Washington DC (UBE) & Virginia Bar Exam Tutoring & Self-Study

Finished up the 200 question practice MBE in the Strategies and Tactics book this weekend, then went over all the answers. I thought it was very helpful… So much so in fact, that I’ve decided to do a 200Q practice exam every weekend from now till the bar (That’s 4 more practice exams)… I may not be able to get one in next weekend due to work travel, but that shouldn’t be a problem since I only have two more practice exams that I am aware of. (The barbri simulated MBE and the PMBR one)… So maybe I’ll end up spending those other 2 weekends doing MPT’s and MEE’s…

I’ve decided to focus more on the MPT than the MEE, simply because the MEE will most likely be 2-3 MBE subjects, so that leaves roughly 12%-16% of the entire bar exam on the MEE subjects, so the MPT being 25% should warrant roughly twice the study time… I am not going to give it twice the study time, but I will probably give it 50% more study time than the MEE subjects… And of course, I am going to focus my MEE subject study on the more probable topics to be tested…

Exactly 1 calendar month until the bar exam… I am going to begin MEE/MPT studying Monday… Up to this point, I’ve been 100% focused on MBE subjects… I have finished all the practice questions in Strategies and Tactics… That’s 354 questions, which I completed in an average time of 1.5 minutes per question (fastest questions were Torts and Evidence which I finished in about 1.2 and 1.3 minutes per question, respectively… Slowest was Con Law, which I finished in 1.8 minutes per question) so time doesn’t appear to be too big of an issue at this point…

This weekend, I am doing the 200-question practice MBE in Strategies and Tactics, as I plan to do a 3 hour timed session this morning of the AM portion of the exam (100 questions) and then go over the answers this afternoon, then do the same tomorrow with the PM portion… I hope to score, at a bare minimum, a 130 raw, with my target being a 150 raw score… This will be the first time I have done mixed-subject MBE questions…

I believe this is when most of the bar review courses start, with 7 weeks till the bar… I have done approx 300 PMBR Red Book questions across the 6 MBE subjects, as well as reviewed flash cards and Strategies and Tactics when I can… I’ve also been continuing to listen to the PMBR CDs when I am in my car… I must admit, I slowed down over the holidays, and after the new year, but I am ready to kick things off for the “final” 7 weeks till the bar… Unfortunately, my full-time job is becoming more demanding as time goes on and February will be a very busy month (go figure)…

Anyway, my immediate goal is to complete all of the practice questions in the Strategies and Tactics book. There are 354 questions total across all 6 MBE subjects, and all are released NCBE questions from previous bar exams… To date, I’ve only done PMBR sample questions so I’m curious to see the difference in the style/difficulty of the questions… Once I’m done, I plan to do the NCBE Annotated Preview 2006… My goal is to finish all 354 questions by next Friday, Jan 16th. I think that is possible, even though I am traveling on business 2 days next week…

I’ve been continuing to make notecards, but I don’t have the time to review them as much as I’d like to… Con Law and Contracts are killing me… By FAR my worst two subjects… Property and Evidence are my best so far… I know this is somewhat backwards, so I’m hoping that Con Law “comes to me” at some point before the bar, because right now it’s brutal…

I don’t have too much to write about, other than I am doing 25-30 practice questions every day, reviewing my Strategies and Tactics book daily, as well as making and reviewing notecards daily too… My main focus is on property and evidence, big time… I feel pretty good, so not much too report… If I can keep up 25-30 questions per day, I will have done about 2000 practice questions come bar exam time… For each question, regardless if I got it right or wrong, I review the full answer to the question and make a note card if I don’t fully understand the answer…

Anyway, I received an interesting comment today (It’s a comment on the first post of this blog from an anonymous poster) which is published and I already responded to it but I wanted to make it a post as well, since most people probably don’t subscribe to the comments…

Here’s the comment from the anonymous poster:

When you exclude holidays, there’s probably only about 60 days of studying left… If I get in 5 hours a day, that’s 300 hours…. It’s gonna be a photo finish :-)

I finished all 300 earlybird PMBR questions from all 6 MBE subjects, as well as read the strategies and tactics for all 6 subjects plus listened to all 32 PMBR MBE CDs I also made about 150 flash cards for questions I got wrong (yes, I averaged about 50% correct on the PMBR questions). So anyway, I feel like I’m ready to really start studying now… The plan is to do PMBR red book questions every day, along with flashcard review and make more flashcards for wrong answers. I also plan to continue to listen to the PMBR CDs whenever I have free time or am in my car, and also to continue to review the strategies and tactics book as much as possible.

Finally, I have set a date of mid-January to begin studying the MEE subjects… I wish I had audio lectures for those subjects: Trusts and Estates , Business Associations, Federal Civ Pro, Uniform Commercial Code, Family Law, and Conflict of Laws. But I’ll just stick with the written materials I have for them… Since they are essay only, and won’t be tested on the MBE, I am hoping I won’t need to have such an in-depth knowledge of those subjects. (i.e. – No need for fine-line distinctions on the MEE)

I still don’t feel anywhere close to ready for the exam, but hopefully when the time comes, I’ll be 300 hours further in my studies… Next milestone is to take a 100-question practice MBE in between Christmas and New Year’s and do well on it…