FROM BARWRITE®: HOW TO MANAGE TIME ON THE NEW YORK DAY OF THE NEW YORK BAR EXAMINATION
The time structure for the New York day of the New York bar examination is your lifeline for excelling on the bar exam. Focus on time. Grip your external time cues, including your watches, your clocks, and your notes to yourself that tell you when each part of the exam will begin and end. Time is key. The structure of the exam is time.
Avoid thinking about constructs in your own mind, like your lifetime goals. Avoid thinking about family fights. Avoid noticing events in the outside world, like the actions of your seatmate or the activities of the proctors. Your structure is time.
MORNING SESSION: 9am - 12:15pm. The morning session is three hours and 15 minutes long. It begins at 9am and ends at 12:15pm. There will be 50 New York multiple choice questions (NYMC) and three New York essay questions. Stay on time. Keep a steady flow of raisins or other small fruits moving through your system for fuel. Nothing crunchy, please.
NEW YORK MULTIPLE CHOICE: 9am - 10am. Start with the NYMC, and move through the questions, one foot in front of the other, at a steady pace. Treat the NYMC with respect, but do not dally. I suggest that in order to have 45 minutes available for each essay, you should allow 60 minutes for the 50 NYMC, finishing at 10am. That is 1.2 minutes per NYMC question, or three-tenths of a minute less than the New York Board of Law Examiners suggests. Do use all 60 minutes, but do not go over time. Do not second-guess yourself. Keep moving. Promptly at 10am, switch to the first essay question.
FIRST NEW YORK ESSAY: 10am - 10:45am. Pick up the first question in your packet, whatever it is. Forget about trying to pick an essay that is easy for you. Just begin with the first essay question. You have a production job here, producing paragraphs, so get in position on the assembly line and execute your job. At 10am, start reading and outlining. At 10:15am, start writing on the first page in your test booklet. You will spend five or six minutes on each paragraph. Finish the first essay at 10:45am.
Remember. You must stay on time. If you are not finished by 10:45am, do something drastic. Put together whatever law, facts, and conclusions you can, jam it all into one sentence, and write it on the page. Bits of blood, hair, nails, are fine. Just finish. Get out of there!
SECOND NEW YORK ESSAY: 10:45am - 11:30am. At 10:45am, start reading and outlining the second essay. At 11am, start writing on the first page in your test booklet. Finish the second essay at 11:30am.
Remember. You must stay on time. Bits of blood, hair, nails, anything! Just finish. Get out of there!
THIRD NEW YORK ESSAY: 11:30am - 12:15pm. At 11:30am, start reading and outlining the third essay. At 11:45am, start writing on the first essay page in your test booklet. Finish the third essay at 12:15pm.
Remember. You must stay on time. Bits of blood, hair, nails, anything! Just finish. Get out of there!
LUNCH: 12:15pm - 1:30pm. Remember to Eat the Right Food.
AFTERNOON SESSION: 1:30pm - 4:30pm. The afternoon session is three hours long. It begins at 1:30pm and ends at 4:30pm. There will be two New York essay questions and one Multistate Performance Test (MPT). Remember. The exam is about sticking to your time structure. Time is your lifeline. Check your watches before you begin the afternoon session.
FOURTH NEW YORK ESSAY: 1:30pm -2:15pm. At 1:30pm, start reading and outlining the fourth essay. At 1:45pm, start writing on the first essay page in your test booklet, five to six minutes per paragraph. Finish the fourth essay at 2:15pm.
Remember. You must stay on time. Throw in bits of blood, hair, nails, anything! Just finish. Get out of there!
FIFTH NEW YORK ESSAY: 2:15pm - 3pm. At 2:15pm, start reading and outlining the fifth essay. At 2:30pm, start writing on the first essay page in your test booklet, five to six minutes per paragraph. Finish the fifth essay at 3pm.
Remember. You must stay on time. Throw in bits of blood, hair, nails, anything! Just finish. Get out of there!
MULTISTATE PERFORMANCE TEST (MPT): 3PM - 4:30PM. The MPT is entirely about following directions and managing time.
At 3pm start tearing apart the Partner Memo into the little bits of information and analysis that the partner wants to find in your work product, and outline your task. Do your research. Write your headnotes in your test booklet. No later than 3:35pm, start to write your MPT task. Leave the first page of the test booklet blank. See below.
Make sure that you place ample landmarks at the tops of the pages in your work product. Use headnotes, numbers, and letters, so that the grader can see by looking at your page what is going on in there.
At 4:25pm, take the last five minutes to write the opening page and closing page of your work product. Go back over the partner memo for one last reading, checking to make certain that you have done everything the partner asked you to do. Review the format. Make sure that a memo has memo format, a brief has brief format, etc.
Finish the MPT at 4:30pm.
CONGRATULATIONS! You've completed the New York day, and you've done it on time!
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Wishing you the greatest success on the bar exam,
MCG
