Adam Ferber is the former Examinations Director for the State Bar of California and grader of 40 California Bar and First-Year Law Students’ Examinations. He provides intensive, individualized tutoring and coaching to applicants for both exams, as well as counseling and advocacy for applicants appealing their unsuccessful exam results. Contact Adam at www.ferberbarreview.com or on Facebook at Ferber Bar Review – Student Resource Group.
There is no great writing – only great rewriting. Justice Louis Brandeis
My mother taught me to write, beginning when I was in middle school. Actually, she taught me to rewrite, and she never let up. I’d show her a draft, written out in longhand on lined paper. She’d mark it up and we’d talk. Were my topic sentences conveying enough information? Could I write them shorter and punchier? This draft-to-edit-to-discussion cycle repeated itself until we had something that was, as she’d say, “classy.”
It was a tedious way to learn, but I owe her for it – big time. In a way, it gave me my living.
If your essay and performance test grades have not been up to snuff, I recommend it for you. When you write practice essay and performance test answers, edit them yourself or with a friend. Question what you wrote. Are the statements of law clear and complete, leaving nothing to guess about? Have you dedicated enough time to lawyerly analysis of the facts in light of the law? Then rewrite an entirely new answer. Repeat this cycle until your answer is “classy.”
Copyright 2011 Adam Ferber and www.ferberbarreview.com. Reprinted by permission.
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