BarWrite® Blog

Can Memorizing Law Make You Brilliant?

Although everyone knows that memorizing is useful for the bar exam, and most lawyers have memorized at least the first few lines of an oral argument, memorizing is deeply unfashionable. New research, however, suggests that we shouldn't save

How Bar Candidates Can Avoid Thinking They Should Be Doing Something Else

One big distraction in life is always thinking you should be doing something else. People who want to achieve a great deal in life probably suffer more from this distraction than others. I knew a publishing executive here in New York who said the only time he was happy was when he was in the subway, because sitting in the subway he couldn't be doing anything else. Gloria Steinem has said that only when she is writing does she stop thinking she should be doing something else.

Why should bar candidates expect to be any different? In making us vulnerable to this distraction, preparing for the bar exam is like many other tasks that lawyers perform, and that in fact everyone performs. The best antidote I have found to the constant distraction of thinking I should be doing something else is to have a good daily schedule to follow and then to follow it religiously. The distraction does not go away, but it does somewhat abate.

For bar candidates, as I tell my BarWrite classes, one big menace to learning the material is the chatter from that invisible fellow on your shoulder who's always saying, "How can you be studying negligence, when you should be studying wills?" One device that helps bar candidates is having a good daily study schedule, so they can say to that invisible fellow, "Thank you for sharing," and go on doing their scheduled work.

Bar candidates who are looking for a good daily schedule should sign up for my teleseminar (May 28, 2013) on how to design a daily study schedule. http://www.barwrite.com/free-teleseminar-three.html It's a one-hour program on the telephone, and you will receive both call-in information and hand-outs by email. We always have a good and productive time. I hope you will join in.

Wishing you the greatest success on the bar exam,

MCG

From Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

SCORING HIGH ON BAR EXAM ESSAYS . This book "may be the best money you can spend on bar exam preparation." -- The St. John's Law School Forum. PERFORM YOUR BEST ON THE BAR EXAM PERFORMANCE TEST (MPT): TRAIN TO FINISH THE MPT IN 90 MINUTES "LIKE A SPORT(TM). A Study Guide for All Bar Exam Performance Tests, and for Law Students and Practitioners, to Develop Strong Organizational Habits "Like a Sport" and Produce More Efficient Work Products. BARWRITE® TEN-DAY COACHING GROUP helps you pole-vault the bar. "My MBE went from a 126 to a 149!" ­- Gemma Waananen Kenney (Member, New York and New Jersey Bars). BARWRITE® THREE-DAY NEW YORK ESSAY AND ONE-DAY MPT BOOT CAMPS boost bar scores. "Dr. Gallagher takes the mass of information studied and teaches her students how to apply it effectively in essays." Christina Valentine, Australian solicitor (Member, New York Bar). Read the announcement here about those new BarWrite Three-Day New York Essay Boot Camps.

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Targeted Drone Strikes Against American Citizens Provokes Important Legal Questions

Last week Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky conducted a filibuster opposing the President's nomination of John O. Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. Senator Paul feared that once at the C.I.A., Mr. Brennan might authorize unmanned drone strikes against American citizens, on United States soil, without trial. In the end, Senator Rand stopped speaking, and Mr. Brennan was confirmed. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/rand-paul-does-not-go-quietly-into-the-night/

The use of unmanned drones to kill American citizens without trial raises, however, important legal questions, even when they are on foreign soil. The New York Times has published a riveting account of how the government considered the legal issues and then hunted and killed a U.S. citizen in Yemen, Anwar-al-Awlaki, who had beyond any doubt incited other Muslims to commit violent acts against the United States. Unfortunately collateral killing of American citizens who had not been targeted also resulted. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/world/middleeast/anwar-al-awlaki-a-us-citizen-in-americas-cross-hairs.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0

I commend this story to you, along with consideration of the questions Senator Rand raised.

Monday Morning Map:

"The best way to assure your future is to make it happen."

