Thread: Has anyone used bargraders.com? Are they helpful?

Has anyone used bargraders.com? Are they helpful?

I was coached by Robin Sembenini of BarGraders, who has graded eight sittings of the California bar exam. And the information I have been sharing is what she explained to me bar graders are looking for on the essay exam. Unfortunately for me I am a stubborn S.O.B. and because I "knew" my style of writing was better than the way I was being told I needed to write for bar examiners, it was a monumental struggle for me to "dummy down" my writing. I worked with Robin on two tries, and each time my score improved greatly, but because I still had not managed to set aside my earlier writing style and practiced enough to make the new writing style automatic, I did not pass, because when panic set in during the exam (as it always did), I went right back to writing the way I always had, as evidenced from looking at my exams later. Luckily for me on this past exam I finally gave in to the process and did things the way she told me to, and it worked. In fact, when I ran across my notes from our original conversation, I realized that this time I had managed to do everything Robin initially told me I needed to do on the essays, right down to memorizing exact statements of the rules for ConLaw.

Your demand brings up a very good point. No matter how good your coach is, if you have psychological issues regarding the bar exam in general, test-taking or studying, and you don't deal with those issues, chances are very good that you won't pass, because you will have taken yourself out of the game before it even starts. You can have an encyclopedic knowledge of the law and still not pass because you are not prepared to deal with the curve-balls the bar examiners will most assuredly throw at you, which is why I also have been sharing the additional skills you need to develop to cope with the essay questions you will see during the exam.

One additional point -- IMO the bar exam is harder for students who have been working in the real world for some time before returning to law school. Students who enter law school directly from undergrad most likely will have never seen a real memorandum to a client, or worked on a brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, and when they are told by a bar review instructor that this is the way to write for the exam, they have nothing to compare and no reason to struggle against it, which is why so many first-time takers do pass the first time. The one consolation for the returning student, of course, is that as soon as the bar exam is over we can completely erase that simplistic style of writing and reasoning from our memory banks and return to the style we know is required by the real world, while those first-timers who pass the first time get to spend the next few years learning what we already know.

Source: westlahere

bargraders are pretty good

I used bargraders to practice essay writing for Feb. 2007 bar. You write essays in softtest
format under strict time conditions. My essays were graded and, in most instances, I also received comments in the form of general suggestions and annotations to my essays. I wrote three to five essays on each subject. The process was very helpful to me in passing the bar. I had a lot more confidence than I would have had without this service. At the time, bargraders guaranteed grading within 24 hours. Now you can choose between 24 or 48 hour service. There were clear differences in how I did between subjects and between graders (you get the graders first name) but I think this is realistic. I do think that they are instructed to grade hard and on several occasions I really didn't agree with the grade I received, but that is probably realistic as well. I had a relatively short time to study and I really think the bargrader system helped me stay on track. When I was studying, the three graders were Robyn, Larry and Dafna.

Yup. They also have current graders for the specialist exam, former barbri graders, lsat instructors and other very qualified licensed attorneys in California.

They are very good. They give feedback and grades. The system also lets you see where you are weak. For example, you can compare your scores on a subject by subject basis. I was weaker on Con Law then Crim Pro, so was able to focus more time on Con Law as the exam got closer. Also, I consistently did not state the Rule "R" of IRAC. I highly recommend them.