Last-minute advice for bar exam takers.

On one of our other blogs (here).

More on how to study for the bar exam

Ilya Somin's updated his post (here), and I agree with some of his points: (1) figure out your own, best way of studying and key your bar prep to that, (2) try not to overstress, (3) be disciplined in your studying, and (4) remember that failing the bar exam is not the end of the world. (Ilya, did I summarize these points fairly?)

Where he and I disagree is on how risk-averse the average law graduate should be when preparing for the bar. And, of course, everyone should determine his own level of risk-tolerance. When I took the California bar, a year after law school (after my clerkship ended), I took Bar/BRI, made flash cards, commiserated with my friends, and made it through the test relatively unscathed. Twenty years later, when I sat for the Nevada bar, I looked a lot more like Kevin Costner in Tin Cup. (Remember the scene where he's wearing every golf-swing gadget ever made?) I took Bar/BRI again, bought flash cards and old bar review books off eBay, did the computer-generated review tests, made outlines of my outlines of my outlines (I'm not kidding!), and basically worried myself into a tizzy, because I know how awful I am at memorizing things and how bad I am at taking multiple-choice tests.

The stakes were much higher for me the first time around. I had a law firm job and, even though the firm would have kept me around if I'd needed to take the bar exam a second time, my career would have been stalled for a bit during the extra time, and my stress level would have shot through the roof. I was a tenured full professor when I took the Nevada Bar and my life wouldn't have changed one whit had I not passed (although I probably would have lost some credibility with my students had I failed).

Here's what I think that Ilya and Jim Chen (his post here) and I are all saying (Jim, let me know if you agree): like Robin Williams's character in the movie Dead Again, it's important to know what you are.

In the movie, Williams plays a disbarred (or whatever you call a de-licensed doctor) shrink. Kenneth Branagh plays a detective who, among other things, may be trying to quit smoking. Williams tells Branagh that "[s]omeone is either a smoker or a nonsmoker. There's no in-between. The trick is to find out which one you are, and be that. If you're a nonsmoker, you'll know."

So, when it comes to studying for the bar, you're either risk-averse or risk-taking. The trick is to find out which one you are, and be that.

Good luck on this summer's bar exams--in every jurisdiction.

Volokh Conspiracy's Post on Reducing the Pain of Taking the Bar Exam

One of our own law students directed me to Ilya Somin's post (here) on the Volokh Conspiracy blog, never a boring blog. Prof. Somin's advice is to study less for the bar exam: read the review books, take some practice tests, memorize the rules, and relax.

Hoo, boy. I disagree heartily. Maybe his advice is true for a few brave and risk-taking souls, but I can't imagine wanting to take that type of risk with the one barrier to entry to practice that's given only twice a year that would stand between me and my ability to practice my choice of career.

Full disclosure here: I am a lecturer for a bar review course, which may taint my perspective, but I also sat for a state bar a year ago. In order to prepare for the Nevada bar, I took a bar review course (not, BTW, the one for which I'm now a lecturer). Let me say right now that I was extremely grateful that I had taken that course, could not possibly have passed the bar without having had that level of review, would not have had the stamina or sitzfleisch to have studied that intensely on my own, did not have the knowledge base in at least six of the Nevada subject areas being tested, and could not have imagined having the chutzpah to have risked my results with LESS study than I had given any of my law school courses. Moreover, I did not need to pass the bar to keep my job. I'm a law professor, not a lawyer. I took the bar because my husband and I had an understanding that, if he had to take the Nevada bar when we moved here, I had to take the Nevada bar as well.

And the Nevada bar is HARD. Hard as in H-A-R-D. Hard as in "I sweated out waiting for my results" hard. (We both passed, but we both worried about passing.)

So, Prof. Somin, I respectfully disagree with your post. (So, by the way, does Jim Chen--see his post here.) THIS law professor wants to send out a different message about studying for the bar. DON'T slack off. Embrace the pain of studying. Suck it up. Work your butt off. Face it: you'd rather have three months of pain now than three months of pain now and then three more months of pain later, when you have to retake the bar. Maybe you'll have wasted your effort and, looking back, you could have worked less hard. But is it so bad that you worked hard to achieve a goal?

Breathing a sigh of relief....

See here. I owe a debt of gratitude first, to my beloved, who saw me through the exam and gave me more support than anyone ever has a right to expect; then to Bar/BRI and to Strategies & Tactics for the MBE, which got me through the substantive and testing theory parts of the bar.

Now, on to the MPRE!

