PICKING A STATE AND A BAR EXAM COURSE

 

Which State's Bar Exam Do I Take?

 

In deciding to take the Bar Exam, you must begin asking yourself where you would like to settle down and have a career.  Normally, this decision is made by virtue of where you first obtain employment. 

Naturally, for example, if you get hired for a job in New York, you should take the New York Bar Exam.  (You would not believe how many people take a job in another state, but still sit first for the bar exam in the state where they attended law school). 
Although you may be induced to sign up early for a bar exam in your law school state in an effort to save money, you can postpone taking the exam to another date for a small fee.  Focus on the finish line first and take the exam that is relevant to your employment.  After passing that exam, you can take as many bar exams in other states that you chose.

However, if you have not yet found a job by a few months prior to the exam, you will have to decide where you would like to work to start your career.  Another good idea is to check to see the “waive-in” rules regarding bar exams.  An attorney needs not take 50 bar exams to practice in 50 states.  Each state has different rules and may allow an attorney who passed the bar in another state to “waive in” without taking another bar exam.  For example, Illinois will permit attorneys who passed the New York Bar Exam to waive into Illinois after the attorney has practiced for 5 years. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. accepts reciprocity from every state.  Thus, if you intend to practice in DC, do not bother taking the DC bar exam.  Take another state’s bar, and you will automatically waive into DC when you pass.  The states that are notorious for not permitting this type of reciprocity are New Jersey and Florida.  You can be an attorney for 50 years, but if you want to practice full-time in those states, you must sit for another bar exam.

 

Which Bar Exam Course Do I Take?

 

Once you decide which bar exam to take, you must sign up for a bar exam course.  Unfortunately, you do not have many options.  BarBri, MicroMash, and Pieper are the most popular for complete review. 

PMBR is useful for the Multi-State section only.  However, almost 90% of test- takers take at least BarBri, so you are better off playing it safe with them.  The Bar Exam is scaled based on which students answer correctly or incorrectly.
Thus, if BarBri teaches the wrong information, all of the students who took the course will get the answer wrong, but they won’t be penalized because the examiners will just eliminate the question.  Similarly, every year, BarBri decides to select a “guess letter” for unknown answers.  If everyone taking the exam guesses the same letter incorrectly, the scales will be tipped and the examiners will remove that difficult question from grading.

Although the cost of BarBri will be expensive, you can try to reduce the cost by (a) offering to work for them as a student representative, (b) signing up for the course in your first year of law school to ‘lock-in’ the price, or (c) skipping the course altogether and buying the books used on eBay to study yourself.  For first time test takers, option (c) is not recommended because studying for the exam is a long and arduous journey.  Studying for the exam is easier if you are taking the course with classmates, and organized by the course so you will not have to cram.

In addition to Barbri, many students also take PMBR.  This course is much shorter and lasts about a week before BarBri and 3 days before the exam.  PMBR is much less expensive, but it only covers the six  subjects on the Multi-State Exam (MBE), which are: Evidence, Criminal Law/Procedure, Property, Torts, Contracts, and Constitutional Law.  Although BarBri covers these subjects as well, PMBR prides itself on proving more in-depth knowledge of the MBE.  While the PMBR course is beneficial, one could probably save money here by simply relying on BarBri.  Then again, it is hard to argue with the fact that about 94% of students who take both BarBri and PMBR pass the exam.

 

 

 

     
   
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