Today marks 8 days to the bar exam. Hopefully, this
weekend, you caught up on any sleep you have been missing. You need to be
physically well and fit. You need to be sharp on the days of the bar exam and
you can’t be smart when you are exhausted. Keep that in mind this week. If you
need to take a cat nap, go ahead and take it. Meanwhile, keep on your bar exam
schedule. Start studying at 9 am for a 3 hour stretch. Take an hour break and
study again for another 3 hour stretch. It will be up to you whether you want
to study longer. If you feel you need to, go ahead and review your notes or
essays at night, but don’t study night and day. You will only tire yourself
out. Try to keep your nerves under control.
Think about today and what you need to accomplish
today only. This technique should help you not think too much about next week.
The MBE Testing Institute
knows that taking the bar exam as a repeat taker can be an isolating
experience. The MBE Testing Institute helps the student keep motivated and
confident through interaction with an MBE Testing Institute’s bar tutor.
If you need help passing
the MBE, contact the MBE Testing Institute at pass@mbetestinginstitute.com for
more information.
Today marks 10 days to the bar exam. This is a
pretty significant day for you. You should be just about finished with your
studies. You should know the law, understand the mechanics of the bar exam and
understand how to tackle the MBE questions, the essays and the MPTs. It’s now
time to start powering down a bit.
If you have studied hard and if you are physically
tired, try to rest more this weekend. You do not want to enter the bar exam
exhausted and physically spent. Many of you will start to have sleepless nights
or have nightmares about the bar exam and your anxiety will reach higher
levels. Try to compensate for your lack of sleep at night by taking some power
naps. Don’t feel guilty – you’ve earned it. You want to be at your best
physically and mentally and you can’t do that if you are too tired to think. So
lie down on the couch and take a short nap when you need to. Meanwhile, review
your outlines and do a few essays a day and an hour or two of MBE questions per
day. If your state tests the MPT, write out a MPT every other day. It’s time
now to reinforce what you already know. Reviewing and practicing will build
your confidence that you really do know the subject matter.
The MBE Testing Institute knows that taking the bar
exam as a repeat taker can be an isolating experience. The MBE Testing
Institute helps the student keep motivated and confident through interaction
with an MBE Testing Institute’s bar tutor.
If you need help passing
the MBE, contact the MBE Testing Institute at pass@mbetestinginstitute.com for
more information.
We all know that you must complete your essays or
MBE in that specific 3 hour window. If
you have not done so yet, it is time to practice your timing. You must be able
to sustain that pace.
As you practice, keep that 3 hour pace in mind. It
is imperative that you finish all questions. You do not want to short-change
any essay or MBE question. You do not want to leave any questions unanswered or
unread and lose valuable points. As you know, even 1 point or 2 points can mean
the difference between passing and failing.
How do you build up your time and accuracy? In the
beginning of this process, start with doing an essay or two (depending on the length
of time you get from your state for your essays), or a block of MBE questions
for 1 hour. Then increase those essays,
MBE to 2 hours, then, finally, you should be able to do a set of your state’s
essays or the MBE in that 3 hour block of time.
In addition, thrown in a complete MPT set to work on, if your state
tests the MPT.
You must get comfortable and condition yourself to
sitting for 3 hours, working on MBE or essay questions or the MPT, without
losing your focus or concentration. In these last couple of weeks, prior to the
bar exam, you should be working on 3 hour blocks for the MBE, essays and MPT.
The MBE Testing Instituteknows that taking the bar exam as a repeat taker can be an isolating
experience. The MBE Testing Institute helps the student keep motivated and
confident through interaction with an MBE Testing Institute’s bar tutor.
If you need help passing
the MBE, contact the MBE Testing Institute at pass@mbetestinginstitute.com for
more information.
In prior blogs, I’ve
talked about those toxic people in your personal life. You know the type. Those
are the people who like to tell you horrible stories about people who have
failed the bar exam, or want you to play hooky when you should be studying.
But I have one more. I
have found that there are a few law students at every law school that try to
distract their fellow law students, especially those that have been studying
hard. Those “distractors” have not put in the study time nor have they worked
as hard as you have. Their purpose is to try to throw you off your game and to
disturb your peace of mind.
There are two types of
distractors. The first distractor wanders the study places, begging you for
little scraps of information, i.e. wanting to know the elements of some rule,
and freaking out because they don’t know the law. The other distractor wanders
the study places, telling you that they are powering down because they know
everything cold and they don’t need to study anymore. There was one student at
my school who tried to get people to ditch their work to go play golf with him.
Then on the day of the exam, he was walking around asking about the elements of
negligence, or some other such nonsense. Of course, he failed the bar exam and
apparently wanted others to fail with him.
