This is a big week for recent (and some not so recent) law school grads across the country. That’s right, it’s Bar Exam Week. I think I’ll take some time to reminisce, even though my sitting was only a year ago. I’m not sure I’ve put the story all in one place before, so here we go.
I didn’t take the classes. Or get the audio lectures. The books were it for me, and I had no choice of provider. Bar/Bri is the only state-specific bar review program available in Wyoming. When I got the books, that was the entire package—no sheet on how to study, no sample study schedule, no tips, nothing. That was disconcerting.
Given the lack of guidance, it is not surprising that my studying was ineffective to begin with. I ran into some friends at a local coffeeshop, for example, who told me that the state outline book I was reading was really for people really struggling with a subject or who were taking the bar for the second time. Good to know.
Eventually, though, I refined my strategy significantly. This strategy can be summed up in two words: practice questions. I did, admittedly, look at the basic subject outlines. But the vast majority of my time was spent doing practice problems. In part, my approach was dictated by my schedule. I started working as an appellate clerk about two weeks or so after graduation, so I was working full time, commuting 45 minutes each way, and studying for the bar, all at the same time.
I worked mostly on the multistate test first, going through the Big Book of Questions from cover to cover. At the end, there were a few sets of mixed problems. I wasn’t happy with any of my results at first, though I seemed to be slowly improving. To top it off, the questions were grouped by subject, so that gave me an even better idea of what to look for. I considered that unrealistic. When I finished with the book, I didn’t think I was doing too well until I took some practice exams under either half- or full-day conditions. At that point, I felt much better because my scores were handily sufficient to pass the multistate exam.
Then I turned to Wyoming law. After reading the outlines, I worked on the essay questions, again going cover to cover. All my practice here was done on my laptop with a timer to match testing conditions as closely as possible. In Wyoming, we’re given 11 questions from something like 17 subjects (I forget the exact number) and we’re allowed to skip one question. After looking at the oil and gas outline (difficult, but comprehensible) and the practice questions (complete gibberish), I decided that would be the subject I’d skip if it showed up on the test.
One interesting note about the Wyoming essay practice questions: some of them were wrong or incomplete. I noticed a CrimPro question that was flat-out wrong about a particular search and seizure point. I verified this by looking at the case I was thinking of, which squarely held the opposite of the sample answer, and was still good law. A friend of mine knowledgeable in some aspects of family law noticed another error in that section. One question on civil procedure involved an out-of-state defendant who wanted to contest personal jurisdiction, but he’d already shown up and defended the case on the merits. The sample answer made no mention of the defendant having submitted to personal jurisdiction, which is a pretty basic rule. The point here: be careful, and if you notice something wrong in an area that you are familiar with, verify it and let your friends know.
So, how did I feel about my study strategy? All about the first test day, tomorrow.
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