BarBri 1.5 Speed (or more) Redux

If you're like me, you're impatient with the pace of the BarBri lectures and want to watch them at a faster speed. This has been an outstanding request with BarBri for at least a year, and N&B and ATL both have posts on this from last year. But if you don't want to dig through the comments, here's what currently works for me.

NB: AFAIK, this only works on Windows. If someone with a Mac has a solution, please chime in via the comments.

1. Install the Internet Download Manager (IDM). There's a 30-day free trial, enough time for you to download whatever videos you need.
2. Install VLC as a media player.
3.  Log in to BarBri and start watching one of the lecture videos. If you've installed IDM correctly, you'll see something like this:
   
   
   
   
4. Click the "Download this video" button.
5. Once it's done downloading, open the resulting .flv file in VLC. In the menu, go to Playback > Speed > Faster. This will increase the speed by 50%. You can also increment the speed a little more (10%) by selecting Playback > Speed > Faster (fine).

Pro-tip: You can use the keyboard to adjust playback in VLC as well. By default, here are some common ones (you can see the rest in the preferences somewhere):

• [ - 10% slower
• ] - 10% faster
• Space - pause
• Alt + Left - Jump back 10 seconds
• Ctrl + Left - Jump back 60 seconds
• Alt + Right - Jump forward 10 seconds
• Ctrl + Right - Jump forward 60 seconds

Again, not sure what the Mac equivalent of IDM would be. I suspect there's a Firefox plug-in but none of them seem to work for me. So if anyone has answers there, please chime in.

I Just Want to Tell You Both Good Luck. We're All Counting on You.

Soon the results will come out.  A few years ago, co-blogger Danny Z had some insightful comments as he awaited the results.  This year, aside from the traditional pithy post that opens it up for commenters to vent any angst or frustration, I want to offer a list of DOs and DON'Ts.

1.  Do celebrate your bar passage with friends and family.  You become a licensed attorney only once.

2.  Don't celebrate by posting your name followed by "Esq." on Facebook.  In fact, never refer to yourself as Esq. or Esquire; it's really obnoxious.  Imagine if a judge introduced himself, "Hi, I'm the Honorable John Smith."  Esquire is no exception.  It's an honorary title that others may use to refer to you.  When people use honorary titles on themselves, they come off as pompous pricks.  We have Hastings for that kind of nonsense.  KIDDING!

3.  Do go home early to check your results.  You don't want to be at work.  Trust me.

4.  Don't feel like it's the end of the world if your name is not on the pass list.  Always reenter your info in case you had a typo...happens more often than you might think.  If it's not a typo, it's still not the end of the world. 

That is all for this year.  Only a couple of hours more of feeling like you're on a roller coaster that's continuously falling.  Good luck.

Bar Application, Graduation, MPRE & Moral Character Stuff

In case you missed it, here's a summary of today's lunch session with Dean H*rshen about applying for the Bar and going through Moral Character Determination. I'm sure I missed a few things, so if you have anything important to add, do so in the comments.

First, there were handouts. You should read them. Additionally ...

Registration and Bar Application

• It's really important that you register as a law student before you apply for the bar. Those are two separate steps that take time to process, so you can't just do both in one go. The law school told us to register during our 1L year, but if you're unsure about your status, you can check it out here.
• If you're taking the New York bar (or any other bar for that matter), let the Registrar know! The law school will automatically certify graduates for the California bar, but students from other states will need to submit a form to the registrar by a certain deadline. You may also need to submit other forms, like a handwriting sample for New York. You should get all of this to the registrar as soon as possible.

Graduation

• If you have IP grades ("in progress"), talk to your professor soon to get those taken care of. It's bad if you can't graduate because the professor you need to sign off on this is on sabbatical.
• Writing requirements should be done by this semester.
• The registrar will start sending out individual e-mails to students about any missing graduation requirements, starting next week.

MPRE

• If you are taking the MPRE this November, John St*ele will be holding an MPRE review session at 5:30 on Thursday, October 27, in Booth. See K. H*lmquist's e-mail.

