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Core essay issues

Survey courses don't identify core essay issues
If you study the same outline for the multistate (MBE) and the essay exam, you are going to be short-changing the essay exam. Here’s why: the multistate tests broadly but requires only conceptual understanding. You are actually reasoning among the answer choices.

People who get a passing score on the mbe (roughly 132 raw score) believe they know the law. But understanding legal concepts across a breadth of issues is not enough for the California essay exam. The essay exam tests the issue’s rule, the exception to the rule and often the exception to the exception. Unless you have the rules and the exceptions memorized, you don’t even see the subtle problems the essay is raising.

Luckily, the body of law the essays tests is much narrower than that of the MBE. In a big subject like contracts, there may be 15 or 20 core issues in every subject that you really need to know inside and out. Here’s the problem: the law outlines and course lectures of your survey course replicate the breadth of the subject as taught in law school. This is MBE law. There is so much law that you can’t possibly have the rules, exceptions and exceptions to exceptions memorized for everything. So you wind up with a superficial gloss on a broad number of issues. But neither the outlines nor the lectures focus you on the issues you should concentrate on for the essay exam. See: Daily tips for bar study

If you don’t know the core issues well, you can’t even see what the essay is asking you to discuss, let alone reason well in your answer.

Are you at risk?
• Were you in the bottom half of your law school class?
• Did you attend an unaccredited or California accredited law school?
• Is English your second language?
• Did you attend law school in another country?
• Do you feel you have mastered an issue once you understand it conceptually?
• Do you do much better on multiple choice exams than on essay exams?

BarBoost fills the void
Vivian Dempsey has been studying the California Bar Exam since 1978, when she took the exam. She has reviewed every essay exam question and written answers to most of them. She has identified the core issues that are most likely to be tested on the essay exam. She doesn’t give you any more law outlines, but gives you a list of core issues in every subject. When you read your survey course law outlines, you’ll know what parts to read for conceptual understanding and what parts you need to memorize. You can’t know everything in detail. You have to make choices. With the guidance in the BarBoost course book, you are making informed choices and you multiply your chances of passing the California bar exam your first time.

For more info: info@BarBoost.com or phone (800) 949-PASS

Also see these related sites:
The Writing Edge and California Bar Exam Questions and Answers