BarWrite® Blog

BarWrite® Blog: Learn to Finish the MPT and Bar Exam Essays on Time

HOW ARE THE ESSAYS DIFFERENT FROM THE MPT? One obvious answer is that the bar exam essays are different from the Multistate Performance Test (MPT)--or the California Performance Test--because the essays require knowing a lot of law, which the MPT does not.But don't let that difference distract you. It''s easy to overlook key similarities. First, both the essays and the MPT require a bar candidate to stay in control of time. Second, both the essays and the MPT require a bar candidate to read

BarWrite® Blog: MBE Bar Exam Myths

"People always say that time changes things, but actually, you have to change them yourself."                                                                                          --  Andy Warhol

The bar exam season is here, and so students are asking me, "How many practice MBE questions should I do every day?" They expect me to give them a big number, like 33 or 50 or 100.

In fact, I take a totally different approach to the MBE.  Numbers have nothing to do with it.  My method for raising your score on the MBE is painful but effective, and it does not involve 33 or 50 or 100.  I say that the way to raise your MBE score is to learn more law and learn to do patient legal analysis.  That's right:  learn more law, do better on the bar exam.  What a concept!   But learning more law is painful.  Patiently applying the law to practice fact patterns, one element at a time, is slow and agonizing.  And on many days, you won't feel the progress you are making.

BarWrite® Announces Ten-Day School for July 2008 New York Bar Exam

BarWrite® President Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D., announces that BarWrite will offer its popular 10-day Group Coaching School, starting Sunday, June 1, 2008. "Students can see whether they are making real progress in their ability to score high on the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE)," Dr. Gallagher explains,

New BarWrite® Boot Camp for All States' Bar Exam Essays

BarWrite® and BarWrite Press president Dr. Mary Campbell Gallagher will teach bar candidates how to overcome common essay hurdles and boost their bar exam essay scores in an intensive live One-Day All-States

Bar Exam Candidates Become Cheerful and Self-Confident After Full Day of Writing Practice Essays: BarWrite® Expands Group Coaching School to Ten Days

Bar candidates who spent a full day in February 2007 writing practice bar exam essays under exam conditions became notably more cheerful and confident, says BarWrite® president Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D. "Students reported a tremendous boost to their morale."

The experiment was so successful that starting with the new bar-preparation class that begins on May 19, 2007, bar-preparer BarWrite® will include a full day of writing practice bar exam essays as a regular part of the "Ten-Day Group Coaching School."

BarWrite® Announces New York Bar Essay Boot Camps for July 2007 Bar Exam

BarWrite® announces that it will include three-day New York Essay Boot Camps among its supplemental classes for the July 2007 bar exam. There will be two sessions, Tuesday through Thursday, June 12-14, or Tuesday through Thursday, July 10-12, 2007.

According to BarWrite's president, Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D, each Essay Boot Camp will be an immersion intensive, meeting three weekdays in a row, eight hours a day, in Midtown Manhattan.

The PMBR Case Teaches Some Lessons

The facts of the PMBR case are riveting. At every administration, the NCBE uses some recent MBE questions again, so as to make sure that the new exam is of the same level of difficulty as the previous exam. PMBR, knowing this, would systematically copy the MBE questions and use them in the pre-test it administered during its classes preparing candidates for the next exam. Most disappointingly, PMBR made the fact that its questions were so much like the real questions on the MBE into one of its primary advertising claims.

The case reminds us all, however, that the MBE is an extremely difficult exam.

Here is a journalist's report on my comments on NCBE v. PMBR.

"The BarWrite method for the MBE requires students actually to master many of the rules of law that the MBE tests," Dr. Gallagher says. "What a concept! Know more law, do better on the MBE."

The method PMBR preached in its three-day classes, Dr. Gallagher says, was different. It suggested students should do 50 questions a night, but it did not systematically teach the law. Doing 50 questions a night without systematically learning the law does not raise most people's MBE scores. . . ."

BarWrite Seven-Day School to Begin Sunday, May 28

BarWrite announces that its famous seven-day intensive group coaching school for the New York bar exam begins at 8:45am on Sunday, May 28, in Midtown Manhattan. On Saturday, May 27, there will be a 200-question MBE test, using actual MBE questions, as a pre-test. This pre-test is

BARWRITE ANNOUNCES DATES FOR NEW COURSES

BarWrite has now announced a schedule for schools to prepare candidates for the New York exam and other bar exams in February 2006. The BarWrite schools will include the Seven-Day Essay-Intensive/Retaker Group Coaching School for the New York bar exam, the