It Begins [for the rest of us]...
Barbri began for the rest of us today (CA Berkeley location - EDIT: NY Berkeley location is tomorrow). Gotta love that overwhelmed look on everyone's face this morning.
In true Berkeley fashion, things got off to a rocky start - notably, tech problems with the video sound. But once the first subject video started rolling, I think many of us decided that this may not be fun but might be manageable after all.
However, I suppose the better test for collective mood will come tomorrow after we've started to get a feeling of what the homework is going to be like.
Any other thoughts? Hoping to reboot this as an open forum...
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Again bumping up to encourage more discussion. End of our second (or third in some cases) week - how's everyone feeling?
In true Berkeley fashion, things got off to a rocky start - notably, tech problems with the video sound. But once the first subject video started rolling, I think many of us decided that this may not be fun but might be manageable after all.
However, I suppose the better test for collective mood will come tomorrow after we've started to get a feeling of what the homework is going to be like.
Any other thoughts? Hoping to reboot this as an open forum...
---
Again bumping up to encourage more discussion. End of our second (or third in some cases) week - how's everyone feeling?
Labels: Bar Exams
posted by tj at 9:26 PM
80 Comments:
I liked the Torts video lecture / explanation but thought the Criminal one was really really bad. All the "explanations" she gave were conclusory: "The cops acted outside their reach, so it was unconstitutional, so the answer is B, the motion is granted" instead of really saying WHY the action was unconstitutional.
In other news, I'm in Oakland with only a few other Boalties, it seems like. The materials, schedule, and pacing seem fine so far. Would have appreciated *some* sense of live leadership. It looked like a student just pressed play at the right time and it all started.
I don't know how the video lectures work, but if you're getting videos of the same lectures that we're watching live (which would explain the week delay between the live and recorded ones) then you're in for a treat when you get to the main Torts lectures. Roger Schechter (sp?) is hilarious. Can't wait for the second Torts lecture tomorrow.
I second the criminal law lecturer being awful. Her most memorable line was "Anyone who has watched the show Cops knows that the police acted reasonably and that the answer is C." What does that even mean?
Also, for the amount we are paying I expect a lecturer whose credentials extend beyond being "a licensed attorney in the state of California."
Yeah, i think that just meant that she passed the bar.
The degree to which the criminal law video sucked is hard to express with words. For some reason she thought she'd explain the simple fact patterns instead of how she reached her "obvious" conclusions. Really bad.
Yeah seriously - isn't someone at barbri screening these things?
Caley,
A warning about Schecter. He is entertaining, he is funny, and he seems clear. But be warned -- his information is absolutely the most insufficient for the MBE's and for the essays. Don't rely on him!!
I'm still sad that Prof. Whitebread died. He did the crim law lecture for years and was apparently USC Law's most beloved professor. A lot of people didn't like him in my Bar Bri section, but he had me laughing so hard I was crying at his bestiality and the bunny bit. And what he taught us worked, which in the end, is what matters.
Are the Barbri MBE questions representative of the real MBE questions in terms of difficulty? I find it really hard to believe that they are. I don't intend to sound arrogant or freak others out, but the questions we've seen this week aren't nearly as bad as I expected. Is my intuition right? Are these questions a lot easier than the ones we'll see on the actual bar exam?
Yes, you're correct. The Barbri MBE questions are easier than the real thing. Also, the ones they have you do at the beginning are the "easy" ones. Baby steps.
But, if you think they are hard or you get 50% don't freak out, that's normal and you'll get the hang of it eventually. You can't remember everything the first time you read/hear it.
Hard to say for sure that we're doing the "easy" or "baby step" ones now given that this whole weeklong preview thing is new this year (and FWIW, I hope we're the only bar/bri class that will ever experience it!)
As for the quality of the lecturers, we're still in the "preview week" at the Berkeley CA barbri. They're just reviewing MBE questions. I think we'll get professors when they actually teach us the substantive content.
Schecter certainly is skipping things as he tells his drawn-out funny stories. I mean, he's hilarious, but we jumped entirely over misrepresentation and various defenses for other torts. I can't tell if that means it's not important or likely to be tested or he didn't have a clever hypo for it.
