What I'm glad I did in law school

I don't want to post ad nauseum about the bar exam and my law school experience. I'm also not representing this as "how to pass the Texas bar exam" because for all I know at this point, I've not yet accomplished that. Instead, here are some classes I'm glad I took, and experiences I found relevant, once I started the bar review process.

For the MPT

The MPT is an exercise in which you are given a packet with some made-up court cases, made-up law(s), made-up facts, and a task, usually to write a memo or some persuasive brief. In my opinion, this is probably the most valuable part of the bar exam, especially for potential solo practitioners; it simulates what you'd have to do to come up to speed quickly in an unfamiliar area of the law in order to solve a problem for a client. I'm really glad I took an extra research and writing course, a course in "advocacy" (at the appellate level), and I interned with an appellate court. Other things that might be good for this exercise might be to clerk for a law firm, and to compete in mock trial or moot court competitions where you need to do more research and writing.

Interestingly, and just by chance, I found my internship with an immigration lawyer particularly relevant during this part of the bar exam; the specific task I had on my MPT was to write a brief in support of a client who was trying to show his marriage was bona fide for immigration purposes. It was nice to feel familiar at least with this area of law, even though all the court cases and statutes were made-up.

For the MBE

The MBE is a (pretty difficult) multiple-choice examination covering the basic topics you learn as a first-year student (1L). I'm really glad I took additional courses in Evidence and Criminal Procedure. That pretty much rounded out the topics on the MBE for me. I also apparently had pretty broad-ranging classes in Real Property and Torts as a 1L; often, when the review professor in those areas said "You probably didn't cover this in your 1L class", it wasn't true for our class.

Other than that, I found it really helpful to do lots and lots of practice questions, and then to review the ones I got wrong. A small number I got wrong more than once, which was embarrassing, especially because I probably got those wrong on the bar exam as well. Oh well.

For the Texas Procedure and Evidence short-answers

The Texas bar exam asks 20 questions about criminal procedure and evidence, and 20 questions about civil procedure and evidence. Each question is answered in up to 5 lines of handwritten text. I was pretty happy again for having taken Evidence as well as Criminal Procedure. I have the feeling (and no first-hand experience to back it up!) that participating in mock trials, trial advocacy training, and as an intern in a trial court or district attorney's office would be helpful here too.

For the Texas subject exams

The Texas subject exams are 12 essay questions over two three-hour sessions. Just doing that much writing was pretty exhausting. The subject areas were pretty broad, too.

During the bar review, I was again pretty thankful for my 1L class in Real Property because we covered topics such as landlord/tenant law. I'm also glad I took Family Law, Trusts and Wills, Federal Income Tax, Business Organizations (which included a chapter on Agency), and Texas Consumer Law. Because I took those classes, those sections of the bar review were truly review for me.

Areas I didn't take classes in were Oil and Gas, Guardianship, Secured Transactions, and Commercial Paper. I found those pretty easy to pick up, partly because I found them pretty mechanical, and partly because I could focus on them and just review the other subjects.

If your school offers bar prep classes, such as for the MPT, you might consider taking them. On the other hand, I really can't imagine taking the bar exam without taking a bar reivew/prep course, so if you are sure you will take a review course anyway, then maybe you should take more substantive courses during your time at law school. If you've got the resources, it might not hurt to start practicing MBE questions with an online question bank "ahead of time", maybe during your 3L year, especially if you feel comfortable already with Evidence and Criminal Procedure. If don't already know those areas, then wait for the review course to teach you the basics in those subjects, because otherwise the review questions are likely to be frustrating.

One last thing. I ended up choosing to hand-write my exams, mostly because I'd already seen the bar exam software freeze up or fail for various classmates during final exams at law school (in fact, it even happened to me once). Although I still wonder if that were the right decision, I doubt it made much of a difference. I would have been better served doing a lot more hand-writing practice during the bar review process; most of the practice was online and typed, which was a very familiar environment. Time management is different when you hand-write, at least for me; I can type 80-90 words a minute, and certainly can't write that much. I think my hand-written essays were a bit shorter than typed ones would have been. In the end, it doesn't matter as long as I pass the bar exam; I wasn't going to get the top score even by typing, so unless hand-writing put me below the passing grade, I'm okay. Just saying if you make that choice for taking the bar exam, you might consider practicing time management while writing lots and lots of essays over a six-hour stretch.