- Abraham Lincoln

***

From Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

SCORING HIGH ON BAR EXAM ESSAYS . This book "may be the best money you can spend on bar exam preparation." -- The St. John's Law School Forum. PERFORM YOUR BEST ON THE BAR EXAM PERFORMANCE TEST (MPT): TRAIN TO FINISH THE MPT IN 90 MINUTES "LIKE A SPORT(TM). A Study Guide for All Bar Exam Performance Tests, and for Law Students and Practitioners, to Develop Strong Organizational Habits "Like a Sport" and Produce More Efficient Work Products. BARWRITE® TEN-DAY COACHING GROUP helps you pole-vault the bar. "My MBE went from a 126 to a 149!" ­- Gemma Waananen Kenney (Member, New York and New Jersey Bars). BARWRITE® THREE-DAY NEW YORK ESSAY AND ONE-DAY MPT BOOT CAMPS boost bar scores. "Dr. Gallagher takes the mass of information studied and teaches her students how to apply it effectively in essays." Christina Valentine, Australian solicitor (Member, New York Bar). Read the announcement here about those new BarWrite Three-Day New York Essay Boot Camps.

You can't find a job in your comfort zone

You asked me for tips on looking for a job (or a new job), and here are some thoughts:

1.    Join everything you can, alumni associations--including the alumni association for your undergraduate school--bar associations, committees of bar associations, nationality groups, attorneys groups, attorneys of various nationalities groups, language-speaking groups, etc. Do you already belong to a lot of groups? Join more groups! Set yourself a weekly goal of how many group meetings you will go to, perhaps three or four, and how many new people you will introduce yourself to at each meeting.

2.    Step out of your comfort zone, there are no jobs in your comfort zone. Don't just pass out business cards when you go to meetings, ask questions and get to know people. People hire people they know. They tend not to interview, let alone hire, just from resumes, even impressive resumes. No one ever hired from a business card.

3.    Ask everyone you already know for advice. Not for a job, for advice. People love being asked for advice.

4.    Offer to speak to classes and groups concerned with the areas of the world and the issues involved in your background. The students are better-connected than you might think, and the professors always know people and can give advice. Besides, every lawyer should be a good public speaker, and this is practice. And with your host's permission, you can put it on your resume.

5.   Write something and get it published. You can write up your experience in an internship, for example. Where you publish it is less important than just getting it published, your alumni newsletter, a local weekly newspaper, anywhere. It is great to be able to send copies out and to talk about it. A publication, as I can attest from abundant experience, is an excellent credential. Put your publications on  your resume.

6.   Set up a blog or a web site. Publish your opinions and your experience, once a week or once every two weeks is plenty. Put your blog and your web site on your resume, too.

For a treat, read my blog post called "A Happy Networking Story."

***

Monday Morning Map:

"The best way to assure your future is to make it happen."

- Abraham Lincoln

From Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

SCORING HIGH ON BAR EXAM ESSAYS . This book "may be the best money you can spend on bar exam preparation." -- The St. John's Law School Forum. PERFORM YOUR BEST ON THE BAR EXAM PERFORMANCE TEST (MPT): TRAIN TO FINISH THE MPT IN 90 MINUTES "LIKE A SPORT(TM). A Study Guide for All Bar Exam Performance Tests, and for Law Students and Practitioners, to Develop Strong Organizational Habits "Like a Sport" and Produce More Efficient Work Products. BARWRITE® TEN-DAY COACHING GROUP helps you pole-vault the bar. "My MBE went from a 126 to a 149!" ­- Gemma Waananen Kenney (Member, New York and New Jersey Bars). BARWRITE® THREE-DAY NEW YORK ESSAY AND ONE-DAY MPT BOOT CAMPS boost bar scores. "Dr. Gallagher takes the mass of information studied and teaches her students how to apply it effectively in essays." Christina Valentine, Australian solicitor (Member, New York Bar). Read the announcement here about those new BarWrite Three-Day New York Essay Boot Camps.

 

 

The MPT Part of the Bar Exam Requires the Skills of a First-Year Lawyer

Here is an excerpt from the book Perform Your Best on the Multistate Performance Test: How to Finish the MPT in 90 Minutes and Excel (With 12 Actual MPT Tasks, Sample Answers, and Complete Analyses), by BarWrite's founder and president Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D. (New York: BarWrite Press). BARWRITE® THREE-DAY NEW YORK ESSAY AND ONE-DAY MPT BOOT CAMPS boost bar scores.