The purpose of both
distractors is to divert you from your own studying and to make you feel unduly
nervous and anxious. They will try to undermine your own confidence. They are
going to make your question your own knowledge and freak you out too. Stay away
from those people. You want to keep focused and keep your mind clear and easy
as you march towards your goal.
The MBE Testing Institute
knows that taking the bar exam as a repeat taker can be an isolating
experience. The MBE Testing Institute helps the student keep motivated and
confident through interaction with an MBE Testing Institute’s bar tutor.
If you need help passing
the MBE, contact the MBE Testing Institute at pass@mbetestinginstitute.com for
more information.
In every essay questions or MBE questions, there are
different kinds of facts you need to be aware of. You have the background facts
and the legally significant facts.
We know that the background facts help put the
questions into context and makes for a more coherent fact pattern. But you must
recognize the differences between background facts and legally significant
facts. Background facts are there to put the whole fact pattern together. But
do not mistake legally significant facts for just background noise. You must be
able to see and understand those legally significant facts that enable you to
trigger issues in your mind.. For example, if the fact pattern reads,
“defendant screamed and called the plaintiff stupid”, you are probably looking
at a legally significant fact that should trigger your issue of defamation or
even negligent infliction of emotional distress. You can then key into the
issue presented, writing down all the elements of defamation or NIED, making
sure that you blend the elements of defamation with the facts you just read.
This is critical reading in a nutshell.
These skills make you a better test taker and you
will be successful in finding your issues for discussion. Don’t ever just skim
the words or read the fact pattern like you would a novel. This will not help
you find your legally significant facts.
The MBE Testing Institute
knows that taking the bar exam as a repeat taker can be an isolating
experience. The MBE Testing Institute helps the student keep motivated and
confident through interaction with an MBE Testing Institute’s bar tutor.
If you need help passing
the MBE, contact the MBE Testing Institute at pass@mbetestinginstitute.com for
more information.
You have 2 weeks until
the bar examination. Instead of spending the day getting nervous about the
time, concentrate on what you have left to do.
By this time, you should
have pretty much memorized as much black letter law as you can cram into your
brain. It is now time to put away the books and stop studying the law.
What you need to do in
these final 2 weeks to prepare yourself for the bar exam is to practice,
practice, practice. You are now familiar with your state test and the MBE
questions and what to expect from the bar exam.
Try to do an essay or two
every day, testing yourself on a variety of subjects that you know your state
tests. Do the essays under test conditions. Once you finish your essay under
time constraints, spend an equal amount of time reading your essay and
comparing it to the model answer. Read for comprehension, also. There might be
a point of law that you did not know that you can learn from reading the model
answer.
For those states who have
the UBE, and California or New York who have performance tests, you also must
include taking the time to do the performance test also. Try doing 1
performance test every other day. This way you can probably get 5 or 6
performance tests in to your practice sessions prior to the bar exam. On the
days you do not do a performance test, practice your essays.
In between the essays and
performance tests, you also need to work on questions for the Multistate. Try
to get in at least 50-100 MBE questions per day, if you can. This way you can
really be sharp when exam time comes.
Don’t waste the time to
panic, but do take the time to practice. You will be more prepared than ever if
you follow this schedule.
The MBE Testing Institute knows that taking the bar
exam as a repeat taker can be an isolating experience. The MBE Testing
Institute helps the student keep motivated and confident through interaction
with an MBE Testing Institute’s bar tutor.
If you need help passing
the MBE, contact the MBE Testing Institute at pass@mbetestinginstitute.com for
more information.
Critical thinking is the key to being a lawyer and
to passing the bar exam. Reading the bar exam essays and the MBE fact pattern
is not like reading a novel. Instead, you must pick through the facts, actively
thinking of what each fact means. Critical thinking means that you must
carefully examine the essay fact patterns and the MBE fact patterns. You must
sort through the fact pattern, looking at salient facts so that you can make
the next step of identifying issues. You will need to draw inferences from the
facts and synthesize the facts into law. Look for nuisances and distinctions as
you read. This will help you to answer the essay questions and pick the right
answer choice on the MBE.
Reading critically and thinking through each fact,
while using your logic and your legal reasoning, will allow you to understand
what the question is asking you to do. Remember to evaluate every fact. Do not
look at the whole of any question; instead, break it down into bites of facts,
and you will come to the central issue of all fact patterns. Then you can start
the essay writing process or answer the MBE question correctly.
The MBE Testing Institute knows that taking the bar
exam as a repeat taker can be an isolating experience. The MBE Testing
Institute helps the student keep motivated and confident through interaction
with an MBE Testing Institute’s bar tutor.
If you need help passing
the MBE, contact the MBE Testing Institute at pass@mbetestinginstitute.com for
more information.
