Do foreign-trained attorneys who want to become members of the New York bar need to take a full bar review course like Pieper or BarBri?
"Yes, indeed!" says Dr. Mary Campbell Gallagher, the founder and president of BarWrite®, and an expert on the bar exam. There are at least five things a full New York bar course can do for you that you can't do for yourself. Notice, by the way, that
Here are five reasons you MUST take a full bar review course:
1. A full bar review course can explain what is important for the New York bar exam and what you don't need to worry about. The amount of material is enormous, and you can't possibly learn it all. You need help sorting what is important from what is unimportant for the exam.
2. A full bar review course can give you structure, requiring you to attend lectures, hand in essays, and do practice tests. Studying for the bar exam is stressful, lonely, and exhausting. Without structure, the days melt into each other, and you aren't sure whether you have covered material or not, or whether you have mastered it or not.
3. A full bar review course can give you feedback, telling you what you are doing right and wrong. This is key. You absolutely cannot do this for yourself. On your own, you have no way of knowing whether you are doing things right or not. You may be tempted to use whatever standards were successful in your home country. Often, they are totally different from the standards on the New York bar exam.
4. A full bar review course can give you a daily plan for studying, telling you what to study every day. Having a daily plan is vital to success. You must be learning new material and reviewing old material every single day. Without a daily plan, you just won't finish all of the work you need to for success on the New York bar exam.
5. A full bar review course can give you tests, so you know whether or not you are making progress. How are you going to tell whether you have mastered the material? You can't wait until you take the exam, that's too late. Tests, feedback, and structure are all key, a full bar review course can give them to you, and you cannot supply them for yourself.
Many foreign-trained bar candidates study for a year in American law schools, Dr. Gallagher says, but they do not learn the material in the same way that JDs learn it. According to Dr. Gallagher, foreign-trained bar candidates need to supplement their full bar review course and memorize the most-frequently tested New York law in easy-to-use form. They need intensive training in American legal writing style, American law office formats, and exam protocols. That is how BarWrite® supplements the full bar review courses. But the full bar review courses are KEY.
Everyone--both JDs and LLMs--needs to take a full bar review course and supplemental courses. But for a foreign-trained lawyer who wants to pass the bar exam and become a member of the New York bar, the full bar review course is the sine qua non, an urgent necessity.
