Property Drills

Man these are hard. I took almost 3 minutes per question. And I only got 55% right. I don't know why they're making us do drill questions when we haven't even had the full lecture on property yet. Tomorrow is the last day on Property.

Our property lecturer is this person. I think she started off on the wrong foot by 1) having the mic on too loud, and 2) speaking way too fast. By the end of the first hour people's heads were about to explode. During the break someone suggested that she tone it down a bit and she did. It was still long though. It felt as though she was rushing. I found humorous how she would insert the phrase "over there" in her sentences. Eg, "to A, but if liquor is ever consumed on the land, then it'll go over there to B." I actually think her pace is fine, given that she provided fill-in-the-blank notes. Some of the people were complaining b/c they like to type. I usually just go with whatever is handed out to us and listen passively.

These full-day lectures are taking a toll on me. I'm beginning to have some insomnia again. Falling further behind on assignments...

BTW thanks to all for referring to my poll. I got lots of traffic today!

P.S. Here is some guy giving free advice on the bar exam!

Con Law Day

I am busy busy busy.

Went from 9 to 5 today with Chemerinsky. I can't believe he lectured without notes for the entire time. I'm not sure if I should trust what he's saying if he's speaking completely from memory. But then again it's him. It is frankly astounding what he is capable of. Not only did he mention case names, he also got all the numbering and lettering in the outline correct. Now did he take time to memorize that or does he have a photographic memory? Probably the latter. How great would it be to have photographic memory for the bar?

His puns were fairly well received at St. Mary's. I laughed once about how the Supreme Court used to have obscene movie night.

I've decided to make electronic flash cards. My handwriting sucks and copying it all over again can't hurt.

Turned in practice essay. Rent day tomorrow. Furniture still hasn't arrived yet.

Real Life

An interesting post from the Yahoo group:

You know what can make you forget about just failing the bar exam
(again)? Finding out you failed the bar exam, going to Walmart and
getting robbed and beaten in the parking lot by two men. Of course,
spending Memorial Day weekend in the hospital with a face that looks
like I went multiple rounds in a boxing match, bruises the size of
grapefruit and oh, of course, a missing purse with my credit cards
being used throughout Sacramento added to this absolutely horrible
weekend. On a happier note, I really am glad I'm here to complain and
not dead. And no, they didn't find who did it.

Ok, which of yall did a quick rundown of possible tort claims in your head just now? Discuss.

Also, the story reminded me of this Japanese workout video.

Barbri Takers:

Please only vote once. And spread the word:

Free polls from Pollhost.com

With regard to the Paced Program...

I have not fallen behind, and I intend to keep up all summer. I have fallen behind, but will try to catch up. I have not fallen behind, but expect to later on during the summer. I have fallen behind, but it doesn't bother me. I do all the assignments but don't read the CMR. I am not worried at all about keeping up with the program. This is a question of fact and should be decided by the jury. The program is extreme and outrageous and has caused me severe mental distress.

The Fine Art of Bullshiting

Mr. Sakai (scroll to bottom) is our lecturer for the Essay Writing Workshop. It was kinda good. We actually had to do some work in the workshop. We outlined 3 essays. He didn't really take a lot of time going over the answers b/c there was a model outline in the back for us to look at. I think it really isn't important at this stage what we get right / wrong. In fact he said it's good now that we don't know anything. Because it'll be the only time when we get to BS. And that, is an essential skill when you blank out. He also gave a pep talk in the first hour which made me really nervous.

Doing the Evidence essays made me realize that this type of writing is what I should have been doing in law school all along. It's just that no one ever told me. For each piece of evidence, you're supposed to talk about relevance. Well actually the lecturer tells us it's not necessary. But the "problem solving approach" is new to me. I never had a list of issues to discuss for every piece of evidence. In my law school evidence class, I just went with whatever came to mind. Having this checklist of issues let's me know what exactly to practice. The thing about practicing essays, though is that it's never really worth it to write out an entire essay unless you can have it graded. You do it just to confirm you know the rules of law and that your sense of timing isn't off. But other than that, writing essays seems to be a big waste of time.

I just wrote an essay today, which will be turned in for grading tomorrow. It was about torts. I missed the number 1 issue to start it off. And then apparently you're supposed to talk about defenses for every type of claim. I forgot to do this for a few claims. I wrote it by hand like I intend to do on the actual exam. Also I don't have a printer.

I clear jug of water a few days ago. I've been using it as a sort of trash container. Anyways it still hasn't filled up but it's turned into this cool time capsule that is a record of what I've been eating on a day-to-day basis. Today I added a plastic fork, a yogurt cup seal, and some cherry pits. It's kinda gross. Especially when I open it and can smell the contents.

Torts MPQ AD 1-56

I did bad on these. Not only was I as slow as last time, I only got 55% right. With the IQ's, usually you can cross off 2 choices immediately, because they would be either ridiculous or a wrong statement of law. With the AD's, often all four choices would sound plausible. Often the choice that sounds like nonsense turned out to be correct. It was a big blow to my confidence to have my intuition come up wrong so many times.

After going thru the answers, I am still not completely satisfied with all the explanations. Some of the explanations are highly annoying b/c it would ramble on and on about the basic rule. And then gloss over the grey area where I picked wrong choice. But I did learn a lot too. The AD's are very nit-picky.

I haven't done the essays yet. Maybe I should do at least one before bed...

Evidence MPQ AD 1-56

60%. Also, I was way slower with these than the IQ. I took longer than the 1:48 per question limit. I think there were several first-impression questions that I really stopped and thought about. The trick with MBE's is that you just can't think. It's got to be reflexive. For example if I see an exclamation mark anywhere in the question, I automatically look for excited utterance.