I get to be a professor again--tales from week 1

Last week, Boyd School of Law started its classes, and I got to teach my first day of the basic bankruptcy course. It's been a year since I've taught anything, and eight years since I taught a bankruptcy course. (Congress, of course, was nice enough to amend the Bankruptcy Code so that I wouldn't feel rusty.) I'm using the Epstein, Markell, Nickles, Perris book, and I started out with a day of big-picture questions about what a bankruptcy code should do. The students were comfortable participating in teams, and they had good answers to the questions. Tomorrow, we'll start learning the Code in earnest.

I also got lucky enough to become part of our Appointments Committee and our Bar Exam and Class Rankings Committee. I'm not being facetious--I'm truly delighted to serve on these committees, and I'm looking forward to working with my new colleagues.

Given that we get to do exactly what we want to do as law professors--and would do for free if we were independently wealthy--it's a damn good life, and I'm thrilled to be doing it again.

Happy start-of-school, everyone....

Roughly 26 hours to go....

Things I've realized in the last few days, with the bar exam less than 27 hours away:

1. I have no more room in my brain for anything else except (a) more review and (b) stress. I can't even remember the simplest things that I just heard. On the other hand, I remember feeling this way in 1987, when I was one day away from the California bar. On the other other hand, though, I hated this effect then, too.

2. If there were a Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of bar review, it would go something like this:

Hubris: "There's not that much to learn, really. I can do it and still have a life."
Frustration: "Why on earth did the law change so much in [insert field] since 1987?" Some subjects also experience self-frustration: "Why didn't I start memorizing MONTHS ago?"
Lucas v. Hamm-ism: "If I promise to practice only in those areas in which I am actually competent, will you please just use some essay questions that I can actually answer?"
Chagrin: "Why did I tell so many people that I was taking the bar?"
Resignation: "Well, at least there's nothing else I can do until I get the results."

I am clearly in stage 3, with a bit of self-frustration stage 2 lingering on: If I'd only studied 8 hours/day, 5 months straight....

The sad thing is that I actually don't mind taking tests. I like the mental challenge. But this one's going to be a whopper, and I'm just as likely at this point not to pass as to pass. If I don't pass, then I'll take it again and I will force myself to memorize stuff earlier. If I do pass, I will be very lucky and very grateful.

More to come, and here's wishing good luck to all of my colleagues across the nation who are in the same boat this week.

Open brain, insert black-letter law

With only a few weeks to go of bar review classes, I'm now at the point that I'm happy to accept passively the disgorgement of bare-bones law into my open and willing brain. I like the jokes that the lecturers use in between this dumping-into-brain action, but I also find myself thinking, "OK, more rules--NOW."

I hope, though, that law students, with fifteen glorious weeks of study and (often) open-book exams, don't feel the same way.

Bar review and summer camp

A friend of mine who's studying for the Texas bar has, quite aptly, compared bar review to summer camp "but without the horseback riding." Shannon's right, and I'd just add that listening to black-letter law (which is all I care about these days) is a lot like making plaster hand molds in camp: seems like a good idea at the time, and utterly useless after camp is over.

Teaching to the test....

As I begin the third week of bar review--and let me say how grateful I am that BarBRI is spoon-feeding me the material I need to know--I can't help but think how much bar review is like the reactions to "No Child Left Behind" or the rankings. The goal is to hit those points that can get measured. (The bar itself actually tests application of the law to facts, so it's NOT a by-rote thing.)

A lot of K-12 teachers resent No Child Left Behind, because their days of teaching mastery seem to be behind them. It's improvement on the test scores that gets their administrators rewarded, and thus that law (and the tests that measure progress) shapes the principals' decisions about time and resource allocation. The same is true of the rankings, of course. Schools chase the change of statistically insignificant places on an ordinal ranking system, which in turn forces certain priorities.

The good news for Stanford, of course, is that I doubt I'll affect the law school's rankings next year, no matter how I do on the Nevada Bar.

Reflections on the first week of bar review

One more day, and Jeff & I will be finished with the first week of bar review. Observations so far:

1. I liked Professor Whitebread's lecture in 1987, and I liked it in 2007, too. Can 20 years really have passed so quickly between the two periods of bar prep.
2. I love taking notes on my laptop, although I seem to be the only person in the class who's doing that so far.
3. So far, the prep consists of stenography, in large part, and a bit of application. I know that those proportions will shift midway through.
4. I secretly (well, not so secretly, since I'm blogging) enjoy re-learning most of this stuff.