Moral Character Determination

• You can fill it out at this link.
• Fill it out now! It takes a long time to complete and to process. Technically, you don't need to have this done until you take your oath in December, but it's best to get this all done before you take the bar, so you don't have to worry about any of this while studying for the bar.
• At least 4 people asked this, but yes, LLM and international students need to go through the Moral Character Determination process as well. If you want to sit for the bar, you have to go through moral determination.
• You need to have your fingerprints taken. Boalt doesn't do fingerprinting, so ask the bar for locations
• It's OK to have a few "youthful indiscretions" on your moral character determination, but it's better to be upfront about this rather than try to hide it. If you fail to mention something, and it comes up later during the moral character review, that's bad.
• Similarly, if you have anything that might impact your moral character determination, like a bankruptcy or criminal record, that you did not mention to Berkeley, you should talk to Dean Hirshen. It's important that information the Bar has about you match the information the school has.
• Even if you've taken a moral character determination in the past, e.g., for a security background check, you still need to do this one as well. But mention the previous one in your application.
• When putting down your employment history, if your employer no longer exists, there should be a box you can check to note this. If your boss is no longer there (but the company still is), just put down the company and boss as is, and let your old company deal with it.
• When putting down the places you resided at, if you were travelling for an extended period of time but didn't have any single particular place you stayed at, just list your permanent residence.
• This sounded weird to me, but when listing the time and places for your your residencies, you also need to note those brief periods during winter or summer break where you were at home.
• A moral character determination is good in California for three years, so if you're not taking the Cal. bar but might at some point in the next three years, get the moral character determination done now.

That's all I have. You can also view posts from previous 3Ls about this process. Feel free to add in the comments.

STUDENTS OF LAW MAY ESCAPE ORDEAL

From the Ontario (Calif.) Record

February 16, 1911

Local attorneys are much interested in a bill offered in the legislature by Senator Caminetti, which provides that graduates of the San Francisco Law School, as well as the law department of the University of California and Stanford, shall be entitled to practice before the State courts without examination.  The bill also provides that the chief justice of the State Supreme Court may order an examination if he sees fit.

Many lawyers are opposed to the bill for the reason that it is claimed law students even in practical law colleges did not get the inner spirit of the law as those who realize they must buckle down to the acquiring of legal knowledge in a way that will help them to pass a severe examination of the Appellate Court, or other examination.

Professor Woodward of Stanford, who has been advocating the Bar Association’s bill for a State board of examiners to supervise the admission of attorneys to practice, thinks that no law school graduate should have a license without examination.

Ursus Major

My ExamSoft Nightmare . . . with Happy Ending

I almost forgot to post this: I have something important to say about taking the bar with a laptop. During last year’s California exam my laptop crashed in the middle of a Performance Test, and I ended up having to write the remainder of the exam by hand. This post is about how to avoid my experience.

The trouble hit after I had spent about 15-20 minutes reading the PT file, taking notes, and outlining my answer by hand, during which time my computer’s power-save function set in and dimmed the screen. When I turned to begin typing, the computer not wake back up. I tried key taps ("tap . . tap-tap . . .TAP-TAP . . . TAPAKAACCKALAK-TAPTAPTAP!!!"). I tried mouse movements ("scribble . . . scribble-scribble-click-click"). I tried unplugging and re-plugging my power cord . . . nothing. Nada. Zippo. Zilch.

So, after a bit of fretting, I tried rebooting the machine. Nope. This freaked out the ExamSoft program -- it booted straight into ExamSoft and promptly reported an “error” message that left me unable to (1) enter ExamSoft or (2) boot my computer back to Windows. There I was, stuck in blue-screen error land, while everyone else was ferociously typing away.

