With three weeks till exam day, we are entering the home stretch! From here on out, it's all about practice, practice, practice and working on your weaknesses. Keep your foot on the accelerator. Tou can learn a lot of law in two weeks. YOU CAN DO THIS! You will pass this @#%^ exam!

Themis simulated exam: Tomorrow!

Themis' full-on simulated exam is tomorrow and Wednesday (and Thursday, for accommodated students). If you're taking the Sim on campus, we will have hardcopies of the MPTs and essays for you--just like the real exam. If you're taking the sim off-campus, you can download and print your own copies of the essays and MPTs from this Google Drive folder [link]. 

Wednesday's mutliple-choice questions are in the "Multistate Bar Exam--Practice Exams" book. Bring your book; we will not have copies of the SimMBE. Answer the questions on the tear-out bubblesheet (to better simulate the real exam), then enter your answers online later to generate your results. Use the spreadsheet linked to last week's blog to create a report that consolidates the results from the AM and PM sessions.

On-campus rooms and start times: Room 201 for standard-time examinees; start at 9am. Room 104 for extended-time examinees; start at 8am.

Barbri's simulated written exam: next week

Barbri's simulated written exam (1 MPT, 3 essays, all self-graded) is coming up next week. The exam materials are at the end of the "Written Exam Workbook"--"Summer Simulated Written Exam." If you're behind in Barbri, hold off the sim written exam until you complete the essay lectures. If you're way behind in Barbri, email, text or DM me, and we'll discuss optimal timing for you.

Barbri, unlike Themis, does not have a full-blown simulated written exam with 2 MPTs and 6 essays. But you can roll your own: There are two half-day practice exams at the back of the Essays book—"Summer Sim" and "Winter Sim." You could combine those for a full-day exam,* or you could download 6 essays and 2 MPTs from our banks (or get them from the Barbri books). If you do not turn the written sim into a full-day sim, at some point you should definitely complete 2 MPTs back to back and 6 essays back to back; it doesn't have to be all in one day.

We will host a full-day written Sim on campus on July 15 (rooms and times TBA) and provide lunch. Order your lunch here by noon on Friday, July 11. 

MBE: Practice exams & focused practice

• Themis preppers: After you take the Themis practice exam, use your results to identify weaknesses and attack those weaknesses with focused practice, just like the Barbri peeps did a couple of weeks ago. Themis makes this a little bit more difficult than Barbri because your results are split between the morning and afternoon sessions; combine the sessions to identify weaknesses. See last week's post for details.

• All preppers: When you complete a practice exam in Adaptibar or QBank, analyze the results by subtopic (just like you did on the Barbri/Themis midterm) and target your weaknesses in Adaptibar by doing some focused practice on the weak subtopics. Do this after each practice exam.

• When you are not doing practice exams or focused practice in Adaptibar/QBank, keep doing mixed practice (questions from all topics).

Essays: Time to get serious!

With the MEE lectures behind you (or soon to be), it's time to turn up the heat on essay practice even higher. This week, you should be outlining an average of 3-4 essays per day (and writing out at least 2 per week all the way--not a problem if you take the Barbri or Themis written sim this week!).

Now is the time to work hard at memorizing the essay rules verbatim. You should have some knowledge of most rules at this point; time now to memorize the granular detail needed for success on exam day. Spend more time reviewing essay rules--with flashcards, your Excel/Word list of troublesome rules, or the outlines (the shortest ones available, like Themis's "final" outlines). 

If you use the outlines, do not simply read them; use them to test yourself the way you would with flashcards: Find the topic you want to work on. Cover up everything except the heading (with your hand or a blank sheet of paper. In your head, out loud, on paper or on your laptop, recall and elaborate as much of the rule as you can remember. Then uncover the text and see what you missed. Cover it again, and see how much you can remember. Do this three times, then move on to the next topic. After five or six topics, go back to the first topic and review it again. This is a great way to get the benefit of flashcards without actually having to make flashcards.

Another helpful tool for memorizing essay rules is www.hackthe.bar. It prompts you for a rule, you type as much of the rule as you know, and it tells you what you omitted. I was impressed when it debuted last summer. Unfortunately, it now costs $160, so you'll have to decide if the cost is worth it to you. 