Dr. Gallagher writes:

What the Task of Writing the Multistate Performance Test Really Is

Your task on the Multistate Performance Test (MPT) part of the bar exam is to act like a first-year lawyer. You are an associate in a law firm, or a junior attorney in a government agency, or a clerk to a judge. The senior lawyer who sends you an assignment in a task memo on the MPT expects you to act like a junior lawyer drafting a work product. Nothing more, nothing less. The bar examiners look for the following in grading the Multistate Performance Test (MPT):

1. Following directions.

2. Managing time.

3. Acting like a competent first-year lawyer. That means understanding and attempting to solve the client's problem. Doing reasonable legal analysis. Using statutes and cases judiciously. Giving the work product an orderly structure. Communicating clearly and appropriately.

The primary task is not to produce a polished piece of writing. You do not have time for that. Make your motto, "Get in and get out." Trying to produce beautiful writing too often leads to long-winded, pretentious, writing, writing that will not favorably impress the grader. Trying to perfect each sentence or each paragraph of your work as you go along will make you waste your time, and time is your most precious asset on the MPT. Get in and get out.

Success on the MPT depends, first, on taking exquisite care to understand the assignment in the task memo. Strangely enough, given the fact that you are under enormous time pressure, success on the MPT requires slowing down at the beginning. It means rereading the directions in the task memo several times. It means not plunging into the work until you have some idea of what legal issues the client's problem raises. It means thinking about what kinds of facts and law might help you solve the client's problem before you start looking for the facts and law in the File and Library.

What Students Worry About Although They Do Not Need To

Producing a lot of writing. Your job is to produce a draft work product like a first-year lawyer. You have to try to solve the problem, and you have to finish what you start. You are not Charles Dickens, being paid by the word. The bar examiners will not grade you on the number of pages you fill. Get in and get out.

Producing polished writing. As my MPT teaching assistant Sarina Siegel rightly said, "The MPT will never be your best work." Your job is to produce a draft and finish in 90 minutes. If you take the time to phrase your sentences beautifully, you will not finish on time. Get in and get out.

Making sure you have the details exactly right. Your work product on the MPT is just a draft. It is not a law review article or a brief you will submit to the Supreme Court of the United States. You will inevitably make mistakes. Leave them, go on, and if you have time at the end, come back and correct them. Except in appellate briefs, do not concern yourself with correct legal citation. Just name the case or the statute. Period. Push on, and finish. Once you have finished the task, you can go back, but not before then. Get in and get out.

Producing a sophisticated piece of legal analysis. The issues in MPT tasks tend to be straightforward, and the bar examiners will normally provide guidance within the File or the Library on how best to do the work. You are only a first-year lawyer. The task memo is asking you to prepare a draft that a first-year lawyer might prepare. The task memo is not asking you to demonstrate the most challenging level of legal work. The MPT task does not give you room for sophisticated legal work.

Using the law you learned in law school. Far from expecting you to use the law you learned in law school, the drafters of the Multistate Performance Test tell you emphatically not to use the law you learned in law school. If you think you recognize a case in the MPT Library, be careful. The drafters may have changed that case. The MPT asks you to use the skills you learned in law school, but it does not normally ask you to apply specific rules of law you already know.

Impressing the grader. If your ambition is to dazzle the graders with your work product on the MPT, you will inevitably be disappointed. The MPT is about following directions, managing time, and producing an organized, lawyerlike, draft that responds to the directions. Completing the MPT work product requires competence, not special gifts. The MPT gives credit for following directions, and it does not allow scope for brilliance. 

***

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From Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

SCORING HIGH ON BAR EXAM ESSAYS . This book "may be the best money you can spend on bar exam preparation." -- The St. John's Law School Forum. PERFORM YOUR BEST ON THE BAR EXAM PERFORMANCE TEST (MPT): TRAIN TO FINISH THE MPT IN 90 MINUTES "LIKE A SPORT(TM). A Study Guide for All Bar Exam Performance Tests, and for Law Students and Practitioners, to Develop Strong Organizational Habits "Like a Sport" and Produce More Efficient Work Products. BARWRITE® TEN-DAY COACHING GROUP helps you pole-vault the bar. "My MBE went from a 126 to a 149!" ­- Gemma Waananen Kenney (Member, New York and New Jersey Bars). BARWRITE® THREE-DAY NEW YORK ESSAY AND ONE-DAY MPT BOOT CAMPS boost bar scores. "Dr. Gallagher takes the mass of information studied and teaches her students how to apply it effectively in essays." Christina Valentine, Australian solicitor (Member, New York Bar). Read the announcement here about those new BarWrite Three-Day New York Essay Boot Camps.

