New York Bar Exams

Anybody have any experience taking a bar review course in Ireland, either online or otherwise? Looking to take the feb 2011 bar exam but all the review courses seem to have mixed reviews

stainluss wrote: »

friarylaw.ie is the only one i've heard of..

i was just wondering A14, do you think you will find it hard to get a visa in the US with that bar? (Do you know anyone who has done that?)
Or are ya passing the bar just to help job prospects in Ire & UK?

My mum and dad are both US citizens so looking into getting a visa or citizenship that way. Dont no of anyone who has gone over without a visa yet but I know friarylaw has an immigration attorney who helps there students with getting visas, shouldnt be too hard to get one if you got a secure job within three months of arriving there. The US embassy in dublin has a website with some handy info on it too.

They actually use the video lectures used by the American barbri course , the only programme that actually have live lectures are independant colleges in Dublin . I was thinking of doin the friary course as well until I heard that ..

It's Monday to Wednesday 6-9 every night , their pass rate for last feb was 100% .. pretty impressive ! You can do it by distance learning too, it defo sounds like the best one if your going to pay that much money.

cfarrell1980 wrote: »

That sounds good. I am still in 'negotiations' with an ex-college-colleague to buy his bar exam materials - if that falls through (which it currently looks like doing), I will get back to you about the materials.

With respect to advice on preparing etc, I'd be glad to hear any tips you have. Currently, I'm looking at doing February 2011. I'm working full-time, so I intend putting in maybe 1 - 2 hours a day until Christmas. After Christmas, I'm going to try to take January and February off work to put in as much time as I possible can.

If you have preparation tips, I'd love to hear them

Ciaran,

Did you buy the NY bar preparation materials off your college in the end?
Mine are still for sale, if you would like to do a deal

Mark

Hi 2ndtimer,

Im hoping to take the exams in July. I also got the micromash course.
Problem is I originally intended to sit the exams in Feb, however due to a multitude of reasons I decided to take them in July. Im trying to get motivated to start study for them now and am finding it extremely difficult! I've secured a good job starting in Sept in the UK and don't need to have the exams but I would like to have them.
What kind of study plan are you doing? Im also working only part time...
Any words of wisdom or motivation would be much appreciated!!

Thanks.

Thanks for the info 2ndtimer!

You sound really disciplined! - Im jealous! :-) So time wise would you be doing approx 7(ish) hours a day then?
I will take a leaf out of your book and start with the view that this is a job! Its great to hear from someone who is doing it themselves - feeling more positive about the whole situation now!

Cheers!

Sitting the exam in Feb 2011. Will be taking the Celebration Bar Review course. Possibly going to NY for a 3 day "bootcamp" course.

2ndtimer wrote: »

No worries,

I think there is plenty of time to prepare so although these are perceived to be very difficult, anything can be done if you put in the work. The Independent college course started April 5th, so this is the right time to start.

7 hours a day is what Im doing, but find your own rythm and what works for you. Aslong as the hours you are putting in are productive you're on a good track. Think if you treat it like a job it actually becomes more managable and the resentment that one usually has for study is not as prevelant!

Glad the motivation has been raised!

Hey 2ndtimer,

Hows the study going for you this week?

Ive started now and am feeling quite positive about the whole thing. Have you registered online for the exam?

osullivem wrote: »

Hey 2ndtimer,

Hows the study going for you this week?

Ive started now and am feeling quite positive about the whole thing. Have you registered online for the exam?

Hi,

Yeah, registered and paid today, just have to send away my transcript and think im going to get a letter from law society to confirm my degree recognised etc etc.

Have neglected sudyingt a bit..was on an internship last week in Dublin and had to work 12 hour days from monday to weds this week in anotherjob.

Back at it today..must really start on constitutional. I find it challenging as never really seen it before.

Are you doing the MPRE aswell? im going to stay out there and sit it August 10th I believe

Hey 2ndtimer and osullivem. Glad to hear there's more people out there using Micromash. Only after I got it did I start hearing of BarBri, which is apparently quite popular state side.

How are your scores looking so far on the practice MCQs? I'm hovering around the 50% mark at the moment on the MBE subjects. But I haven't looked at the NY portion yet.

