BarWrite® Blog: Why Memorize for the Bar Exam? Part I

Can memorizing help raise your scores on the bar exam?  Yes, and memorizing will also help you practice law.  That's how the brain works and grows.  Read on for Part I of our series about Memorizing for Higher Bar Exam Scores and see below for information about BarWrite® bar classes for New York or for All States.

Surprised that memorizing is so good?  We all use our memories intensively every day.  We remember our telephone numbers and our loved one's names, and we remember what we are supposed to buy at the grocery store and what happened last year and ten years ago.  Without memory, we would be lost in the hell of amnesia.  Not only can we remember much of what happens, and the things we hear about, but we also know how to put things into our memories systematically, by practicing new skills.  And for

verbal information, practice produces memorization.  As our parents and teachers always said, practice makes perfect.  Memorizing is one of the most helpful friends we have.  When we travel, we may memorize vocabulary items in a new language.  Actors memorize their parts.  How could the ability to put things into our memories by practicing them systematically not be a wonderful gift?

Yet that helpful process of systematic memorization has somehow gotten a bad name.  In fact, however, current research indicates that when we repeat things, whether piano exercises or tennis strokes or verb paradigms or rules of law, our brains change.  They wrap around new pathways, and those changes in our brains make further learning faster and easier.  Take a look at Scientific American for March 2008, where you will find "White Matter Matters," by R. Douglas Fields.  And Daniel Coyle's well-reviewed recent book The Talent Code stresses that new research shows high achievement resulting from three things:  coaching, motivation, and repetition.  Yes, repetition.  As John Biesnecker says in a post on his language-learning blog, "Memorization, if done right, is simply priming your brain for processing material that you're going to encounter frequently."  http://www.GlobalMaverick.org.  The name of that post?   Repetitio est mater studiorum.  Sounds like it might help with the bar exam, right?

Read on, for more information about how to use memorizing for success on the bar exam, after this brief message from our sponsor, BarWrite®. . . .

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In the BarWrite® 10-Day Group Coaching School for the New York bar exam, we help aspiring lawyers pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses, launching them into the bar exam with skills and knowledge that accelerate them towards the masterful practice of law. 

Why wait?  Enroll today!

"I sat through one course of BARBRI, two courses of PMBR, one Marino Retaker course, and two BARBRI Marino essay courses.  Finally, I took the 10-Day BarWrite® course, and it was the only one that made me feel prepared for the New York bar exam.  The only course that I now recommend to other people is the  BarWrite course, which I loved."

-- Stefanie Weiss, Brooklyn Law School
(Member, New York bar)

See below for more information about the 10-Day School.  For information about our All States courses and our New York courses visit us at http://www.BarWrite.com.  Questions?  Staff@BarWrite.com.

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Now, back to memorizing and how it helps you.

Memorizing will help raise your scores on the bar exam, and it will help prepare you for the masterful practice of law.  That's why in the BarWrite® classes we use memorizing a lot.  Bar candidates often have trouble remembering the most-tested rules of law, but those frequently-tested rules are key to success on the bar exam. In my view, these bar candidates have, as it were, no sticky material on their own side.  If a bar candidate does not know the code rule for a motion to dismiss, for example, he not only has trouble learning that rule, but he also has trouble learning the motion for summary judgment and the motion for a directed verdict.  On the other hand, once a bar candidate memorizes one of those rules, he can relatively easily go on to learn the others.  Learning one rule by heart can open up whole new areas of law.  That's why students in the BarWrite® Schools for the New York bar exam memorize the most-frequently tested rules of law.  If they memorize that relatively small number of rules of law, they not only put those rules into inventory for use on the exam, they also give themselves a foundation for learning new areas of law.  At BarWrite® we call those most-frequently tested rules the World Cup Rules. Does memorizing help you raise your scores on the bar exam?  Listen to Vijay Bhagwati:

BarWrite®'s regular emphasis on memorizing the rules for World Cup each day makes essay writing so very easy. Practicing multiple choice questions using Under-Here-Therefore method made the MBE much, much easier.  I would highly recommend the 10-day Group Coaching course to anyone.

--Vijay Bhagwati, Member, New York bar

The 10-Day School for the New York bar exam. What is the  BarWrite® 10-Day School?  The 10-Day School meets on week-ends in New York City.  The BarWrite® 10-Day School teaches you a full system for the bar exam, to supplement your Pieper or BarBri course.   BarWrite® helps you pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses right at the beginning of the course, with the BarWrite® MBE/Essay Skills Evaluators^TM.  Then you can start building a solid foundation of the most-frequently tested law and learn to use the MBE/Essay/MPT Skills-Builder Systems^TM.  You receive the highly-acclaimed book Scoring High on Bar Exam Essays, and the new book Perform Your Best on the Multistate Performance Test, plus New York essay materials, and complete MBE materials that we license from the National Conference of Bar Examiners.  You receive weekly study Blueprints, Reports, and Tests^TM, to keep your schedules on track, and you receive coaching for your study schedules.  You will want to know, Is this process working?  What will it still take for you to feel you are really ready for the bar exam?  A month into the class, we find out, by looking at the your MBE/Essay Bar Skills Re-evaluators^TM, so you have the information to design your Final Sprint Accelerators^TM towards the bar exam. Does this help you pass the bar exam and become a better lawyer?  That's what our  BarWrite® graduates tell us. 

"I promise you that if you truly follow Dr. Gallagher’s method, you will not only pass the NYS Bar, but you will be equipped with the necessary tools to complete any legal analysis that you can utilize for your future career.”
     

   --Curlina Edwards, CUNY Law School at Queens College

For more information and to enroll, visit http://www.barwrite.com/10day-lawcoachingschool.html.  To look at our other classes, visit http://www.BarWrite.com.  And you can purchase the book and CDs Scoring High on Bar Exam Essays right there on-line, at http://www.BarWrite.com.

For more information about BarWrite® visit us at http://www.BarWrite.com.

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Wishing you the greatest success on the bar exam, MCG

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And now a key hint for how to study effectively, from Bar Write Blog's sponsor:

SCORING HIGH ON BAR EXAM ESSAYS . This book "may be the best money you can spend on bar exam preparation." -- The St. John's Law School Forum. The BARWRITE® ALL-STATES MPT BOOT CAMP boosts your score on an often-overlooked source of competitive advantage, the Multistate Performance Test (MPT).  THE BARWRITE® TEN-DAY GROUP COACHING SCHOOL helps you pole-vault the bar. "My MBE went from a 126 to a 149!" Gemma Waananen Kenney (Member, New York and New Jersey Bars). Dr. Gallagher recommends that foreign-trained attorneys supplement BarBri or Pieper with BarWrite's TEN-DAY ESSAY-INTENSIVE GROUP COACHING SCHOOL.  THE BARWRITE® THREE-DAY NEW YORK ESSAY BOOT CAMP boosts essay scores. "Dr. Gallagher takes the mass of information studied and teaches her students how to apply it effectively in essays," says Christina Valentine, Australian solicitor (Member, New York Bar).