Having officially started Bar Prep today, I invite any and all fellow JD's out there who are sharing in the hazing process to share your tales here; and law students and pre-laws can feel free to ask Bar Related questions. Perhaps we can all get through the insanity together.
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DAY 1:
Dear Future, Current, and Past Law Students of the BLSD and beyond,
Today was the first day of PMBR. That acronym may not mean much to you now as you make your way through the jungle of the law school application process, but trust and believe you will become familiar with it. Don't worry about what it stands for...to be honest I don't even know what it stands for an I'm a PMBR rep at my law school. What is important is what it can give you. And as I write this, I have no idea whether or not any of this crap they have us going through will make the difference in passing or failing the bar, but I have to believe that it does - otherwise what the hell am I doing getting out of bed at 7:45am on a Monday. I don't get up on Mondays anymore. I don't get up on any days anymore for that matter. Haven't done that since we were actual law students (aka 1L's).
So like I was saying, Day 1 was contracts. They had us sit down in this crowded auditorium and take a 2 1/2 hour practice exam of the MBE. The MBE is one acronym that is probably worth knowing - that's the Multi-state Bar Exam. That's a fancy way of saying "Multiple Choice." Yes, just when you thought that standardized testing was over and done with, POW! Here comes the MBE upside your dome. The MBE...taking the substantive law that took you 4 months (or even up to a year) to memorize and fully comprehend and reducing it down to nothing more than a commercialized and meaningless "fill in the bubble" answer sheet. What a concept. All those nuances you learned - gone. All those exceptions to the exceptions to the exceptions - gone. All those hours spent trying to argue "both sides" of every legal issue - gone. Just fill in "C," Pal and keep it moving.
Oh you'll get the opportunity to write the essays that you know and love on the bar exam itself, but that's not until day 2 of the actual bar exam. That's what BarBri prepares you for. (if you don't know what BarBri is yet, you soon will). Day 1 is the multiple choice day of the exam. That's where the real fun is. At no surprise, this is also the day that makes or breaks most law students. People fail the bar because they fail the multiple choice half of the bar, not because they failed the essay half. You've been writing essays on law school exams for 3 years by now, you got that *&^% down to a science (hopefully). Mutliple choice however...you either know it or you don't. And sometimes, even when you know it, you still don't. They go by this "pick the best answer" bull that basically means that more than one answer can be correct, and you have to choose the "Best" correct (or incorrect) answer out of what you are given.
So they'll say some stuff like NYU Law School is located in:
A. California
B. Ohio
C. New Jersey
D. Virgina
The answer being "C" because Jersey is the "most correct" answer, even though it is wrong.
So anyway, getting back to Day 1 of PMBR - the multiple choice people. Today was Contracts. I hate contracts. I probably hate contracts b/c I hated my professor who "taught" contracts. I say "taught" but let's keep it real, he didn't teach jack *&^%. I learned contract law from Examples and Explanations, with a touch of Crunch Time. Which basically means I know the general concepts and that's about it. Rather, I should say I knew the general concepts, because after todays mock test I can clearly see now that I don't know jack about contracts.
50 multiple choice questions. I got 20 correct. What's worse is that when the professor polled the room to see how many people got right, the overwhelming majority got no higher than 25 correct. That's 1/2 man! WTF?
So there I am, graduating 3L, managing editor of Law Review, teaching & research assistant for multiple classes, on top of my game and got a whopping 20 out of 50 contracts questions correct. HA!
Gotta laugh at that one. Straight comedy. But the cool part was nobody was really trippin off of it because as today's lecturer told us, it does not matter how many you got correct or incorrect today - the Bar Exam is in July. You have 2 months to build on today and make sure you get these questions right when it counts.
And in case you're wondering what type of questions they ask, since the fair use doctrine applies here and there's no copyright infringement I'll give an example of a short one (one of the very few that I actually got right):
In a written contract Singer agreed to deliver to Byer 500 described chairs at $20 each F.O.B. Singer's place of business. The contract provided that "neither party will assign this contract without the written consent of the other." Singer placed the chairs on board a carrier on January 30. On February 1 Singer said in a signed writing, "I hereby assign to Wheeler all my rights under the Singer-Byer contract." Singer did not request and did not get Byer's consent to this transaction. On February 2 the chairs while in transit were destroyed in a derailment of the carrier's railroad car.
In an action by Wheeler against Byer, Wheeler probably will recover(A) nothing, because the Singer-Byer contract forbade an assignment
(B) the difference between the contract price and the market value of the chairs
(c) nothing, because the chairs had not been delivered
(D) $10,000, the contract price
Yeah.
I'll let ya'll figure that one out.
Day 2 tomorrow: Property. More to come later....
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