Now into week 2 of the live course, and into the substantive lectures. Is it natural to feel that there is no possible way to memorize the huge amount of information they are giving us? Does everyone feel this way? The three session Contracts lecture was HUGE. Can't believe this must be committed to memory.
I feel the same way. I can't believe that it's possible to learn all of this material, and I've only been doing live lecture for a week.
pace yourself in june (try to keep up with homework and don't miss classes, but stay calm) -- july 5 to the exam date is when things get crazy.
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I'm taking it this year and am considering using this set of free online flashcards:
http://www.flashcardexchange.com/user/view/334368
Not sure how useful/good they are yet, but just wanted to share. (Deleted and reposted because I got the link wrong)
Would love to see this post moved up to encourage more comments.
Am a little stressed. It's a ton of info, and am still unsure how to game plan each of the subjects. More than that, though, I am just extremely bored. Way too much me time studying. Planning to put the work in, but this can't end soon enough.
Took Barbri last year. I thought the process went like this:
Part 1: first two-three weeks. You freak out because of the sheer magnitude of law you have to commit to memory. And you have no idea how Barbri really works.
Part 2: mid-late June. You're getting the swing of things, feel like you have a handle on the schedule. You start thinking "I can do this"
Part 3: Fourth of July - take a day or two off, or at least don't study all day that weekend. You'll need the rest for ...
Part 4: The homestretch. Three weeks and then it's over, and you are working really hard everyday, no breaks, no days off. It's stressful because it's so close, but you can do it because (a) you feel like you're actually retaining stuff now and (b) it's only a few more weeks/days.
Then it's over! You can do it!
And studying is much worse than the actual experience of taking the bar, I promise.
So many people say that after July 4 it gets really crazy. But I didn't experience that at all - it was a constant pace during the whole thing. Day 1 was pretty much the same as any other day, except the last 2 weeks when I went into turbo practice essay writing mode. But even then it was just more intense - not extra hours.
I've found several times that the rule necessary to answer the MBE question was not covered in lecture. You can fib on the multiple choice, but if that happens on the essays, you're SOL. It'd be nice to have some introduction to how the pieces fit together - should we just focus on what was said in the lecture? memorize the mini-review? how different is the subject matter of the MBE from the essays? tried to ask barbri hotline, totally unhelpful. otherwise, found the torts lecture funny and entertaining, but could have been condensed down; property was an excellent format, filling in the workbook kept your attention during the dreary material.
Studying for the bar sucks. I keep waiting for these MBE questions to ask me about policy justifications. It's almost as if I just spent $150K on a poli sci degree.
The difference being this is a poly sci degree you can actually get a job with.
I was expecting not to have learned or remembered anything from 1L torts, but I actually did. Its remarkable that you can teach most of the important parts of these topics in less than 10 hours. I can't help but think that if I took barbri BEFORE 1L year, classes would have been so simple.
but if they lectured on tort law before 1L it would have been harder to identify the next generation of legal scholars.
Hate to hijack, but since I assume mostly 3Ls are reading this thread -- has anyone else found the whole Boalt bar loan process incredibly, incredibly frustrating?
It's a great deal -- $4,200 interest free thru 2011 -- but the screwed-up bureaucracy to get it is driving me mad. It took at least four trips to the cashier office on Shattuck before they finally figured out which forms they needed and when. And now that they finally disbursed the money, I've received a statement saying interest has been accruing and I owe a payment next month.
AGGRAVATING. Particularly at this moment.
3:10, I'm totally with you, could have written that post myself! The woman in charge down there, while goodhearted, is incompetent. Forgetting and messing up forms, going away for extended periods and not following up... After a bunch of headache, they finally disburse my money, and two weeks later say they need another form filled out! No way do you owe them interest or immediate payment, but it'll take you some more headache to get it sorted. And I believe repayment begins early 2010, not 2011.
I got the same letter. Has anyone else gotten this screwup? What did you do? Call ACS?
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A little off topic from the bar loan business, but is anyone else loving good ol' Chuck on those Enhanced Multistate videos? For whatever reason I get a kick out of listening to that guy.
I assume we'll have to take it up with the people here at Berkeley, since they set the terms of the loan and ACS just collects (unless ACS just mucked up reading the details or something).
