Bri.

bar/bri v. NCBLE

2008-07-08T22:25:00.002-04:00

feeling it yet?

2008-07-08T21:15:00.003-04:00

so the days just keep ticking away, ever closer to the bar. concepts are starting to run together and i still suck at MBE questions.

i have started doing old bar essays, though. there is the occasional questions where i'm like "what the *%&# is this?" but, for the most part, they are going pretty well.

obviously, i haven't passed the bar yet, but a bit of good advice i got from someone who passed last summer is that the week or so before the bar, you need to sit down and do 6 essays in 3 hours... just like you'll have to do on the real thing. do this for 3-5 days in a row

yes, write out 6 answers in one sitting. this may seem like overkill, but i feel like doing this will get you that much more accustomed to doing it on July 29th. i mean, you spend the summer doing thousands of stupid MBE questions - why not the same effort for the essays?

think - "where can i get the most points?" in north carolina, anyway, each additional point you earn on the essays scales to 3 or maybe even 4 points. each additional point you get on the MBE? 1 point.

bar exam blues

2008-07-04T16:49:00.002-04:00

so we took the bar/bri simulated mbe this past week. needless to say, i didn't do so hot - not awful, but not what i had hoped for. supposedly the simulated mbe is ridiculously hard, though, harder than pmbr's simulated mbe. who knows.

i keep reading about people who scored around a 100 on simulated mbe's and then around 140 on the real thing.

freak out
my friend called the other day. he's taking the NY bar. he has been real laid back so far, going to bar/bri and not doing much else. he had his first freak out before their simulated MPT exam. i told him, "welcome to the club".

i think freaking out several times before the bar can actually be a good thing, so long as you know that it is normal and everyone does it. use that fear to help you focus.

take a break
other than that, i feel like so much studying has made my brain hurt. my head is getting full of knowledge, and i don't want it spilling out before july 29th. today is july 4th, and i'm taking a break.

you should, too. eat hotdogs, go to a parade, watch fireworks.

ramp it up

2008-07-01T12:49:00.002-04:00

today is july 1st - the bar is exactly 4 weeks away. time to start ramping up the studying. thank god bar/bri is drawing to a close.

bar/bri 'essay' lecturer guy: "we're going to do a CIRAC for essays - conclusion, issue, rule, analysis and conclusion.... don't forget to put the issue statement down, or else you'll be doing CRAC on the bar exam. and that's not good."

i hate civil procedure

2008-06-24T21:27:00.003-04:00

i've been studying civ pro for what feels like an eternity. what a god-awful subject. so many ridiculously nit-picky rules and nuances.

i think if there is a civ pro essay on the bar i will just write the bar examiners a short story of my choosing for that 30 minutes - the topic? probably batman. or ninjas.

nc bar grading

2008-06-24T15:09:00.005-04:00

on the north carolina bar exam, essays count for 60% of your grade and the mbe counts for 40%. there are a total of 500 points (300 for essays and 200 for the mbe). but here's where it gets tricky.

i know the following is a lot of math and most lawyers hate math, but bear with me:

there are 12 essays, each worth a maximum of 10 points - 12 x 10 = 120 points (not 300). so the examiners first take your RAW essay score. after they have determined the curve/scale, your raw score is converted to that and THEN multiplied by 1.5. why 1.5? the curved/scaled score is scaled to 200 and 200 * 1.5 = 300.

still follow?

now the curve/scale is different for each exam, but i am pretty sure it ranges from 2 to approximately 2.25. huh?

here's an example: you had a raw score of 70 (out of 120). that score is multiplied by 'the curve' (so 70 x 2 = 140). THEN, that is multiplied by the 1.5 - giving you a total of 210. so essentially, in this example, a raw 70 comes out to be 210 out of 300 points - meaning you need a 136 or higher on the mbe to pass (nc requires 346 points, no matter how you get 'em)

moral - in my opinion, the 60% weight for essays is misleading. the essays are most important because they are scaled more than the mbe, meaning a 5 point increase in your RAW essay scores would come out to be somewhere between 10 and 15 TOTAL point increase.

so my approach is to focus most of my studying attention on the essays (while not neglecting the mbe, either). but hey, that's just my way of thinking.

mbe waive into dc

2008-06-23T18:29:00.001-04:00

so apparently if you take any state bar and get a scaled score of 133 or higher on the mbe you can waive into washington, d.c. - just a lot of paper work and some $ is all it takes.

but my question is, you have to PASS your state bar and have a 133+ to waive in, right? you can't fail your bar but have a 133+ and waive in, can you?

edit: upon thinking about it, of course you would have to pass your bar and have a 133 to waive in... but riddle me this - in north carolina, if you pass the bar, you aren't even told your MBE scores (ridiculous, i know) ... so if you pass NC and want to waive into DC, what do you do? i suppose you could contact the actual MBE examiners and request your score?

bar humor

2008-06-22T14:00:00.002-04:00

so the bar/bri ~~comedian~~ lecturer we had for 'equity' was a really cool old jewish guy who cracked a lot of jokes. my favorite?

