Helps you drink from the firehose
Written: Jul 11 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Long-time veterans of the bar prep game
Cons: May be crowded or pricey, but do you really want to risk going cheap?
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| 11thStreet's Full Review: BAR/BRI Bar Review |
This is a pass/fail test. Anyone who makes it through the years of school required to qualify should come equipped with the basic skills, talents, and knowledge base to get at least half the questions right – roughly what you need to pass. So why, then, do so many people fail the bar exam? Poor preparation.
The bar exam has absolutely no relation to one’s ability to practice law. If a lawyer did in real life what the bar exam requires, he or she would be sued, disbarred, or worse. The bar exam calls upon the taker to memorize a series of legal rules, without any regard to the authority they rest upon. The test taker must then apply those disembodied rules, without benefit of research or any other assistance, to the facts as presented, and then draw a definitive legal conclusion and commit it to paper. In real life, that’s called malpractice.
The bar exam, like most other standardized tests, is just a game, and to play the game, you have to know the rules. The ones that fail the test are the ones who don’t play by the test’s rules. They are often the smartest, most diligent, most eloquent members of their classes. But they didn’t play the game.
This is where BarBri comes in. They make it their business to learn the rules of the bar exam game and coach you how to win it. BarBri compiles intelligence about every state’s bar exam – including the multi-state portion given virtually nationwide – by interviewing past examinees, collecting publicly-released questions, and even interviewing the test authors themselves. Then BarBRi teaches its students in a six-week span what to expect on the test and how to beat it. If you study what they tell you to study, don’t panic during the course or the test, and are smart enough to have graduated law school, you will pass the bar.
The substantive focus of the course is reviewing those things you already know and introducing you to the concepts you may not know in such a way that you will remember them. BarBRi goes to great lengths - and mostly succeeds - to find good, entertaining, memorable lecturers. These lecturers have only one goal - make the student remember the information long enough to apply it in the bar exam. To that end, they use techniques such as repetition, mnemonic acronyms, and vivid hypotheticals (involving armadillos with orange neckerchiefs or Janet Reno buying leather garments) to drill the information home. I nailed every test question on contractual risk-of-loss between merchants by remembering those armadillos, and you will too.
BarBri doesn’t leave out the procedure, either. While each state has its own particular quirks, BarBri knows what they are and prepares you for them, through practice, practice, practice. Does your state, as most do, require the Multistate Bar Exam portion? You’ll not only take a full-day graded practice test, you’ll get a book three inches thick with drill questions and detailed answers. Does your state require essays? You’ll have the chance to submit several essays for grading and get state-specific pointers on what the examiners are looking for in your answer. BarBri will even remind you that, for example, Virginia expects you to “dress for a court appearance” but also to wear sneakers so you won’t make too much noise. The folks at BarBri don’t miss a trick.
The course is not perfect - when you teach this many different subjects to so many different people, it probably couldn’t be. But you don’t need perfect - you just need to pass. I first took BarBri five years ago for the Florida Bar, and now I’m taking it again for Virginia. Five years ago, everyone I knew who took BarBri, passed; everyone I knew who failed, hadn’t taken BarBri. Coincidence? Maybe - but I’m not taking any chances.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
11thStreet
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Location: Northern Virginia
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 48 members
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