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Sunday, July 24, 2016

Last-minute advice for bar exam takers.

It's Sunday.  The bar exam is on Tuesday.  Some unsolicited advice:
  1. You are not going to learn new things now.  That's ok.  Don't panic.  
  2. Given #1, give yourself today and tomorrow (until 5p) to study.  Then STOP.  Do something relaxing Monday evening.  We're big fans of watching dumb, funny movies and going to bed early.
  3. Give yourself plenty of time to get to the exam site each day.  Don't stress yourself out by running late or forgetting that the Gods of Bar Stress love traffic jams and transit breakdowns.
  4. Consider packing your lunch so that you don't have to wait in long lines listening to other people talk about the exam.  Go for a walk at lunch, or do something else relaxing.
  5. On Tuesday night, write down the subjects that you discussed in Tuesday's exam.  You likely don't need to review those subjects for Thursday's questions.  Bar examiners are pretty smart about not repeating themselves.
  6. Remember the "consenting adults" rule:  don't talk about the exam in public, because someone will go away from that conversation very unhappy.  (You don't want that person to be you, and you really don't want to hurt another human, either, right?)  
  7. File away, for later, the funny things that happen during the bar exam.  When one of us took the California exam, the person next to her wore bracelets that scraped the table over and over.  By Thursday, there was ... a discusssion ... about why taking the bracelets off would be a smart thing to do.  When the same one of us took the Nevada exam, parts of the ceiling kept falling on her table, triggering thoughts of tort liability and sovereign immunity.
  8. Try to be kind to other people -- especially friends and family, but not just them -- while you're under extreme stress.  They will remember the unfunny parts of the bar exam period.
  9. BREATHE.

Monday, July 4, 2016

Law School Survival Manual cited in Journal of Legal Education

Thanks, Kris Franklin!  (Article here.)  And while I'm at it, thanks, Patti Alleva & Jennifer A. Gundlach, for citing my Rethinking U.S. Legal Education: No More “Same Old, Same Old” article in their article (here).