funtocry

suz-dz

I would just prepare for one, and use that as my base for the other

[I took the Massachusetts exam as well as Maine and my preparation for that consisted, literally, of bumping into a classmate on the way into the exam center and saying, "Hey, is there anything I should know about Massachusetts law?" He said something about a consumer protection statute, 93-A, and triple damages for fraud. Okay. I didn't even end up using that on the exam. There was a lot I didn't know on the Mass test but I passed, just like everyone else I know who took it.]

I didn't do Bar Bri. I used the following materials to study for the bar: a used PLI CD-rom and study booklet that I bought on e-Bay. (It was geared to the previous year, so I had to set the date on my computer to the previous year before the CD would run.) It was okay. I watched most of the little videos on the CD ROM, as a way to earn a colored circle or two of credit for studying when I was feeling kind of passive, and used the book to help me make my own posters and flash cards, or to look up subjects that I'd gotten wrong on my practice tests. I bought the Maine Bar Bri subject guide, which was necessary and something I relied on, but was not particularly good. (For example, it was undated, and in some cases the law had changed. In other subjects it was just plain wrong -- tax, for example, had some important misstatements of the law.) I also borrowed my friend Brett's book of Maine's subject area essay questions and answers and that was a useful tool. My friend Caroline gave me her materials that she'd used to take the New York bar a few years before -- a few Bar Bri multistate books, which I found moderately helpful, and some Gilbert's practice MBE questions. The Gilbert's practice MBE questions, with the explanations of the answers, were the mainstay of my studying.
For me, it's boring and hard to study a subject in a vacuum. I mean, I couldn't just read the Contracts outline without my mind wandering, or saying, yeah, yeah, right, I know all this. But when I would do fifty Contracts practice question and note on my answer sheet which answers I was confident with and which were guesses, and then I scored them and reviewed the answer explanations, I was very interested. If I had been confused between two answers in the practice questions I was motivated to learn the distinctions that had confused me, and while reading the answers I would make up a flash card on the subject -- "novation" or "parol evidence" and would write out any subtleties I learned from the question. Especially if the question was one I HADN'T found confusing but had gotten wrong -- that got me real serious about figuring out why.
So a typical day of studying for me would begin with a hunk of practice questions on a subject (timed, always timed). Then grading them, and keeping paper or a pile of index cards beside me. The index cards were a device I started using after a few weeks of studying; I'd not used them before but really came to like them. I would just put a concept or a word or a term on the blank side and fill in a sentence or two or three on the other side, whatever chunk I gleaned at the moment I decided to make an index card. Later, if I learned something new or nuanced about the same concept I would add the clarifying information. Some cards have very little on them, some are full of tiny writing. I color coded my multistate index cards with a quarter-inch thick colored stripe on the right hand side, so you could tell at a glance which cards were property, contracts, evidence, etc. My other subject matter cards were on colored card stock and were a hodgepodge. Basically I had a card for each subject and tried to cram, for example, everything important to know about Wills onto the back of one tiny purple index card. Anyway, so I'd grade the hunk of questions I'd done, making up index cards or jotting down concepts or questions on a sheet of paper. Then I'd generally go outside (it was June and July, and gorgeous, after all), often in my bikini, and I'd sit in the sun and read or watch a little lecture from the CD ROM on my laptop. Or look at the trees, or nap.
I fretted about studying and/or pretended to be studying much longer, but I probably actually studied only about five or six good hours each day. Maybe only four. And there were plenty of days I didn't study at all. The fear that I should be studying, that I was behind, that it was time, or maybe even too late, to finally get serious and disciplined, never left me. I talked to two or three friends on the phone about their process and that left me alternately reassured and panicked. They weren't doing nearly so many practice questions; I wasn't doing nearly so much mastering of the subjects I hadn't taken in law school.
I spent my study time between three or four places. I was at a little coffee shop in town most days, with earplugs or headphones on, making index cards or taking practice tests or reading and noting the elements of the answers of all the past Maine Bar Exam essay questions about negotiable instruments or trusts and estates or professional responsibility. I worked at my kitchen table or my drafting table making posters about criminal procedure or hearsay exceptions. I sat out in the sunshine in my yard a lot. I took practice MBE tests on my green loveseat. I didn't study anywhere else, really, but I did drag a book or two around with me everywhere else I went. In retrospect it was ridiculous. I don't know whether at the time I really expected I would steal away and study at the grocery store or at dinner at my parents' place, or if I just wanted sympathy, but I always had a book or my flash cards in my bag or in the passenger seat of my car.
I don't think people appreciate the misery of the bar exam. Even if the actual study schedule is reasonably manageable, as mine was, the anxiety and the perception that you're hugely far behind, that you'll never get it all into your head and that you'll space out or be unable to parse what's in your head into the specific answer format they want, that nagging doubt is always with you. It was relatively mild in me; I know I'm smart, I know I remember things really well, I know I'm good at tests, so far I've never been in the bottom 40% of any test I cared about. By contrast some of my classmates were hugely affected by the process; they became stressed out robots who could only talk about or do one thing: study. But even for me, with a degree of confidence and a commitment to sailing and seeing friends and enjoying life it was quite unpleasant, and something I hope never to do again.
If I DID have to do it again I think I would do it the same way. Maybe in a more compressed amount of time. I would spend a lot more time with the Maine Rules of Civil Procedure, because I made the foolish assumption that because they gave us the Rules I wouldn't need to know them by heart and fell down hard on that section. Otherwise I think the fundamental combination of going hard core on the MBE subjects and taking calculated risks about how to divide one's time among the various subjects needed for the state exam, tracking hours spent and subjects studied with a color-coded system, worked pretty well. I never bothered to get my score (do they even give it out? I never cared enough to find out) buit I passed both exams.

Source: http://civpro.blogs.com