 

If you're ready now to prepare for the bar exam, visit our BarWrite web site, ask for the Free Booklet, and then if you still have questions, write to us for more information about our courses:  Staff@BarWrite.com.  For more insight into the MPT and taking and passing the bar exam, be sure to subscribe to this blog, BarWriteBlog.com .

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How to Defend Against a Motion for Summary Judgment

For lawyers, some practice tips are invaluable. Graduates of my classes know how important the motion for summary judgment is. If successful, that motion can conclude litigation short of trial. The court merely has to find that there is no triable issue of fact, and that the case can be decided as a question of law. No wonder the bar examiners like to test on this motion.

Today I bring you a great set of tips for defending against a motion for summary judgment. Not surprisingly, using the tips requires Element-Fact analysis.

How To Defend Against A Summary Judgment Motion

From George Vetter’s book, “ Successful Civil Litigation,” quoted in Steven Stark’s book, “Writing to Win”:

    1. Demonstrate an issue of fact, or
    2. Expose the invalidity of materials supporting the other side’s motion (for example, mistakes in the affidavit), or
    3. Illustrate how the case hinges on something else that needs to be assessed, such as credibility, or
    4. Show the moving party’s exclusive control of the facts.

(Hat tip, Louis Sirico, Legal Skills Blog)

Is that list of suggestions not elegant? It's a how-to for defending against a motion for summary judgment, and it makes use of deep understanding of how the motion works. It uses Element-Fact analysis to take the "factual" element of the rule for summary judgment and challenge it. Here is something everyone who goes near a courtroom can use. But more than that, it illustrates an approach to law practice that is intelligent and workmanlike.

Cheers,

MCG

Monday Morning Map:

"Get to be so good they can't ignore you." - Steve Martin, in his memoir Born Standing Up

***

From Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

SCORING HIGH ON BAR EXAM ESSAYS . This book "may be the best money you can spend on bar exam preparation." -- The St. John's Law School Forum. PERFORM YOUR BEST ON THE BAR EXAM PERFORMANCE TEST (MPT): TRAIN TO FINISH THE MPT IN 90 MINUTES "LIKE A SPORT(TM). A Study Guide for All Bar Exam Performance Tests, and for Law Students and Practitioners, to Develop Strong Organizational Habits "Like a Sport" and Produce More Efficient Work Products. BARWRITE® TEN-DAY COACHING GROUP helps you pole-vault the bar. "My MBE went from a 126 to a 149!" ­- Gemma Waananen Kenney (Member, New York and New Jersey Bars). BARWRITE® THREE-DAY NEW YORK ESSAY AND ONE-DAY MPT BOOT CAMPS boost bar scores. "Dr. Gallagher takes the mass of information studied and teaches her students how to apply it effectively in essays." Christina Valentine, Australian solicitor (Member, New York Bar). Read the announcement here about those new BarWrite Three-Day New York Essay Boot Camps.

 

Student Loan Debt Is a Problem for the Entire Legal Profession

The amount of student-loan debt that many recent graduates are carrying is a cause for concern for the entire legal profession.

The financial crisis has caused stress and suffering, but it has also brought some benefits. Among them, the many articles, blog posts, and books, including a series of articles in the New York Times by David Siegel, and a well-argued book by Washington University law professor Brian Z. Tamanaha called Failing Law Schools, that have brought to the attention of the profession and the public a crisis in legal education. Tamanaha shows that a graduate earning the median reported salary for 2010 graduates, $63,000.00, and with a typical amount of law school debt, $120,000.00, cannot repay that debt within 10 years, and that in fact, to do so would require a salary well over $120,000.00 per year. One of Tamanaha's proposals is that the ABA should permit law schools to offer a two-year program either along with or instead of the three-year J.D. Cutting a year off law-school training could cut graduates' debt by one-third.

On Friday I attended a meeting at NYU Law School where a panel that included Professor Tamanaha, former NYLS dean Richard Matasar, and others, discussed  Professor Samuel Estreicher's own proposal that the New York Court of Appeals should allow law students to take the bar exam after the second year of law school. The Chief Judge of New York Jonathan Lippman and Judge Victoria A. Graffeo
were there, as were numerous law school professors and the Executive Director of the Board of Law Examiners, John McAlary. The audience appeared respectful, interested, and willing to explore Professor Estreicher's proposal.