I raised my hand and looked for my elderly proctor, but got no response. I stood, surveyed the room, and spotted her in a chair near the far end of my row. Fast asleep. I walked over, woke her, and asked for paper to hand-write my exam. After what felt like an eternity she returned, I set my computer aside, and returned to the PT answer I had outlined by hand. Shaken and more than a little stressed I looked down at the page and discovered that nothing -- and I mean NOTHING -- I had scrawled less than a half hour ago made any sense whatsoever. I recognized my handwriting and I knew what the individual words meant, but I couldn’t fathom how they might be related to one and other or point toward a logical legal exposition. (Comparison here to an unpleasant, public acid trip would not be inapt.) Not only could I not remember the structure of my answer, but I could not even remember the basic issue in the fact pattern. It was all the way back to square one for me.

I set to work, re-read the file, wrote my answer by hand, submitted that sucker in a giant paper envelope, and thought the worst was behind me.

Nope.

Remember how I couldn’t reboot my compute or enter ExamSoft? Well, I also had not yet uploaded my answers from the previous day, and I certainly couldn’t upload them now. Half the bar exam was sitting on my computer, with no apparent way to get it to the graders. When the exam ended I entered phase two of my personal little nightmare: an evening trying to multitask (1) being on hold with ExamSoft (the week of the bar exam is an, uh, “busy time” for the two freaking people they have doing customer service) and (2) celebrating with my classmates. Ultimately, with the midnight deadline fast approaching, I found myself:

1. Sitting on the sidewalk above the 19th Street Oakland BART station,
2. Drunk,
3. Poaching internet from some unsecured wireless network,
4. Listening to a very tired ExamSoft representative recite strange combinatons of letters and numbers for me to type into a command line I had never seen on my computer, all in an effort to
5. Complete the upload of my precious, precious bar exam answers.

Eventually the answers did upload, I got onto BART, and -- months later -- learned that I passed the bar. So, "all’s well that ends well," right? Well, yes, but it's also "not the destination but the journey that matters."

Here is how to NOT share my journey. ExamSoft, which operates by locking out access to all other files on the computer, also locked out access to whatever file was needed for my computer’s screen to “wake” from power-save mode. I later heard that similar issues can arise with automatic antivirus and updates settings. It turns out that one simple little setting change before the bar exam -- i.e., had I told my computer never to sleep or dim while plugged in -- would have spared me all that time, misery, and anxiety.

And that, Dear Reader, is my advice to you: disable your antivirus software’s automatic updates function and double-check your power-save settings. It will be 20 seconds well spent.

Oh, and one other thing: if you DO end up writing by hand, it’s actually not all that bad . . . really. I promise.

A[nother] Final Last Bar Post

I have to admit to a particular degree of sympathy to this year's bar takers: after sitting for the California bar last summer, my plans have changed and I will now take another bar exam, in another state, this summer. I've suddenly become a huge supporter of reciprocity, although I suppose my motivation -- like my anger over the drinking age when I was twenty years old -- will quickly fade.

My new state (Washington) is also a community property state, which means that for the second July in a row I am one hundred percent up to speed on the legal implications of income acquired during marriage. Certainly I am at least as up to speed as the lawyers in Silverman v. Silverman, a very recent divorce case in which a ridiculously wealthy private equity executive made the following argument as to why all that money -- which he acquired during marriage -- should be deemed separate property:

A state judge has barred an "enormously successful" private equity firm executive from presenting in a pending divorce expert psychological evidence he claims will show that "his unique personality traits," or "personal capital," enabled him to amass $450 million in business assets during a marriage of more than 30 years.
. . .

"In purporting to prove that the success of the business is solely attributable to his innate genius, the expert opinion evidence offered by the Husband offers no assistance to the finder of fact in fashioning an equitable distribution of the estate based on the contributions of each party to the marital partnership," Justice Drager wrote.

I don't know what gives me more pleasure: the bench-slap handed to the lawyers who tried to make this argument with a straight face, or the $225 million loss their client is going to take after giving them the thumbs up. The one question I want answered it this: why did he THINK she married him?


[Proof of Husband's 'Genius' Barred in Property Distribution.]

Five Rules for Studying for the Bar

Note, 07/22/11: Final bump for the bar exam.

By way of encouragement, I would like to share the following true story from my own encounter with the CA bar last summer.