But given the track record, I'm willing to bet 5 lexis points that the fault lies down on Shattuck.
Got the same ACS screw up. Can someone call financial aid on Monday and report back?? I will say that Candi in that office is pretty responsive and nice.
Warren
I'm with you 6:58, Chuck is awesome. If only for how he pronounces the Rule against PerpetuitEYYYZ
Re: Bar Study loans
Everyone, I just spoke with Financial Aid. Apparently UC Berkeley outsourced the bar loans to ACS, and clearly someone dropped the ball. I spoke with someone over at Financial Aid (I think the big man himself), and he said that he would check in with them and get back to me in the next few days. Bottom line: as of now, it looks like Boalt is going to take care of this for us.
Thanks Josh! Great info.
(slides cursor away from the panic folder)
over / under on percentage of us who "FAIL" the torts CICW graded exam we turn in tomorrow?
80%
I would be willing to bet the average score will be in the range of 50-55
don't worry about whether you fail or pass the tests, please!
fyi all, from financial aid:
"The staff member in Billing & Payment Services has determined that ACS has made a systematic error in billing all of the law school's bar study loan borrowers. The error will be corrected. Please disregard the billing statement and be assure that interest will not be charged until you begin repaying the loan January 1, 2011."
Wait were we supposed to get a % grade on our graded torts essay? Becuase mine just says F becuase I missed an issue.
It's just P or F. No percentage. The graded essays are the least-helpful thing about BarBri.
I failed my essay too. I am not worried about it. I got an pass for my issue spotting, but was told that my rule statements were incomplete and that my analysis was shallow. I am just viewing it as a warm-up though.
While I found the entire Bar study experience very unpleasant, the worst part by far was how they graded those essays. I failed every singe one, yet I graduated in the top 15% of my class and passed the Bar. DO NOT worry about them (but do practice your essay writing).
What exactly did your class rank have to do with that?
To be fair, the school did say that class rank is pretty directly correlative to bar passage, didn't they?
Not stating this to freak anyone out nor to suggest that future results will be the same but...
Last year, top 1/3 of class passed the Bar 100%
Middle third passed around 80%
and bottom third passed at 50%.
It is about as strong of a correlation as you can get.
Those were actually the statistics of the class of 2007, not last year's class. And because only one year's results were released, it's hard to know if that is a significant correlation or merely an outlier.
Still, it's pretty sobering. Or reassuring for about half of the class. I guess everyone can consider their transcript before taking anything to heart.
And I think it was all but 3 people who passed in the middle third of the class, which would make the rate more like 95%.
yeah, the pass rate for the middle 1/3 was 94%, not 80%
about those bar passage rates: now everyone knows. back when the administration wasn't sharing that information, the bottom third were unaware that they were spending three years heading toward a coin flip. entering 1Ls now know. they can take bar courses. they can't put "P = JD" in the proper perspective. they can take the hard courses and put in the effort. if we could go back in time and tell last year's class about the correlation between class rank and bar passage, i'm sure lots of them would have done things differently and lots of them wouldn't have stumbled. given how much debt law students take on, all law schools should be more candid with their students.
There's a small flaw in the logic here that 8:52 almost nails. The correlation between class rank and bar passage rate isn't constant. There's always going to be a bottom third, rankings-wise, regardless of the class's overall mastery of the law (for instance, in a given year, everyone may be a smart and well-prepared as Patrick... 1/3 of them will still be in the bottom 1/3).
As a result 100% of a given class may pass the bar; the bottom third's passage rate in such years? Also 100%. So being in the bottom third of your class doesn't mean you have a coin-flip's chance of passing. That is still dependent on your level of preparedness.
Without much more data, the correlation is probably best stated: "if you are in the top third or middle third of your class, you are much more likely to pass the bar than if you are in the bottom third".
ok, so can't the administration release the data for the last ten years running? or at least release it each year moving forward?
the optimistic outcome is that once students are armed with the information the top third still pass at 100%, the middle third passes at 94-96%, and the bottom third moves way up from 51% to 80%.
the reason they released the data that one time was because the bar passage rate had steadily dropped for several years in a row and they wanted to educate the bottom third on what they needed to do. but that rationale never goes away. the administration should release it. if they don't, they should get a FOIA request each year for it.
re: bar loans; why does financial aid say repayment begins january 2011? mine says it starts 2010. anyone can confirm?
