By Mariya Starchevsky

George Mason University School of Law graduate

July 2008 New Jersey/New York Bar Exam

Having gone to school in Virginia, but studying for the bar in New Jersey, I feel stranded. I have no study group. From the looks of the people around me, I want no study group. I’m sitting in my Bar/Bri class, and two rows in front of me are surfer boys, freshly tanned, just out of the gym.

They’re making a mess by throwing peanuts at each other, trying to catch them with their mouths. I consider telling them to pick it up. Then, I have a clairvoyant vision – me and that dude chewing with his mouth open. I’m in a suit addressing him with, “May it please the Court.” I wisely rethink my remarks. The Bar/Bri review peanuts remain on the floor.

In post-Independence Day celebrations, my friends drag me to a Rita’s. While waiting on a line of 30 for my Italian ice, I notice that everyone is bronzed, with wet hair, clearly wearing swimsuits under their clothes. It dawns on me: “it’s summer.” It hasn’t been summer here. Bar/Bri has become my best friend. I see it more often than I see anyone in my family. Bar/Bri calls me constantly, and I call it. But our relationship is a strained one. Bar/Bri’s bossy – tells me what to do.

The “Pace Program” outlines all sorts of assignments from day one to the night before the first exam day. It requires between nine to 14 hours of work each day. I’m a bad friend – I’ve been coming up with my own ideas. I merely outline issues from practice essays instead of writing out the whole thing. I refuse to handwrite notes, and instead type them directly into my laptop. I discovered that it takes me over four hours to retype and summarize if I handwrite first. Also, constantly typing keeps me awake.

The lectures are boring, exciting, excruciating and impressive. Some professors should bottle and sell it as an affective sleeping agent. Others, like Professor Schechter, are so engaging that I wake up in the morning looking forward to the next lecture. After over a month of studying, I am confused. I take multiple choice practice tests for the MBE and everything is upside down.

Two weeks left and Bar/Bri lectures are over. After approximately 135 hours of videotaped lectures, I gingerly reduced my notes to about 300 pages ready for memorization — all for the privilege of becoming a lawyer. I am completely burned out and now the real work begins. My failure to handwrite the notes, my neglect to write out some of the New York Practice essays, and my utter disregard for practice Multi-state Performance Tests absolutely guarantees my failure.

Out of great insight, I also enrolled with Kaplan/PMBR for a three-day review, starting after the Bar/Bri lectures are over, approximately ten days before the Bar. The first day of Kaplan is my second full-day MBE practice exam. Again, I am a bit above average, and again, that’s just not good enough for the unsettling turning in my stomach. Both Bar/Bri and Kaplan/PMBR conduct comprehensive reviews of the full-day MBE practice exam. Each time I attended, I left within an hour after feeling like a five-year-old. Yes, the answers are provided for us at the end of the exam. It is the night before the exam – why didn’t I waste time reviewing things I already knew?

For the past week, I have been dividing topics by most interrelation and outlining many, many essay questions for the New York bar. Property, mortgages, secured transactions, commercial paper and contracts all go well together. So do federal jurisdiction, conflicts of law, civil procedure and evidence with each other. I completed every New York released essay, but the New York multiple-choice section keeps me up at night in a cold sweat.

The first day of the Bar is the New York Bar section. I drove into Manhattan, forty-five minutes from where I live. The first day was grueling. The room sat over 2,000 but had only three bathroom stalls in the ladies room. The cascade of typing was something fierce. I put in a pair of earplugs, whipped out my highlighter and got to work.

The Multiple Choice section was intense, but the first three essays were fairly straightforward. I answered the parts I knew, I piled it higher and deeper on the parts I didn’t. I was shocked at how many topics I spent weeks slaving over were barely tested. On the second day, I took the MBE in New Jersey at the Meadowlands Expo Center. A huge room for over a thousand was set up, but it looked as though only about 300 decided to take the MBE there that day. New Jersey is a second bar for many, and those in New York opt to take the MBE section in their home state. I was just happy for the free parking.

Three hours, 100 questions for the morning section. Rinse and repeat in the evening.

The third day was the breaking point. This is the state I need, but taking New Jersey and another exam means New Jersey is the “second exam.” New Jersey primarily tests seven topics – all the multi-state subjects and civil procedure. Also, the New Jersey Bar consists of seven essays, one for each topic. I was one of the lucky ones – the 400 – who won the lottery to use a laptop instead of handwriting the exam. This means the Bar Examiners got lucky too. My handwriting is so bad I could have been a doctor.

A word to the wise. Whatever worked for you in law school will work for you during bar preparation. If you need to do a lot of practice questions, do it. If you need to read the texts, do it. If you need to work in a study group, do it. However, if being nervous does not work for you, state the following mantra repeatedly: “partial credit; only need to pass”. It’s the only way most of us make it.