I must admit I'm finding it hard to get motivated to study given we're just under 13 weeks away.

Anyway just thought I'd pop into this thread. Hopefully as it gets closer we can share ideas/tips! Here's a good site I found for Bar advice: http://www.seperac.com/bar/

Getting_Steads wrote: »

Hey 2ndtimer and osullivem. Glad to hear there's more people out there using Micromash. Only after I got it did I start hearing of BarBri, which is apparently quite popular state side.

How are your scores looking so far on the practice MCQs? I'm hovering around the 50% mark at the moment on the MBE subjects. But I haven't looked at the NY portion yet.

I must admit I'm finding it hard to get motivated to study given we're just under 13 weeks away.

Anyway just thought I'd pop into this thread. Hopefully as it gets closer we can share ideas/tips! Here's a good site I found for Bar advice: http://www.seperac.com/bar/

Hi,

My MBE scores are hovering around the 50% mark. Must admit that im finding evidence and in particular all the hearsay exceptions quite tricky. At present im just doing MBE questions on days designated for MBE and making notes of them, dont think I will be able to get through the text books so im using them for reference and learning by doing the questions. Is quite disheartening when you get very low scores though.

Have started NY questions and essay questions aswell, seems like a mountain to get through, particularly CPLR:mad:.

That and the flights to NY have went up from €500 to €700...ahh Im having a bad day, that and I just failed my last fe-1!!

How is everyone else getting on??

Mickalis wrote: »

Sorry to hear that you failed your last Fe1 2ndTimer Hang in there though. Once you get the NY bar exam out of the way youll only have one Fe1 to do to finish everything off !

This is just a general question for anyone who might have done either of the courses in Ireland or heard anything about them. I'm in the middle of doing my Fe1s (just passed my first four) and have my second four in the Sept/Oct sitting. And then I have about a year off before I have to start my training contract in Sept 2011. So once the Fe1s finish in October I was thinking of straight away taking the Independent Colleges NY Bar course for the Bar Exams in the 2011 Feb sitting. I was just curious if anyone has done that course or the other Friary Law one in Ireland and what's your opinion on them? Would it be better getting the Barbri stuff myself and just studying? (Try and take the price of the revision course out of it) It says on Indep Colleges that they use Micromash also. Any opinions on which is better, that or Barbri? Thanks for all your help and any opinions you guys might have !

Hi,

I bought micromash direct from them and am very impressed so far. I taught myself through the Fe-1s coming from a QUB Law degree so am used to private study/learning by own. I think you would be mad to pay the €5k for independent. I used the micromash study now pay later; you pay $450 dollars now and the balance of $1200 one month after you sit the exam.

If you can afford independent and like classroom learning they have a great record, 5 out of 5 who sat it last year passed it. They use BarBri.

As for the difficulty and workload, its comparable to Fe-1s depending on your interpretation but is completely practice focused. There are no essay questions requiring you to critically exam some piece of new legislation, simply problem questions which unlike Fe-1s do not focus heavily (if at all) by reaming off loads of cases. Topic mixing is frequent though so you will have loads going on in a question; e.g a divorce, negligence, intestacy and evidence.

I will say though that learning Court procedure and the rules of evidence are something very different to a Law degree and Fe-1s, and although not the same rules, are akin to what barrister's have to learn here.

Hope some of that helps.

So you have decided to grasp the nettle and take the NY bar. The most important things to remember are:
1/ it is a hard exam, but 75% of people pass the exam – load of foreigners fail, but most of them speak english as a 2nd language.
2/ there is too much material to learn, except there are lots of things you won't learn, don't get caught up in micro details, if you don't understand something, put a mark by it and move on.


You should read the www.seperac.com/bar website before you start to study, he has a lot of good info on the exam.


What's is the format of the exam
Day 1 – NY day – 5 Essays, the MPT and 50 NY state multichoice
Day 2 – MBE – 200 Common law multichoice covering 6 subjects only – criminal, constitutional, contract, tort, evidence and property.


