Self- study for the Maryland Bar

So I was just going to make this a blog about my post-bar awesome trip I have planned but then I thought about how helpful blogs about self-studying for the bar were for me in deciding how to formulate a study plan and building the confidence I needed to take the plunge and avoid BarBri. So I thought maybe I could pass along my own experience to help others do the same.

I graduated from Georgetown Law about a week ago and am studying in a loosely formed group with 2 other Georgetown grads. Our plan is to study during the week independently, maybe a little on the weekends, and have group review sessions on Friday, maybe Saturday.  We are all using different materials. I am studying from 2009 Barbri books that I bought for $400 from a girl who graduated last year. One of the other girls is using Ameribar only, and another girl is using 2009 used Barbri books plus Kaplan MBE materials.

As for the schedule, we are using Ameribar's schedule because it seems to be organized in a more logical manner than Barbri's (MD topics first, then MBE topics). Since MD stuff is worth 2x as much on the bar exam, I thought it reasonable to start with that so I can make up flashcards as soon as possible. I did do Barbri's multistate preview last week (sans lectures), which involves a 25-question quiz on each MBE topic and then a 100 question quiz. I found the detailed answers very helpful in explaining things and was able to make quite a few flashcards out of that. I got 54% right. Subject-wise I did the best in Evidence (63%) and the worst in property (35%). Clearly my strength in MBE subjects does not track my grades on those subjects in law school. On the 25 question quizzes, I generally got about half right, although I did better in Torts, Con Law, and Evidence. I think Contracts & Property (courses I did will in in law school) will be hard for me on the exam because I won't have the luxury of being able to look up the UCC or hit ctrl+F in my outline, and those subjects tend to have pretty specific rules. I also just took Con Law II & Evidence, so they are fresh in my mind. Why I am doing so well in torts I have no idea. But I figure this is decent for not having done any lectures on these subjects.

We were not planning to start studying substantive Maryland topics until today, but I came down with a cold and started studying this weekend because I couldn't do anything else. Combining BarBri materials with the Ameribar schedule has been a little interesting, since BarBri combines Agency/Partnership and Commercial Paper/Secured transactions into 1 day each, while Ameribar treats them as separate subject deserving of 2 days- e.g., 2 days just for agency. The "lectures" I have are filled-in handouts for BarBri's lectures. What I did with Agency/Partnership was to go over the lecture, make some flashcards, then fill in my outline (which is of course heavily based on the BarBri one but I think it's useful to write this stuff out yourself), making more flaschards, and then doing practice essays. While I am not yet finished with this for Agency/Partnership (about half way through my partnership outline), I have found it to create a lot of non-helpful repetition because the outlines are so much more organized and comprehensive than the lectures and I have trouble remembering if I've made a flashcard for a certain topic yet. For the next subject (Ethics/PR) I will do the outline first (while making flashcards), use the lecture to repeat important points & review (& make more flashcards if necessary), then do practice essays, which will hopefully make the process more efficient.

I also want to give a shout out to this University of Dayton School of Law website that has some really helpful information on studying for the bar & a bar study checklist that I have used: http://academic.udayton.edu/LegalEd/barpass/General/advice02a.htm. (I am guessing "R" means Read Outline, which for me means writing out the table of contents, then filling it in as I read the outline).

Hello Blogging

Nothing up yet... mainly wanted to see how this worked before I set out on my travels this summer/fall.