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barexam
This is my second day back at work since the bar exam. I came in Friday, but things were generally dead. It's not dead today.
I have not been keeping count of the number of people who ask me how I did on the bar exam. I'm not entirely sure how I wish to answer such questions. I've settled on, "I think I did well enough to pass." Does that sufficiently hedge?
I just made the mistake of reading someone's breakdown of questions and issues, which suggests that I missed more issues that I had originally believed. In particular, it appears that perhaps my Question #3 and Question #5 were weaker than I had originally believed.
Oh, man. It's going to be a long wait until November 21.
Three more essays, one more (seemingly) straightforward performance test, and the 2008 July California Bar Exam is done. Now, I just have to wait until November 21 for results.
And now, I guess I've got to do something about this blog. The title no longer really fits.
California bar exam day 2. Yay!
Day 2 is the Multistate Bar Exam ("MBE"), a 200-question multiple choice exam given in two 3-hour parts. It's a tough patch of work, but nowhere near as exhausting as a performance test like yesterday's. I feel a whole lot better today post-exam than I did yesterday. On the other hand, the MBE's also a crapshoot. I felt pretty good about some areas that had given me problems before (mortgages!), but as often occurs on the MBE, you find yourself down to 2 correct questions and must choose the "best" response. I've been convinced by a friend that on at least one of those questions, I chose incorrectly.
I use one of the time management techniques suggested by Professor Sakai (a USF prof, and one of the Bar/Bri lecturers) to split the questions into blocks of 20, based on the size of the vertical columns on the answer sheet. I budget 33 minutes per column, which leaves me with 15 minutes of buffer. In the morning, I was running around 7 minutes behind going into the last block of 20. In the afternoon, I had 55 minutes remaining going into the last block of 20. Go figure. It's all meaningless until I find out whether I pass or fail.
One more day to go. There's plenty of anxiety about the remaining areas to be tested on the essay tomorrow. There's also lots of speculation that after the basic performance test we got yesterday that tomorrow's may be harder. I'm not too bothered by that -- we had some toughies thrown at us in Legal Drafting, and I did best on those ones. However, there's always the possibility of not doing best on those, and that's just losing the free points that should come from the performance tests.
A bar taker breaks down the mechanics.
Day One Down, Feels Like Two :
Anyway, the test. In all the stuff I read beforehand, from various sites on the web, and in everything people told me, nobody really said what the exam is actually like, down to the nitty-gritty details. So I thought it might be helpful for some people to explain how it all goes down.
Other locations may be a little different. (E.g., in Los Angeles this morning there was an earthquake—a friend sent me a text message and said chandeliers were swinging and people were screaming during the third essay question). Here’s how it went down in San Mateo, July 2008.
It's a good run-down of the process. It's pretty much how it worked for us at the Oakland Convention Center, other than our absence of a huge parking lot; most people here are staying at the Marriott or across the street (where I am with hideous Internet service) at the Courtyard.
Others were smart and scoped the place out ahead of time. I just read the instructions and figured I'd figure it out.
The person next to me on my right hurt her back last week, so she's constantly adjusting herself. I've found the chair I'm on is (surprisingly) comfortable for about 2 hours, after which time I crush the cushion under my mass and my tailbone suffers and I start shifting.
And at the rate we're going, we're going to spend almost 3 hours just listening to instructions and announcements over the three days.
The California bar exam is a three-day trial of one's patience. I just finished day one.
Today, like Thursday will be, was split into morning and afternoon sessions of essays. In the three-hour morning session of both days, we have three essays on substantive areas of law. In the three-hour afternoon session, we have the "performance test," which is hard to explain.
I thought this morning's essays were relatively straightforward, though the third, a contracts question, gave me more fits than I anticipated such a question would. I thought I had put my contracts difficulties behind me. The three questions potentially covered (and ostensibly, eliminated from possibility Thursday) three areas of law. However, I'm not sure that the second question was truly a cross-over or not.
The performance test was straightforward enough to make me worry that I did something horribly wrong. Time will tell on that one.
Finally... Sheesh. It seems like two days have passed in less than one full day. But half the hard part (the essays) is over. Bring on the MBEs.
Today's it. Day 63 of bar review. Ready or not, the bar exam is tomorrow.
I wish I could tell whether or not I'm ready. Every conversation seems to bring up some rule I don't know -- or haven't even heard of. On the plus side, I'm not always the one at a loss. "If you don't know it, fake it." That's the aim. Here's hoping I hit the target.
I'm kind of looking forward to going back to work on Friday.
The question I keep going over in my head: Is there something I would not be able to write some sort of essay response on?
Short answer: I don't think so. Longer answer: I worry about freezing up.
During this process, we've seen nothing but very good essays as answer exemplars. I really want to know what a 55 looks like, what a 65 looks like, and what a 75 looks like. I feel that seeing only 80s or 85s (or whatever they are, since we don't know) makes it too hard to know what we should do when we fake it.
Or, maybe I actually don't want to know. I sure think I do, though.
It would be really great if there could be just a few more minor, piddly little distinctions between California civil procedure and California evidence and the FRE and FRCP.
Will the 29th hurry up and get here?
Someone mentioned to me that the bar exam is an endurance test, what with 3 days and all. I responded that I'm not so sure it's the three days I'm bothered by; it's the 63 days of prep ahead of it. I am so sick and tired of bar prep now.
Today was the simulated written exam. I did the morning (the essays) and skipped out on the performance test. I'll hit a few performance tests in the waning days to make sure I haven't forgotten anything about doing them.
(The beauty of Legal Drafting, unlike even the other so-called "bar electives," is that Legal Drafting is entirely geared to prepare you for one whole section of the bar exam.)
Written exam went well, largely, given where I am with respect to studying for essays. Based on the grading criteria, I'd say one answer fell in the "above average" category and the other two solidly in the passing category. 12 more topics and a lot more practice essays remain. I feel like it's coming together.
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