The size of law graduates' student loan debt concerns me. I often hear from graduates of my own bar-preparation programs who cannot move to a new job, or a new state, for fear of being unable to pay their law school debt. This is deplorable. A young lawyer with a $100,000 debt feels trapped and vulnerable and may even be tempted to ethical lapses. This is not a problem just for law schools. By whatever means, all of us in the legal profession must work towards a solution.

Related articles

New York Times: Make Law Schools Earn a Third Year (with a Reply)

Five New York Bar Exam Tips

Want some great New York bar exam tips? BarWrite® has prepared five simple tips for the New York bar exam that we are pleased to share with you. These are tips that BarWrite® teaches in our BarWrite® 10-Day Coaching Group, our 4-Day Essay-MPT Combo, and our BarWrite® Global course for foreign-trained lawyers. The keys to success on the New York bar exam are understanding the limited objectives

What Was on the July 2012 New York Bar Exam Essays and Multiple Choice?

Many thanks to the BarWrite® Scholars who looked up in dazed
exhaustion on the Tuesday night of the New York bar exam
in July and said to themselves, "I've got to let Dr. Gallagher
know what was on the bar exam!" Thank you! Looks like our
BarWrite® courses, both the 10-Day Coaching Group
and the boot camps, hit another home run! If you would
lto understand those essays better, enroll in our New York
July 2012 Essay Analysis Webinar on January 9, 2013. A great way
to start the New Year!

How to Make the MBE More Like the U.S. Open

Are you improving your MBE score the same way great tennis players improve their tennis games? Does your MBE study method have the characteristics of deliberate practice? Research shows that tennis champions are different from merely excellent tennis players because of how they practice. Champions use what researchers call deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is painful but effective. Notice this. Deliberate practice is not the same as mere repetition.

I'm going to assume we all agree that the MBE is a test of legal knowledge and analysis. I am not, that is, going to assume that the MBE is just a set of traps and tricks, a popular and pernicious theory that I'll discuss in a later blog post.

Researchers report that the champions at the U.S. Open are different from excellent players who are not champions because they use a kind of practice stretches the players' skills and requires coaching, that is, deliberate practice. It is practice that is keenly targeted to improvement, practice that includes rigorous measurement and feedback, and practice that is focused on process–rather than just outcomes. Does that describe the method you are using to study for the MBE right now? With due respect, if you are like most bar candidates, alas, probably not. Most bar candidates I talk to are doing 30 to 50 practice questions a day, and they are focused on numbers of questions correct, not process, but pure outcomes.

First, a bit of a review. I have argued that doing dozens of practice MBE questions every day is like hitting a lot of tennis balls or practicing scales on the piano. It may be necessary for maintaining your skills, but it will not necessarily increase your performance. Period. Is is repetition, not deliberate practice. Repetition will not teach you the law. It will not teach you how the law applies to fact patterns. It will make you feel tired. But it will not necessarily raise your MBE score. It will exhaust you and make you into what I call an MBE Victim.

Back to the theory of expert performance based on Deliberate Practice. Cal Newport has a terrific post about these painful-but-effective training methods. He calls it, http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-grandmaster-in-the-corner-office -what-the-study-of-chess-experts-teaches-us-about-building-a-remarkable-life/" target="_blank"> "The Grandmaster in the Corner Office: What the Study of Chess Experts Teaches Us About Building a Remarkable Life."

Let's break Deliberate Practice into its components and ask whether your present MBE study system offers you the opportunity for Deliberate Practice. That is practice that is (i) keenly targeted to improvement in how you answer questions, and includes (ii) rigorous measurement and (iii) feedback, and that is (iv) focused on process–rather than just on outcomes.

1. Is your current work on the MBE be keenly targeted to improvement in how you answer questions? Being keenly targeted to improvement of your process is not just counting numbers of questions right. It is like being a tennis champion at the highest level and changing your stride and your stroke as you need to. Is your MBE work keenly targeted to improvement? Is it focused on improving your legal analysis? Or is it just a numbers game? Are you trying to improve how you do the MBE, or are you just aiming to do a lot of questions? Are you working on improving how you analyze the fact patterns? Are you working on improving how you do the analysis?