MPT: Enough is enough

You're probably as good at the MPT as you're going to get. If you did well enough on the MPTS on the simulated exam, you can stop doing MPTs (you might want to do one more the week before the exam just to remind yourself that you can do it!).  Review the formats for some of the unusual tasks [link] but don't bother to write them out. Your time is better spent answering practice MCQs and essays and filling gaps in the outlines in your head.

If you did less well on the sim, then maybe do 2 more MPTs, one next week and one the week after.

If you have not already completed two MPTs back to back, I suggest doing so to give you a feel for what that will be like on exam day.

Freeing up time for practice

A common sentiment at this point in prep is, "I'm studying as many hours a day as I possibly can! I don't have time for even more practice!" 

Good news: With the substantive lectures in the rearview mirror, your prep company will give you outline-review assignments that you can skip! For example, most Barbri students will see "Review Real Property lecture notes—2 hours" on their schedules this week. Reviewing outlines is somewhat useful, but not nearly as useful as answering practice questions.

So when your prep company tells you to review an outline for x hours, mark it "done" (so your completion percentage doesn't suffer) and spend that time answering multiple-choice and essays questions on that same topic instead. In the Barbri example above, a prepper would do, say, an hour of Real Property MCQs in Adaptibar and an hour of Real Property essays from our MEE essay bank. 

Questions of the Week

Question of the week 1: Should I stop doing Barbri/Themis multiple-choice and do Adaptibar/QBank instead?

If you're on-pace to complete 75%+ of Themis or 85%+ of Barbri: No. While the Adaptibar/QBank questions are more like the questions you will see on exam day, the Barbri/Themis questions serve an important purpose: They are designed to expose you to all the nooks and crannies of the outline--not just the basic rule, but the exception (and the exception to the exception), too. For maximum exposure to as many rules as possible, keep doing the Barbri/Themis questions.

If you are seriously behind in your program, then you should prioritize the Adaptibar and QBank questions and skip (some of) the Barbri/Themis sets. This is far from ideal, and I recommend it for desperate cases only.  

Question of the week 2: How do we upload our essay answers on exam day?

Q: The laptop instructions say we have to turn off WiFi during the exam. How do we upload our answers?

A: Your answers are encrypted and stored on your laptop's hard drive. The BLE will give you a set time after the exam to upload your answers—typically 24-48 hours, but pay attention to the exam-day instructions. So you'll go home or to your hotel room, reconnect to WiFi, and upload your answers.

Question of the week 3: What to do about the afternoon blahs?

Q: I was sooo tired during the afternoon session of the sim exam! What can I do so that doesn't happen on exam day?

A: Two things: (1) Work on exam-hours endurance. Start studying from 9 till noon and from 1:30 till 4:30 without breaks, snacks, coffee, music, your phone, etc. That will help acclimate your mind and body to the rigors of exam day. (I'm not saying to study only 6 hours a day! I'm saying to make those 6 hours like exam day. Break up your other study sessions however you like.) (2) Think about what you're going to eat for lunch on exam day. If you ordered a sandwich for the sim and the carbs made you sleepy, maybe opt for the salad on the exam days.

Question of the week 4: Will the BLE provide storage for phones, etc. at the exam site?

Yes, the BLE uses a service called "Yondr" to securely store your cellphone during the exam (Allen, Austin, and Houston sites only). I recommend NOT using it! Leave your phone in your car instead. Why? (1) You won't be able to access your phone during the lunch break if, e.g., you need to call someone for a pep talk, work the NYT daily puzzles to take your mind off the exam, whatever. (2) At the end of the day--when you just want to get the hell out of there--you'll be stuck in line, waiting to unlock and return your Yondr pouch.*  So leave your phone in your car** or hotel room.

The Yondr pouch is only 7.48"(H) x 4.80"(W), so nothing but a cellphone will fit. Leave everything else in your car/hotel room.

*Yondr is new to the bar exam, so I don't know how long this will actually take. But trust me--you'll want to depart ASAP.
**If you leave your phone in the car, put it someplace where the Texas sun won't cook it. Maybe in a small cooler? I mention this only because the heat destroyed a preppers phone a couple of summers ago. 

Week 10 incentive targets

To be eligible for next week's incentive drawing, by 10pm on July 13, complete 76.5% of Barbri or 72% of Themis (including the Themis 2-day sim) AND 1320 questions in Adaptibar or QBank.

That's all for this week. As ever, if you have questions or need talked back from the ledge, email or call me or Prof. Deutsch. Our contact info is on this blog's home page.