The first question on the bar last summer was a long, drawn-out torts issue-spotter with lots of battery and assault and negligence by the owner of arestaurant or bowling alley or something like that. The fact pattern concluded by asking, "Who is liable to whom, and for what?" Question two was ethics (I think), and question three was a horrible screw-job of an evidence question that instructed, "Answer according to California law." Like pretty much everyone, that question shook me up and at lunch I tried to find a quiet place to eat to collect myself. While I was there three women entered and sat at the table next to me. They started reviewing the morning's questions.

Their treatment of the first question was a long discussion about mental states, merger, and attempt, before one of the women, looking genuinely perplexed, asked, ". . . wait, wasn't that a torts question?"

THIS is the competition:

Hat tip to McTwo for reminding me of the fine work by Mr. Andrew Fong, featured above.
_________________________________________

These are my five rules for sanely navigating Bar/Bri and the bar study process. There may be others, but that's for the discussion to follow. Here we go.

Rule 1: Do what has worked for you. We all have different ways of organizing and compartmentalizing information for quick/effective recall later on. For some people, including Bar/Bri, mnemonics work. For me, they didn't. I personally recall things better when I write them out, and discuss. You may like flashcards. I couldn't use them.

Rule 2: Accept the principle of the Bar/Bri schedule, but not every technical detail of it. It makes sense to practice on a subject that you just learned, and later return to earlier subjects to constantly refresh your memory. But the pace is not mandatory.

Rule 3: How you study now should be different than how you study in late June/July. Right now, your goal is to learn elements, basic doctrine, etc. that you will be called upon to recall and apply to facts. Bar/Bri gives you a number of ways to learn those. See Rule 1. As you progress, your goal should become to apply what you have learned under test conditions. In the month of July, for example, it might make sense to do 3 essay questions back to back to back, or 100 MCs. By that time, you should also be able to fit everything you need to know about each subject on a single sheet of paper. In fact, there are such mini outlines floating around. Ask your colleagues. So to summarize: May (learning subjects / elements / doctrine) ---> Early June (same as May but increasingly returning to old subjects) ---> Late June (condensing knowledge of legal doctrine into bare essentials, increasing essay writing, MCs) ---> July (start memorizing bare essential legal doctrines, focus exclusively on preparing for the marathon that is the CalBar).

Rule 4: Try to study at least part of the time with others. Again, with the caveat of Rule 1, it was very helptul to hash out the issues presented by an essay among a few of us to get a better idea of what we all could have done to write a better answer. Also I often found myself distracted when I was alone. But with others, we all felt too guilty to be distracted so we stayed on pace. At the same time, working with others was helpful for Rule 5 in terms of having non-legal discussions and the like.

Rule 5: Have a release. This process is going to dominate every ounce of your soul. If it means taking a couple of evenings off to have dinner and watch TV (FX shows are about to start right in time), then do it. If it means taking Saturdays off to go to ball games, then do it. No guilty feeling here. The California bar is a three day marathon. And on the third day, it's your endurance that will be the biggest factor, not whether you went through an extra 100 flashcards. So I think not overburdening your mind early in the process is important.

Please 1.5 speed me!

Ctrl + Shift + G no worky. My life, terrible. Please help.

And yes, I know this is an individual plea, but I know I speak for many of us in making it.

Lost in the Bar

You know you’re studying for the bar when:

• Everything as a potential lawsuit: (1) The street people on the corner who as you for money are potential trespassers; (2) your friend’s drunk dialing to tell you “what a fun night you’re missing” is some sort of infliction of emotional distress; (3) you consider ceasing to pay your credit card bill because the contract is unconscionable.
• You openly fantasize about blacking out and being hospitalized for the week of the bar exam.
• You have legal Tourette Syndrome. If someone looks at you the wrong way, you automatically fire back with unintelligible legalease: Tort! Hearsay! Rule in Dumper’s Case!
• You suspect Miranda or Shelly would be hot if they were women and not rules of law.
• You have nightmares about fertile octogenarians.