2. Does your work on the MBE include rigorous measurement--not just number of questions correct? You have to measure something beyond the number correct, or you won't be doing Deliberate Practice. WELL, WHAT DO YOU MEASURE?

3. Does your MBE study system give you feedback on the technique you are using? Feedback is not just checking the box for Right or Wrong. Your tennis coach doesn't just tell you what you already know about whether or not you hit the ball. Feedback is your coach's talking to you about how you hit the ball, about how you moved towards it, about how you reached for it. If you are just reading the answers to the questions and finding out "why I got it wrong," you may not be learning the law at all. HOW ARE YOU GETTING FEEDBACK?

4. Is your MBE study system focused on process rather than on outcomes? When we are talking about the MBE, the answer from bar candidates is almost always No. How can your MBE study system be focused on process if it is focused on number of questions correct, instead? Why not focus on knowing and applying the law?

Focus on process is what makes a deliberate practice MBE study system totally different from the focus for MBE Victims, which is on doing hundreds of practice MBE questions. The outcomes people are always is focused on how many practice questions on a subject they got right. In my view, you should instead focus on how you did the legal analysis: element-fact, element-fact, element-fact. The key is not how many questions you got right. That number can be deceptive. The key is whether or not you can do factual legal analysis: element-fact.

5. Cal Newport says, "Seek Resistance: At the core of getting better is Deliberate Practice — stretching yourself beyond your current capability. This work is hard and draining, but also necessary. Seek this mental resistance. If you’re not regularly experiencing long stretches of mind-melting hard focus, then you’re wasting your time." CITATION

Are bar candidates seeking mental resistance in their MBE study? I think most bar candidates are exhausting themselves doing 30 or 50 MBE questions a day. That is a feat of endurance, it is not an intellectual achievement, and it is more physical than mental resistance.

Cal Newport also says, "Revel in the Crafstmanship: The path to becoming excellent is so long and messy that a goal-oriented motivation can only carry you so far. Top achievers find enjoyment in practicing their craft along the way." This is profound. CITATION

Enjoy practicing your craft. Practice like an MBE champion, not like an MBE Victim!

 

-- The End --

From Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

SCORING HIGH ON BAR EXAM ESSAYS . This book "may be the best money you can spend on bar exam preparation." -- The St. John's Law School Forum. PERFORM YOUR BEST ON THE BAR EXAM PERFORMANCE TEST (MPT). Coming soon! Pre-order your copy today. A Study Guide for All Bar Exam Performance Tests, and for Law Students and Practitioners, to Develop Strong Organizational Habits "Like a Sport" and Produce More Efficient Work Products. BARWRITE® TEN-DAY COACHING GROUP helps you pole-vault the bar. "My MBE went from a 126 to a 149!" ­- Gemma Waananen Kenney (Member, New York and New Jersey Bars). BARWRITE® THREE-DAY NEW YORK ESSAY AND ONE-DAY MPT BOOT CAMPS boost bar scores. "Dr. Gallagher takes the mass of information studied and teaches her students how to apply it effectively in essays." Christina Valentine, Australian solicitor (Member, New York Bar). Read the announcement here about those new BarWrite Three-Day New York Essay Boot Camps.

Five Top Tips for Early Bar Exam Preparation

Whether you are taking the bar exam in three months or three years, the bar exam is one of life’s big events. You need to plan ahead.*

What the bar exam tests is whether you know basic law and can do basic analysis. Retakers have more trouble. My company BarWrite, specializes in helping another group who too often have trouble passing the bar exam, namely, foreign-trained lawyers.

If you won’t be taking the bar exam for a while, enroll in your school’s bar-prep course. If you are taking the bar exam soon, and you are determined to pass, then the two or three months of bar prep must be an intense period when you are totally focused on preparing for the bar exam.

Relying on my company's more than 20 years of experience offering large-group courses and coaching for bar candidates, here are my five top tips.

1 Have You Eliminated All Distractions? Are you the one who walks the dog? Hire a dog-walker. Do you have little children? This may sound callous, but the best thing you can do for them is to send them away. They will thank you later, when you are a member of the bar. One of my students came to New York to prepare for the exam and left her 15-month-old baby with her parents. She visited the child once a week on Skype. And she passed the bar! Do I need to tell you that you can’t plan your wedding while you are preparing for the bar exam?

