Jason Seewer is an Attorney Editor at Multistate Edge, a company that helps students prepare for the Multistate Bar Exam. Jason has been a licensed attorney since 2005 and is based in Chicago.
For the majority of law school students, receiving their diploma is merely a diversion until the reality of what faces them over the summer sets in: bar exam studying. Most traditional bar exam review courses begin nearly immediately after the end of law school, thus providing little reprieve from their previous three years of hard work. This has been the traditional model for law students everywhere for a long time: finish law school, participate in a bar review course, take the bar exam. For many students, this is a fine model, and they go on to pass the bar and begin their law careers. But is this model best for everyone? Given the availability of bar review courses that break from this traditional model, should students take advantage and start preparing for the bar exam before most bar review courses begin?
Most bar exam participants would agree that taking the bar exam is one of the least pleasant and most stressful experiences that they will face in their entire law career. The bar exam requires a massive amount of preparation to pass successfully, and the traditional bar review courses provide study schedules that reflect this requirement. A student can expect time spent with lecturers each day, followed by studying the course materials and taking practice exams and essays. These schedules consume the student’s day from morning till night. This model has proven successful for many students, and thus it would be hard to deny the value of rigorous preparation. In fact, it is easy to state that one cannot prepare too much for the bar exam. With that in mind, however, many students struggle with the demands placed on them by these schedules. Maintaining focus and determination for hours on end, day after day, for months is extremely difficult and challenging. One could even argue that for many students, this schedule proves too demanding.
The question then becomes what students can do to alleviate this stress. One possible answer is early preparation for the bar review courses. With the availability of products, such as Multistate Edge, that permit students to begin studying for the bar exam before traditional bar review courses begin, students can potentially alleviate the stress they will feel during full bar review study time by expanding the amount of time available to them to complete all of the necessary preparation. Students can get a jump start on their studies, even if only performed for a small amount of time beforehand, which could prove invaluable later. For example, Multistate Edge provides outlines and practice questions focusing on the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) portion of the bar exam, which features subjects that most students have not studied for quite some time. Keep in mind, most law school classes are not necessarily taught to prepare students for the bar exam. The bar exam tests students on fairly straight-forward, indisputable points of the law. There is no wiggle room on the MBE; there is one correct multiple-choice answer, which is unlike many law school exams which permit students to explain their thought processes and explanations via essay. Thus, early preparation can aid students in familiarizing themselves with the points of the law they must learn to pass the MBE. In addition, the MBE itself is structured in such a way that students must be able to read a question and answer it fairly quickly to be successful. While performing this task requires knowledge of the law, it also requires performing many practice exams to become familiar with the process and to hone this skill which is not typically required in law school. Further, the MBE has several “tricks” that will become familiar to students as they go through the practice exam process. Early preparation, before traditional bar study begins, gives students a jump start on working on this process, thus reducing the lag time that they might otherwise have to face if they began on a traditional schedule. This could prove invaluable to any number of students, and a small amount of study beforehand could make the difference between passing and having to retake the bar exam.
Not every student needs to begin studying for the bar exam before the traditional review courses begin. Every student is different. But if a student believes or knows that he or she will benefit from extra preparation, particularly before taking such an important test, it might benefit him or her to think about taking advantage of one of the early bar study courses available.
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