Bar Prep Courses

In her post about the February 2009 bar exam questions, Lisa mentioned her post from last summer about bar review courses, in which she compared her Barbri experience to what she'd heard about the Rigos experience. I found that post (and the comments) to be very helpful -- before reading it, I was set on taking Barbri, but now I'm not so sure. I need to decide soon. Does anyone have advice for me about bar prep courses, or for other 3Ls (and even 2Ls)? Any Barbri defenders out there?

Winter bar exam

Hi folks, just talked to a friend of mine who took the winter bar this week and he had some news that might be of interest to 3Ls taking the Washington bar this summer. Primarily, there was no Indian law question on the Winter bar. That means there will surely be one this summer. They only added Indian law a couple of years ago, and since then, there was a question on the 2007 summer bar, none on the 2008 winter bar, a question on the 08 summer bar, and none on the 09 winter bar. Notice a pattern? :-) As you'll find out in bar prep, Indian law usually is half a question, combined with Civ Pro.

My friend said there was no commercial paper question, but there were Sales and Secured Transactions. Last summer we had sec trans and comm paper, but no sales. Draw your own conclusions about that.

He said there were a lot of crim pro questions. I had heard this wasn't a heavily tested subject in the past, but last summer we had three (3!) crim pro questions. I would also note that crim pro with Hardisty was one of the more helpful classes I've taken in terms of bar prep.

He said there weren't that many property questions, a lot of torts and contracts, and a straightforward will question. Evidence was half a question. There was an odd question that was a combination of contracts and agency. The con law/admin law question sounds like it was confusing.

This may be more detail than you care about, but bookmark this for later, you'll want to know this summer! Good luck, cheers...
Lisa

p.s. you can click the little label "bar exam" under this post to see everything we've posted about the bar exam in the past. There a long post with a lot of comments about Barbri v. Rigos. It's the only place I've ever seen anyone make the comparison, which would have been nice to know when picking a bar prep program!

Congratulations PALS alumni!

Congratulations to all the former UW PALS who passed the Summer 2008 bar exam. I looked through the pass list and saw Lisa Kremer, Stasiu Nowak, Lisa Goldoftas, Laura Arras, Ray Liaw, Karen Horowitz, and Daniel Heu-Weller. Please let me know if I'm leaving anyone out! We're so happy for all of you.

Post bar life

A few photos from the last week:

Because I live in Tacoma and the bar is in Bellevue, I got a hotel room for the bar and Ray shared it with me. The week before, consumed by stress, we both decided to go a day early so we could try to have a couple of uninterrupted nights' sleep before the exam (something about 3-year-olds and sleep doesn't mix, apparently). Here's how we spent the day before the bar:



Here's a photo from Megan's facebook page -- I certainly didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture, but yes, this is the room where 800 people sweated out the bar for three days:



Afterward we had friends over to our hotel room for champagne. Ray's husband came with her daughters, wearing T-shirts her law firm had made for them:



Friday, I took the kids out for ice cream IN THE MIDDLE OF A WEEKDAY -- scandalous! -- and took this picture, which I emailed to my husband at work to make him jealous. It worked.



Ahh, post-bar life. Nothing to do but clean the house to unearth three years worth of crap, punctuated by trips to the local frozen custard stand. And beer! How I've missed you, beer. Life is good.

Barbri/Rigos/Tesdahl

How to choose a bar prep course? Here are a few thoughts on what I observed the last few weeks of Barbri v. Rigos. I hope others will add their comments and corrections, too. (I think Tesdahl is great too, by the way -- I have a neighbor who did it a few years ago -- but I don't know anyone who used it recently.)

Overall, my conclusion was that I wished I'd done Rigos. I think you can pass with either course. But the Rigos method seemed less stress inducing. I heard from both Barbri and Rigos studets who noticed the difference. Plus, Rigos sent encouraging, pump-em-up type messages in the day before the bar and held a party afterward. Not that you should base your decision on the availability of alcohol afterward, but it seems emblematic of the attitude.

• Both courses consist generally of listening to lectures, outlining and taking practice exams.
• Lectures are by SU or UW professors, by local specialists or (for Barbri) a couple of people who go around the country giving specialized lectures. Hard to guess which course had better lecturers -- they both seemed to have some great ones (Rigos has Donaldson, Barbri has Calandrillo) and some not-so-great ones.
• Rigos focuses a lot on outlining. Students are recommended to spend about five hours a day outlining, and three hours taking practice exams.
• Rigos is heavy on mnemonic devices. Barbri has few mnemonics other than the ones you've heard already (OCEAN, etc).
• Barbri focuses more on taking practice exams. Barbri recommends two hours a day outlining, and then practice exams until you collapse from exhaustion. (It's only been a few days since the bar and I've already forgotten the daily study schedule, how awesome is that?)
• Rigos had 26 graded essays, Barbri had 21. Barbri's feedback was handwritten, Rigos came through email. Lots of good feedback either way.
• Both programs have practice questions that are actual bar questions released by the bar association in past years, and include a sample passing answer, also released by the bar. Barbri also includes a "model answer" for the first 4-6 essay questions of each type. Rigos does not. The model answers are a mixed blessing. They include almost every point you could think of to address in the question. This is good if you want to learn to be thorough, and we all want to pass, so we all want to be thorough, right? However, it also can be discouraging if you didn't get all the points, or drive you absolutely nuts if you're trying to drive yourself to learn everything. As an example, I took a practice question on a subject I'd studied pretty thoroughly, and compared my answer to the model answer, and felt like a complete failure because I'd missed half the points. Then I compared my answer to the sample passing answer and felt like a law savant.
• Both curricula have you turn in sample essays periodically to be graded. The schedules are different, but I couldn't say which is better.
• With either program, the real key is figuring out how you memorize the best. (Not learn. Memorize.) That might be flashcards, speaking aloud, repeated test-taking, rote repetition... you pretty much have to figure that out on your own.

What else, y'all?