2 Do You Have a Dedicated Study Space? Your place to study can be at home or in a library. You must be able to work without being disturbed. Does the place look like a junk heap? Clean it out while you still have time. As soon as you buy your bar exam study aids, store them neatly in your study space, and stay organized. Speaking of distractions, toss out anything that beeps or flashes. No television, no telephone, no email.

3 Are Your Finances in Order? Failing the bar exam is a financial catastrophe, but preparing is also expensive. You can’t study effectively if you’re worrying about making the rent. You also can’t prepare well if you’re just looking for the cheapest fix. The cheapest set of bar-prep courses is not necessarily the best set of bar-prep courses. Figure out how much you will need. Know where your money will come from for the entire two or three-month period. If you need to ask for help, do it early. Get loans if you need to.

4 Have You Arranged to Take Two Months Off From Work? If you are a first-time bar taker with a job, you will need at least eight weeks away from the office. Watch out. Sometimes my students’ employers have suggested that the bar candidate can come to the office, spend a few hours a day or a few days a week working, and then study. Don’t fall for it. As long as you are working even a few hours a week, thinking about your job will take space in your head that ought to be full of hearsay exceptions. Do you have paid or unpaid leave available? Sick days? Find a way.

5. Have You Persuaded Your Family and Friends to Support You? This can be a tough one. Explain to your family and friends that you love them, but right now you need to be alone. You will not be able to go to parties on Saturday night or to Uncle Bert’s house for dinner on Sunday. Tell them you need their support. Remind them how proud they will be when you are a lawyer.

Finally, get prepared for an emotional ride. While you are studying intensively for the exam, expect highs and lows. Denial says: “The bar exam is going to be really easy, so I can go to the movies tonight.” Despair says: “Mom was right, I should have become a dentist/gone into the family business/married Harry.” Expect that while you are preparing for the bar exam, you will not be quite a normal human being.

You can do it! But you have to plan for it.*

*This white paper by Dr. Mary Campbell Gallagher appeared as a Guest Blog post on The Lawyerist blog on April 28, 2012.  http://lawyerist.com/five-tips-for-early-bar-exam-prep/
_____

From Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

SCORING HIGH ON BAR EXAM ESSAYS. This book "may be the best money you can spend on bar exam preparation." -- The St. John's Law School Forum. PERFORM YOUR BEST ON THE BAR EXAM PERFORMANCE TEST (MPT), Train to Finish the MPT in 90 Minutes "Like a Sport."(TM) "Mary Campbell Gallagher sets a new standard for bar-preparation materials." -- Prince C. Chambliss, Jr., Former President, Tennessee Board of Law Examiners. BARWRITE® TEN-DAY COACHING GROUP helps you pole-vault the bar. "My MBE went from a 126 to a 149!" ­- Gemma Waananen Kenney (Member, New York and New Jersey Bars). BARWRITE® THREE-DAY NEW YORK ESSAY AND ONE-DAY MPT BOOT CAMPS COMBINATION boosts bar scores. "Dr. Gallagher takes the mass of information studied and teaches her students how to apply it effectively in essays." Christina Valentine, Australian solicitor (Member, New York Bar). Read the announcement here about those intensive Combo Boot Camps.

Five Tips for Choosing a Full Bar Review Course

FIVE TIPS FOR CHOOSING A FULL BAR REVIEW COURSE

by Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D.
Founder and President, BarWrite® and BarWrite Press

Bar candidates must take a full bar review course in order to pass the bar exam. Failing the bar exam is a financial catastrophe, while passing the bar exam leads to a new life. So choosing a bar review course is a key life decision. BarWrite® provides this information to help bar candidates choose a full bar review course. This advice is purely objective, because BarWrite offers only supplemental courses, it does not offer a full bar review course.

Do not take chances. Caveat emptor! You cannot assume that the best-advertised

FIVE TIPS FOR SUCCESS ON THE NEW YORK BAR EXAM FOR FOREIGN-TRAINED ATTORNEYS

By MARY CAMPBELL GALLAGHER, J.D., Ph.D., President of BarWrite® and BarWrite Press, http://www.BarWrite.com

Every candidate for the New York bar needs to enroll in a full bar review course like Pieper or BarBri. This is especially true for foreign-trained attorneys. But for foreign-trained attorneys, the first steps to success

Five Reasons Foreign-Trained Lawyers Need to Take a Full Bar Review Course

Do foreign-trained attorneys who want to become members of the New York bar need to take a full bar review course?