It begins in 2011. It originally was going to be 2010, but when I got the loan the financial aid people down on Shattuck told me that they have decided to extend the period before the loan begins to accrue.
Interest does not begin to accrue until February, 2011.
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Does anyone know where to get additional MBE practice questions for cheap? I would rather learn the material by doing practice questions because it's more fun than reading the outlines, but I'm worried that if I get ahead in the Barbri schedule now I won't have many questions to practice with closer to the exam (when I - hopefully - actually know the law).
Guy in my barbri class wore a t-shirt tonight, read "Screw it. I'm a 3L" Not any more mister. Sadly, not any more.
how much does that evidence lecturer suck???
The evidence lecturer sucks a lot.
For alums who have already taken the Bar, how does the big book of MBE questions from Kaplan PMBR compare to the actual actual bar questions in terms of difficulty? Would you say that those questions are representative of the actual questions we'll see?
i miss chuck. he should've done evidence instead.
"the declarant esta muerto!"
chuck looks tired in the evidence lecture.
I've heard that the PMBR questions aren't representative anymore because they are in the format of the MBE before this year's changes i.e. they use one fact pattern for more than one question, are extremely long, have answer choices like I & II, only III, etc.
For former test takers, any good source for pneumonic devices?
1:35: Make your own pneumonic devices - it's the only way you'll remember them. Trying to learn what others make up (especially the stupid property lecturer) will not help and only waste time.
1:35 - You heard that from Barbri, huh? It's all true, but I still find PMBR really helpful, if for no other reason than the fact that there are tons of questions. I also think the questions are written much clearer than the Barbri questions.
2:18,
make our own artificial lungs?
It's MNEMONIC devices, folks. Not pneumonic. Unless you're memorizing air. Or something.
words cannot describe how bad the evidence lecturer is
not only is he boring and redundant, but he has made several blatant misstatements of evidence law
Yawn. Doesn't it get boring complaining about this stuff?
All this negativism only brings people down in an already stressful time.
if you don't like it, don't read it
to piggy back 7:25, is there any way we can turn this into something more productive?
how about posting inaccuracies on this board to share with fellow boalties? or maybe share a good "pneumonic" (haha) you've found relating to the day's lecture?
Business records
Existing phyical or mental condition
Dying declaration
Excited utterance
Former testimony
Public records
Interest, statements against
Medical diagnosis
P... I forget.
I had an evidence issue way back from the preview.
One question concerned whether or not the statement that a clerk who had been robbed at gunpoint was admissible, where he previously told the police the gun used was a .45 and then at trial said it was a revolver or something like that.
The correct answer was that it was inadmissible because it was extrinsic evidence of a collateral matter.
Well that really boggled me and certainly hasn't been my experience, where I've seen witnesses impeached for the littlest inconsistencies. Surely here in this problem the inconsistent statement has bearing on his ability to recall and is relevant to his identification of the Defendant. I hope there aren't any questions like this on the Bar or I will really psyche myself out.
For those more versed in evidence (like Warren), would ya'll be willing to list all the misstatements of law you noticed? It would be really helpful to those of us who are less knowledgeable in the area...if you have time. I would personally be very appreciative :).
if barbri says it, it's true.
i'm no evidence dweeb, but the explanation of similar happenings didn't seem to jive with what I had learned at berkeley. but the time for complexity and figuring out who is right is way past me. now is the time to just trust yourself to barbri and roll with it.
I am unbelievably sick of this discussion about class rank and bar passage. Yes, I am towards the mid-bottom probably -- who knows. But I am working my ass off in Barbri and literally terrified that I won't pass. How does reminding us that we have a lower likelihood help us when we are working as hard as we can? Thank you for freaking me out even more than I already am (which, incidentally, will only hurt me on the test, since these tests require confidence), when I was reading this post to get helpful advice. We all know about Edley's email. Enough already.
Yes, can we start a new thread for Barbri discrepancies? I have noticed some discrepancies between what is said in the lectures and what is in the books.
(Fortunately I have no idea what my class rank is, but I also concur with 5:34 -- enough.)
see new thread above to shift towards more helpful dialogue
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