Welcome, class of 2011, to bar studies.

California BarBri for most Boalties began earlier this week an judging by the facebook chatter I have seen so far, many of you are freaked the hell out. If that’s you, your feelings are normal, for what that is worth. Things will settle down a bit in the next few weeks and at any rate this whole thing will be over in a few short months.

In the meantime, feel free to use this thread to cry, vent, or anonymously ask questions about the bar exam that you would be far too embarrassed to ask in person. I hope you’ll find this to be a pretty supportive thread. Good luck!

(HT: Legally Noted.)

D. Boon Cilled a Bar in Year 1760

Sara asks:

[W]ould someone create a thread for 3Ls with questions about BarBri, bar studying, and the bar exam? Thanks!

Here it is.

If Sara asked for the thread because she suspects that there is more than one way to "kill a bar," she's right. I have my own list of tips, thoughts, and soothing reminders to share, but I suspect they'll percolate through the comments on this post without much contribution from me. If there is a bottom line message to convey, it is this: no matter what it feels like, you'll be okay!

_______
Update 04/06/11 (Patrick): Esteemed Boalt alums (and bar slayers) Steve Ullmer and Toney Jacobson will give a talk at Boalt on April 21st, from 12:45-1:45 p.m., on the bar, barbri, and how you can "utilize technology in studying to maximize efficiency and free time over the summer." (If that reads like a BTLJ thing, it is . . . so, the food should be great you may rest assured that you can text and email freely without annoying the speakers.)

Bar Results Open Thread

The July 2010 bar results have been released. It seems like Boalt's passage rate was pretty high, so kudos to many of you. I think all of us also know people who got bad news on Friday, though, which makes this period very bittersweet and emotionally confusing. I hope everyone remembers that tests like these are imperfect measures of almost nothing. Let's just be there for each other. Feel free to discuss your thoughts and feelings below.

For the Rest of Us...

Apparently, immediately after the end of the bar exam--in the very moment when our reserves of conscious thought had been completely exhausted--the geniuses at the California Bar "reminded" us to hold onto some magical white card that has our applicant and file numbers on it, which we will need to access the website where results will be posted tonight. Some people still have those cards. This post is for the rest of us.

An astute commenter in a thread below found an e-mail from Examsoft (subject: Confirmation of SofTest Installation for the July 2010 California Bar Examination) that lists an applicant number and a file number. I have confirmed that the applicant number is the same number we used on the exam, but no one has yet been able to confirm that the file number is the same.

Can some well-organized savior who has both the magical white card and that Examsoft e-mail confirm that the file numbers are the same in both? I would just wait until tonight and hope for the best, but someone just told me that if you don't pass the exam, the website will say something like "file not found," which is probably the same message we'll get if we have the wrong file number. See the problem? Help appreciated.

TGIF?

As many of you may be most painfully aware, this coming Friday is bar results day for us wonderful Californians. Please feel free to post your thoughts/anxiety-driven rants in the waning days of being a non-lawyer. Good thoughts to all . . . even you dirty liberals.

One Week Left!

Unfortunately, California doesn't seem to be as incompetent as New York, which means we still have to wait out the final week. How's everyone holding up? One minute I feel fairly confident, and then the next I shat and get a legal. It's just plain cruel to make people wait four months for results to come out. I find myself preparing for the worst, thinking "well, I'll just take January off and start studying over Christmas break", but the thought of spending another 8 weeks doing that very nearly makes me lose it. I've done my best not to forget what I learned in June-July, and I imagine that if I do pass, one of the best parts will be reformatting C.

Anyway, I'm nervous. Am I alone?

MBE (now updated!)

Update: Congrats all, neato gang. I have all my fingers crossed for you (not that any of you need it). This wait until November is going to terrible, but in the mean time, grab a beer, sit back and watch the Mad Men, the best show on TV. I'm thinking about all you. I ... I love you.

Uh... wasn't that supposed to be the easy part? I feel like they were rude not to provide lube.

