Please let us know if you have passed or failed, and which one of the following tutors have you used. Thanks!
Paul Pfau
Emerson
Joe Buffington
one of Whitney Roberts Bar Code tutors
Vivian Dempsey
Tina Post
Jay Chavkin
Neil Gieleghem (graduated from McGeorge)
I had Jay Chavkin for my 2007 Feb Bar, and I passed 1st time. He's a nice guy. Is he the silver bullet? No. No Bar prep ever is. It's a matter of matching his style with yours. He's easy going and relaxed. We had large group meetings once a week and two small group meetings twice a week at his house. I'm a pretty disciplined guy when it comes to preparing my exam, so I only need good outlines (i.e., the minimum material needed) and practices. He offered me both. I don't need anyone to yell at me or to ask me to read some flash cards in front of him. One thing he did not do is performance test. To be fair, our group voted not to do PTs during the big group meetings. I voted against it. I didn't think it's time well spent for me to drive across town just to sit down with a group of people to do a PT practice exam. I wrote one completely for practice and just outlined three more PTs. You NEED to practice for the PT, but I think it's more important to check out as many old PTs as you can than writing them all out. Again, it's just my style. I think my advise is if you are looking for someone to coach you closely, Jay is not the guy for you.
You left out Michael Schmitt from Southwestern. He's highly regarded for his bar prep, but I can never stand his on your face style. I took his class before, so I know. His pass rate seems to be good.
www.lawtutors.net offers one on one and small group tutoring in CA.
We have been around for years in the East Coast and are now branching into California.
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I'm taking Paul Phau now.
He primarily focuses on essay preparation and presentation, so if you're weak on the substantive law or MBE - you may want to go with the traditional courses offered, i.e. Barbri, Bar Passers, PMBR - because his expertise is essay writing. His program caters somewhat to older multiple repeaters from non-accredited schools, so if you went to a high ranked ABA accredited school like I did - keep it to yourself - and just blend in. If you're a 25 year old recent grad from UCLA - you may be somewhat uncomfortable compared with your surroundings in a law school class, but there are those of us in his program who didn't want the McDonald's experience some tutorial programs offer, while giving the law school a nice kickback based on the number of students enrolled. My academic dean flat out refused to provide me with the names of any tutorial programs other than Barbri, even though I expressly stated that I had no desire to sit with 400 students for 6 hours a day for two months. Paul's not about the hype whatsoever - he is here to help you pass the CA Bar. Just know it's pretty much a 30+ aged group in his program.
Essay writing is the key, and that's what Paul is all about. One of his former students didn't even go to law school - and passed. Another is now the attorney for a well known celebrity here in Los Angeles, and has been on the news with high profile cases.
Paul grades practice exams to Bar standards - not necessarily the anal law school standards - which is a plus, because you know exactly what the Bar graders are looking for in his detailed comments, rather than a law school prof who simply puts - "Need more analysis","Conclusory"; Paul tells you EXACTLY what you need to do in order to pass.
Finally, after all these years, he still cares about YOU passing - no sense of phoniness whatsoever.
California Bar Tutors (cabartutors.com) worked for me. Prices aren't bad.
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Can you tell me what you thought about cabartutors.com?
I'm posting this from another thread because I'm hoping that it will be helpful to someone out here:
This last time I took the bar (my 2nd time), I studied with Vivian. She sometimes misstates the law, but I learned far more law with her than I ever did with BarBri because she made it manageable. Having said that, I still failed the second time. And it was because of my writing (I got a 138 raw/152 scaled MBE). In fact, my writing scores were the exact same as they were the first time around when I didn't know what the hell I was doing and really hadn't learned the law very well (I was too burned out after law school). Moreover, only 1 of 18 in our Los Angeles class passed the Feb. 2011 CBX... which is terrible (we all have emailed one another; that's how I know).
This time, I'm taking Steve Liosi (BarPerfect). Vivian focused on memorizing the law and practicing. Steve focuses on analysis and practicing. I'm hoping that Steve will give me what I need to pass. I don't need to learn the law so much anymore after Vivian's class, but I think that she graded exams so long ago that she perhaps has lost touch with precisely "how" to show the examiners that you are writing in an analytical way.
Hope this helps someone out there. I'll update in November after getting results from this July's CBX.
By the way, I passed w/Steve Liosi. He is great with analysis, but you need to remember to text him with every email that you send because, otherwise, he doesn't check that email address. Vivian's class, especially in retrospect, was pretty worthless (even though I think that her heart is in the right place).
Jason Tolerico is as much of a scam as the other bar exam tutors in Orange county. Jason never graded for the bar exam, and yet he thinks he knows how essays and PTs are scored. THen his best MBE program sucks. No printing, and if you call tech support for some outlines that you paid form, they say you have to pay more to get the outlines in print though the outlines are not viewable on the screen. The videos and audios don't work. BEST MBE is a horrible program. Stick to Adaptibar. THe questions are all same and there are no timed tests. Or Multistate Edge heard was pretty good.
“The name above [mine] does not appear on the pass list for the California Bar Examination.” Quoted words I had received 5 times prior to Steve Zikman becoming my Strategic Bar Coach to prepare me to take the CA Bar for the last time. His step-by-step methodical approach is elegantly simple. I felt that Steve made himself and his Flash Outline material readily accessible despite my limited schedule having a full time job and raising two young children. Steve made the very most of our phoned meetings, finally culminating in those sweet words: “The name above [mine] appears on the pass list for the California Bar Examination.” Failing to prepare is to prepare for failure. Steve Zikman will prepare you to pass the CA Bar.
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