My Journey to the New York Bar - Upped My Game

Now that I knew which areas of the substantive law I needed to strengthen my knowledge on, I got myself organised by creating a study plan. I really went to town with my study plan, setting out certain days of the week to study specific topics and divided each session between revising notes and doing both multiple choice questions and essay questions for each topic.

 The areas of law where I felt more confident in, I studied on the days I worked, whereas, the areas of law where I knew I needed to spend more time on, I used Thursdays and Fridays to focus on them as I was no longer working on those days.

I decided to take on board a suggestion given to me first time round which I initially dismissed. The suggestion was to wake up between an hour and a half to two hours early to studying before work. As a person who really likes her sleep, the thought of waking up at 5.30am to study before getting ready to go to work, was really difficult! I didn’t like the idea at all! I would rather sleep late and be up until 2 or 3 o' clock in the morning studying then wake up at 5.30am!!

However, when I thought about the benefits of doing this, I decided to do it. I had to be disciplined and go to sleep a little earlier than usual so that I had sufficient sleep. I mainly did this on the days that I worked in the office (which was Monday-Wednesday) because after work I knew I would only get a maximum of two to three hours of studying done, before my brain would want to retire for the night. I used the early mornings to revise notes and read through the text books and used the evenings to go through exam practice questions and review my answers (and make additional notes of the answers I got wrong so that I could revisit the topics).

This literally was my life for 10-12 weeks leading up to the exam! Study, work, church repeat.

I had already invested a lot of time and money into this and as I believed it was the path for me to take and succeed in, I had to see it through until the end and make the necessary sacrifices to achieve what I had initially set out to achieve.

My Journey to the New York Bar - Back to the Drawing Board

By the time I arrived back in England, I had already decided to re-sit the Multi-state Bar Exams in February 2017. I reasoned with myself that as I had just over two and a half months to study and prepare for the exams, if I had a good study plan and focused well, I would be alright! I knew I needed to 'up my game' and change my strategy to get the results I wanted, which was to pass the bar exams.

I contacted Bar Bri International so that I could re-enroll onto the bar review course. What I really like about Bar Bri is that if you enroll onto their bar review course for the first and you do not pass the exam, you can re-enrol for free! You're not required to go review all of the video lectures again (unless you want to) and you can just focus on reviewing the topics you want to. You also get access to the same support you had before. I didn't make use of the full video lectures this time as I had sufficient notes that I took first time around. But the short 'bite-size' review videos were great to refresh my memory on the substantive law.

I was assigned a new mentor and I was quite happy this time round as she was a great help and very approachable. I felt I could relate to her especially because she didn’t pass the bar first time and passed on her second attempt, and was therefore able to guide and support me through the process of resitting the bar exams. One of the things I was taught was just to focus on the substantive law that I didn’t know well. Don't look through what I already know but put all my focus on what I did not know well; the topics I knew I struggled to grasp and understand.

The New York State Board of Examiners allow you to request a copy of your exam papers and answers so that you can review them. I thought about requesting them to see which questions I got wrong so I knew where I need to improve. But as I was in the UK and it was drawing close to the Christmas holiday season, I didn’t know how long it would take for me to receive them and I didn’t want any delay. I knew very well the topics I struggled with leading up to the exam and what I needed to spend more time on.

I went through my old lecture and revision notes, as well as my answers to the practice multiple choice and essay questions I did before as they served as a good indicator of where I needed to focus. Constitutional law was first one on that list LOL. I don't know why but it was the subject I struggled with the most, followed by criminal procedure and evidence (with its many exceptions!)

 By this time I was well into my new role at work and decided to continue working 3 days a week so that I could have Thursday and Fridays free to study the whole day as well as weekends and weekday evenings on the days when I was working during the day.

 So my prep for the bar started on 11th November 2017...