Also, it's pretty cool that Wills and Civ Pro are now MBE topics.

This is Your Brain; This is Your Brain on the Bar

Update, July 26, 2010: Good luck, everybody.

Update, July 16 & 20, 2010: Those familiar with BarBri- and MBE-type multiple choice questions will enjoy this. It keeps making me laugh.

Update, July 15, 2010: Bumping up to the front of the line . . .

Update, July 11, 2010: Bump. Here is the previous 2010 bar exam thread; let's use this one comments, gripes, questions, and support. Also, apologies to folks who make comments and they don't immediately appear. I don't know exactly what has been going on, but it is well-documented that Google blogger platform sucks in fundamental ways. All I can do is apologize, and hope the glitch fixes itself, or heals, or whatever.
_______________________

Ugh. I doubt I am the only person who feels irritated, stressed out, and grouchy these days. Is it really already July? This word cloud, which I made from the sample answers to the 2008 and 2009 July California Bar Exams, rather nicely describes the space between my ears:Click the image to enlarge.

Who would have guessed that Paul, Dave, and Diane, were as important as Congress?

Steele Justice!

John Steele (this one, not that one) has made Boalties a generous offer regarding the Professional Responsibility component of the California Bar Exam. Here is his message:

For Boalties, I am offering some free documents that may help with PR essay questions, and will hold a free webinar to explain my suggestions. At this stage of your preparations, if you’re comfortable with your approach, please feel free to stick with what you’re doing and ignore my offer! Don’t fall prey to overload!

The documents are a few appendices from my MPRE prep outline. Appendix C lists major difference between the California and ABA approaches to PR. Appendix F, the key one, uses three mnemonics for organizing an answer to a PR essay question. (Please don’t distribute the document to others. Have Boalties email me directly to request it.) Appendix D lists all the PR question topics for the past decade, just to give you a feel for what recurs.

Then, on Tuesday, July 13th, at 4:00 pm, I will hold a free webinar explaining my mnemonics for answering PR questions on the California bar examination. Email me if you’d like the registration link. After the free webinar, the presentation will be available on-demand for $10 (to help defray the costs of the webinar service). I’m trying to limit the free webinar to Boalties, because of bandwidth-cost issues, but you can have unlimited people watching the computer where you’re watching it.

Email me to get the free document and the registration link.

Again, if you’re OK with your current PR prep, seriously consider just sticking with what you’ve been doing.

Best,

John Steele
John.steele @ johnsteelelaw.com

See you on the 13th at 4:00 p.m.

Turns Out There is More to Bar Review than Beckett's

Update 6/10/10: I hope all is going well for everyone. This is the first of several bumps.

Update 6/27/10: Bump-bump.
_______________________________________

It is about time to kick off this year's bar exam thread. Feel free to use the comments to discuss crazy people at BarBri, war stories about the exam, or your personal answer to the following multiple choice question:


I will bump this thread periodically as need be.

Yeah, There's an App For That

Perhaps because I've been griping lately about the expense of bar exam and bar prep courses, people have been sending me links like this one. The link, of course, describes the new $1,000 iPhone bar preparation application. (Other coverage here, ATL coverage here.) You can find the app here -- tread gingerly if you have enabled one click ordering!

The implication, though never expessly stated by the developer, is that this application is functionally identical to BarBri's $4,000 iPod program, but at a quarter the price. I like the idea of sticking it to BarBri at least as much as the next guy at Boalt, and I probably like the idea of a competitive market even more than the next guy at Boalt. Plus, I'm cheap. I know, I know, "the firm will pay for it" but just because I can subsidize BarBri for free doesn't mean I want to. So in short, I'm all for it.

So somebody, please. Talk me out of it.

I Just Want to Tell You Both Good Luck. We're All Counting on You.

Bar results come out.  I suppose it's only fair to have an open thread on the psychological mind ****ing that is the time until you see the results.  The real fun begins on Monday when others look up your name.

BUMP UP.  So?  What's the mood?  Congratulations to all who passed, and chin up to those who didn't.