Yes, indeed, says Dr. Mary Campbell Gallagher, a graduate of Harvard Law School and president of BarWrite® and BarWrite press. There are at least five reasons, she says, why a full New York bar course is vitally important. And BarWrite® is objective on this question, because it does NOT offer a full bar review course. BarWrite® offers only supplemental courses, specializing in helping foreign-trained lawyers and retakers pass the bar exam. When Dr. Gallagher refers to full New York bar courses, she means Pieper or BarBri or Themis or Kaplan.

If you are a foreign-trained lawyer, here are Dr. Gallagher's five reasons why you must take a full bar review course:

1. A full bar review course can explain what is important for the New York bar exam and what you don't need to worry about. The amount of material is enormous, and you can't possibly learn it all. You need help sorting what is important from what is unimportant for the exam. You also need help sorting what is unique to New York law from what New York law has in common with the law of other states where you may have taken the bar exam.

2. A full bar review course can give you structure, requiring you to attend lectures, hand in essays, and do practice tests. Studying for the bar exam is stressful, lonely, and exhausting. Without structure, the days melt into each other, and you aren't sure whether you have covered material or not, or whether you have mastered it or not.

3. A full bar review course can give you feedback, telling you what you are doing right and wrong. This is key. You absolutely cannot do this for yourself. On your own, you have no way of knowing whether you are doing things right or not. You may be tempted to use whatever standards were successful on a licensing exam in your home country. But they may be different from the standards on the New York bar exam.

4. A full bar review course can give you a daily plan for studying, telling you what to study every day. Having a daily plan is vital to success. You must be learning new material and reviewing old material every single day. Without a daily plan, you just won't finish all of the work you need to, and you won't be ready on time to take the New York bar exam.

5. A full bar review course can give you tests, so you know exactly how much progress you are making. How are you going to tell whether you have mastered the material? You can't wait until you take the exam, then it's too late. Tests, feedback, and structure are all key, a full bar review course can give them to you, and you cannot supply them for yourself.

Many foreign-trained bar candidates study for a year in an American law school, Dr. Gallagher says, but they rarely learn the bar-exam subjects the same way that JDs learn them. So although a full bar review course is necessary, it may be insufficient. That is why foreign-trained bar candidates need to supplement their full bar review courses. To make sure that foreign-trained lawyers can learn the most-frequently tested law, BarWrite® provides its "World Cup Rules"^TM. These are the most-frequently tested rules of New York law in easy-to-memorize form. Thus, a lawyer whose first language is not English need not try to do translations during the bar exam. BarWrite also teaches useful systems for finishing the essays and the MPT on time, systems that are useful not only on the bar exam but in law practice. Nonetheless, the full bar review course is the foundation. It is key.

Everyone--both JDs and LLMs--needs to take a full bar review course and supplemental courses. But for a foreign-trained lawyer who wants to pass the bar exam and become a member of the New York bar, the full bar review course is the sine qua non, an absolute necessity.

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*** From Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

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Counsel Behavior Lesson from the Vice-Presidential Debate 10.11.12

Long before I saw the Vice-Presidential Debate, I planned to post a link to "How to Deal With AWFUL Opposing Counsel." Now Vice-President Biden has illustrated awful counsel behavior, right there on our little screens. Lucky citizens! New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, a totally convinced Democrat, said Biden, who interrupted Ryan constantly and laughed 92 times, "mugged condescension as if he were the star of a silent movie." Said Sarah Palin, Biden reminded her of "watching a musk ox run across the tundra with somebody underfoot." In fact, Biden was the worst-behaved counsel I've ever seen. Independent of the value of what either he or Paul Ryan had to say, independent of who won or lost, Joe Biden was an embarrassment to his high office.

Here's the post I originally intended to tell readers about, by Karen Koehler, "How to Deal With Awful Opposing Counsel." http://www.karenkoehlerblog.com/2012/08/tips-for-attorneys-how-to-deal-with-awful-opposing-counsel/

Cheers,

MCG

From Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

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