The Essays
90% of essay questions are on the 8 topics listed below. Don't waste lots of time on trusts or other things that rarely come up. Take secured transactions for example – you could spend days learning it and it wont do you any good. All you need from these topics are the basic definitions.
1/ Criminal 16%
2/ Wills 15%
3/ Tort 13%
4/ Contract 12%
5/ Dom Relations 10%
6/ NY Practice 9%
7/ Corporations 8%
8/ Property 7%
From this list you can see the important NY subjects are Wills, Dom Relations, Corporations and NY Practice, these are always on the exam, this is where you NY study time should go, not conflicts of law, federal procedure etc.


NY Multichoice
These are hard, most people only get 50% here, do all of the practice questions in the BarBri NY book, if you can get more than ½ right, move on.


MPT
These are the closed world questions – you have an hour and a half to read a 20 page file and contains a set of facts, imaginary statutes and imaginary cases, all set in a fictitious jurisdiction.
All of the past MPTs are online, with marking sheets. NB NY only asks for letters or memos or similar, don't waste any time doing out wills or anything but letters. If you are asked for something persuasive, don't just state the law, state it from your position. Cite and distinguish cases that don't favour your position. Sounds obvious, but people screw this up.
Write out 3 or 4 of these against the clock, one days prep is ample.


MBE
This is the most important part of the exam! If you can get a high MBE score, you will pass. To do well on the MBE you need to do at least 1500 prep questions. Listen to the MP3s and review the outlines – do not memorise the outlines, most of your study time should be spent doing practice questions.
Keep a spreadsheet of your results and track what you are scoring for every 10 questions. With no study you will probably get ½ of the questions right. For the first 600 questions or so, I was consistently getting between 50-60%, but about 10 days before the exam it just clicked and I started to get 70-80%.
To pass you need about 135 on the MBE, this is a scaled score, that equate to getting about 65% raw. The general theory on the bar exam is if you can get a high MBE, you will pass with poor essays.
It is essential you take the online NCBE tests, I recommend you save these until close to the exam, I would do one 2 weeks before the exam, and the other one a week before the exam. Some of the questions on these tests will be repeated on the actual exam.




How much time should you allow to prepare?
I recommend 2 months part-time and one month full time. This allows for 6 weeks part time for the MBE – one week per subject, and 2-3 weeks for NY part-time. The goal here is to have gone over all of the topics once, so you can identify them – no memorizing at this point – you should aim to have completed about 1000 questions by this time.
In the one month full time you will distill and refine all of your notes and save the memorizing for the last week.
Note – This is a goal – I didnt do this much work.


What material/books do I need?
You don't need to spend the money on BarBri or any other course.
The best way to go about the exam is to download MP3s online – check the pirate bay. You can also find summaries there, there are also some on www.seperac.com


Out side of that, there are only 2 books you will need, you can pick these up on ebay or elsewhere online.
1/ The BarBri New York Book – this book contains 100 sample essays and a couple of hundred sample NY multichoice. It is really good practice to write outline answers for the essays, you should also do all the NY multichoice questions.
2/ PMBR Blue or Red Book – These books contain hundreds of sample questions – they are more similar to the actual exam questions than BarBri (which I found to be easier and shorter than the actual exam questions). The more sample questions you do, the better you will do on the bar.


Audio Lectures
There are really good MP3 lectures on the pirate bay. You should put these on you ipod and listen to them everywhere you go. Don't turn on the radio until you are finished this exam. It is amazing how much you will pick up just by having them on everytime you get into the car. You will find yourself getting really sick of them, when that happens is means you are learning the material and it is getting stuck in your head. I have my earphones in for the whole month of July, walking, driving, at the gym – it works – do it.




Answer Format
You should check out the Seperac “Master” document. It is good to glance at to see what has come up over the last 30 exams, but I found the answers in it to be a bit ****. They are long, and verbose. Remember the attorneys who correct your exam only get $3/essay – make their life easy and they will give you a passing mark – state the law clearly, and underline/bold key words – no fancy stuff. You wont be able to remember a half page of law for the exam, don't bother trying.


Summary
Don't by a course, you wont need it.
Listen to the MP3s everywhere you go/drive. It is the easiest way to get familiar with the material.
Do as many MBE questions as you can, start doing these questions from day 1, don't leave them till the end.
Don't get sidetracked, stick to the core MBE subjects and the key NY subjects listed above. If you message me, Ill send you my summaries for the NY day.