"what do you get when you cut 100 bras in half? 200 yamakas with chin-straps"

thanks, pmbr

2008-06-21T18:36:00.003-04:00

i came across this on another blog - http://workingabarexampole.blogspot.com/ (by a stripper who took the 2007 bar?) -- sorry, i am not that exciting, anyway....

apparently PMBR sent/sends out this email with last minute tips......

And our #1 exam tip?

Study where the points are! The list below details the most heavily tested areas and represents almost 100 points! Be sure to review these areas during the remaining days prior to the exam.

Equal Protection/Due Process 9

First Amendment 9

Hearsay 12

Character/Impeachment 10

Homicide 9

Strict Liability 7

Negligence 16

Mortgages 8

Contract Formation 16

study strategies?

2008-06-21T18:25:00.003-04:00

well i am more than halfway into studying by this point. initially, i set out to do all the available multiples (bar/bri + pmbr) - something like 3000. well that didn't work. i started in late may with the goal of 50+ multiples a day, but i quickly found out that wasn't feasible - yet.

for starters, i hadn't reviewed the 6 mbe subjects much yet. why do a set of questions where i am guessing on more than half of them, because i don't yet know the material? i was getting almost all of them wrong when i realized that was a huge waste of time.

quality over quantity. during bar/bri, i have been doing between 25 and 40 multiples per day. but, i go over them thoroughly. every question i get wrong, i read the answer and corresponding law and then i type/write out the rule of law that i missed. i'm not trying to memorize every aspect of the law, but going over the answers slowly and letting them marinate in my head has worked much better than doing questions for the sake of doing them.

randomness
so at the end of bar/bri they give you a simulated mbe - all 200 questions. also, with the 3 day pmbr, the first day you do a simulated mbe. bar/bri multiples, in my opinion, are a good deal easier than pmbr multiples. the pmbr simulated mbe is supposed to be ridicuously hard - with the goal of scaring you straight, i suppose.

anyway, i read somewhere that to get a good idea of how these aforementioned simulated mbe's compare to the real one, add 20-25 to your raw bar/bri score and 30/35 to pmbr. so if you only got 100 out of 200 on pmbr, that should be close to a 135 or so on the real mbe.

advice #1

2008-06-20T16:57:00.003-04:00

starting off -

should you take a bar review course? um, yeah. you have just spent three years and who knows how much money (i.e. loans for most of us) to go to law school. spend another $3,000 to take Bar/Bri and PMBR. the merits of Bar/Bri and PMBR will be another post for another day, but this is one time you want to be a lemming - everyone takes them. are they god-awful expensive and ridiculous? yes. but if nothing else, they provide you with a ton of sample questions to study and they force you to be organized/go to class since you are paying those outrageous prices.

which one - bar/bri, pmbr, study group, micromash, etc? i can only speak for myself, but there is no way i have the organization/will power to "self study". while i am sure the smaller programs are great for a lot of people, i need to go to cattle call everyday and be forced to listen to trusts and equity and such.

can i learn it all? no. you can't learn everything. do not try to "learn the law" for the bar - break things down into manageable chunks.

although it is probably too late for some of you, i highly recommend taking most of the bar subjects in law school. some schools only require first year courses, while others require students to take (nearly) all the bar subjects. sure, it was fun to take 'philosophy of law' as a 2L - but when you are stuck trying to teach yourself "evidence" for the first time during bar review you will be wishing you took it during school. (although there are some subjects which aren't too difficult to teach yourself, such as family law, perhaps)

don't procrastinate (too much) yes, i realize this blog is taking away from my study time, but i must be honest with myself. i just can't study 24/7 (at least until a week or two before the exam), so i try to study dilligently for several hours and then take a break.

that said, i don't advise waiting until July to start studying. yes, take some time for yourself during the month of June. don't feel bad about doing nothing more than going to bar/bri and doing some multiples most days. as they tell us constantly, "it's a marathon, not a sprint" - start studying in june, but don't kill yourself. if you try to memorize everything about civ pro in june it will be long gone come july. start off slowly, but be ready to ramp it up

welcome

2008-06-20T16:21:00.000-04:00

why the title, "346" for this blog? to successfully pass the NC bar exam, you need 346 points out of a possible 500. yes, that's right, 69.2%.

if you are like me, you are probably arriving at this blog looking for answers. you are probably taking or getting ready to take the NC (or any other) bar exam, and you are looking to (1) kill time -er, take a study break and/or (2) gain any possible advantage to pass the friggin' bar

let me preface this by saying that i am currently studying for the July 2008 NC Bar exam, so i don't know how valuable all of the following tips/ramblings will be.

i am a graduate of a law school located in north carolina, so that narrows it down to 5 out of 7, as elon and charlotte graduate their first classes next year (i think).