Was supposed to outline 2 evidence Q's but only did one. Will do some more today.

I am slowly figuring out my apartment complex. Apparently the several highrises are not separated, but connected via a balcony walkway. I figured this out as I was doing laundry yesterday. I wonder if they are also connected underground. It's really quite a labyrith.

Another Day...

Well I checked all the Evidence IQ's I did. I did get lucky on a few, having misunderstood the question but still guessing right. Next time I'm going to circle the ones I'm not sure about, b/c it was a big waste of time going over all 70 questions, because for some, I really didn't have to go over.

I like the following clip. Is he leading?

Congrats to the Feb Passers!

Congrats to Rob and "Anonymous Failee". And to all the other passers.

I did 70 evidence MBE's today, from MPQ IQ. Basically all the IQ. I got 75%. It didn't feel like 75% because I was basically guessing all along. I don't know anything about Evidence. Perhaps I will learn some Evidence after I check my answers later on. I wonder if I would swtich back to PMBR b/c many ppl have said that it's harder, especially the red book. See here. I don't see how I can fit PMBR back into my schedule. Maybe I will just cut out some Barbri questions whenever I have to do them.

Holy...

So i skipped out on a few MBE's today. Tomorrow I need to do 70. Is anyone else feeling exhausted from the crushing workload imposed by Barbri? I mean, 70 MBE's will take a couple of hours to do, timed. Then I have to go back and review all the questions again. And that's like the whole day tomorrow. And when you think things lighten up a bit after such a big day, you have another 50 the next day, and then another 50. All the while there are other tasks like outlining essay answers, reading CMR, making flash cards, etc etc. It's simply impossible to get it all done. Why must Barbri make me feel like I'm a failure?

Flashcards!

I haven't been makin' them. Didn't really see a need to. Until now. You don't really need to memorize the elements and stuff when you're just doing multiple choices. But when I did my first written question today I realize something. They expect me to regurgitate a mini outline of the law! Holy crap. This means I have to copy the elements of every tort, and and...everything, onto index cards. I, see, now.

Part of me think this is just silly. I mean I did memorize the multiplication tables but that is useful. I don't think lawyers actually know this crap if you asked them. So we're memorizing something only to forget it again. Which is dumb.

But come to think of it again, if we were given mini outlines on the essays, the essays would just turn into a writing contest and that just isn't fair. The only fair way to test is to test our capacity to memorize. Anything. We might as well be memorizing nursery rhymes.

Anyhow so I began making flashcards in earnest. For a moment I thought about doing them on Microsoft Access, but then decided to go paper. I don't want to carry around my computer all the time.

This guy is doing our Evidence lectures. He's material is not as funny as the previous one. But he's pretty clear. The one funny comment he made was totally unprepared. The microphone he'd been using was going nuts. After minutes of struggling with it in vain, he said, "I knew I shouldn't have turned on my pacemaker this morning." That got a giggle out of me.

*Title Goes Here*

The schedule that Barbri laid out is grueling. You are basically swimming in this stuff 24-7. If you hate it, you need to learn to no mind it quick. Because frankly if don't like this stuff, it's a lot of pain. I already know that if I fail this time, I will definitely retake. But I can't say for the third time. Even so, I can already imagine the huge sense of disappointment I'm going to feel if I fail. This is a major effort. (BTW good luck to all you Feb takers.) I can't imagine anyone trying to juggle anything else with Barbri. I guess if you don't do their homeworks it's manageable.

I've been reading the May entries of AGWIABE. She sounded to be in a pretty good mood in May. I am not really in a good mood, but not in a bad mood either. From her posts, I can tell that she probably took Barbri in the same place I am. Also, I believe her torts lecturer is the same as mine. He is this guy. I haven't posted much about his lectures but he is totally funny. His lecture was like a comedy act. Pure gold.

That is it for now. I leave you with this story on the ongoing the Barbri class action suit.

Torts, MPQ IQ 34-74

I blazed through these. 40 questions, a little less than an hour. And I got a lot right. I only missed 9--over 75% right! Here is what I think is the reason for my success with these 40:

1) the questions were shorter. Most of the questions were one fact pattern followed by multiple calls.
2) I realized that sometimes, when you get the gist of the question, you really dont have to finish reading the question. For example, you don't really have to read how exactly P got hurt. Irrelevant.
3) Since these are all torts, there are only like 5 possible situations that can pop up. If you just knew the products liability rule, you got several right.
4) It was kinda cold where I was sitting. I had to move the generate my own blood flow. Also I was uncomfortable and wanted to get away from there.
5) Finally, the diff b/t y'day and today was that I now understand products liability.

Okay, now to catch up with my CMR readings.

More Torts

I did some Torts MBE's today, timed. Torts is my best subject. However I've never timed myself up until now. I think I have a speed issue. For the first drill, I did just 10 and found that I was taking 20 more seconds per question than I should be! You need to be doing 1 question per 1:08. I then did another 30 or so in the MPQ book. I was barely able to finish within the proper amount of time. But I misread a few b/c I felt rushed. I got 60%.

I think all this will get better with time. I'm not going to read any faster in 2 months, but I am still memorizing the rules. When you know the rules, you can sometimes know exactly what the question is talking about, and exactly which answer is right. You don't have to think about it at all. Which is what I'm doing now.

I'm also making some flash cards, like the Barbri instructor told us to. I'm not sure what good they'll do. Currently I have 6 cards. I think one of them is about attractive nuisance.

Still trying to catch up with Convisor readings.

Falling Behind

Well I can't finish the reading for today. I can't believe I'm already falling off the train on the first day of Barbri. Okay, perhaps I shouldn't have gone to South SF to drop off the car today and then try to return some stuff at Mervyn's. But 100 pages of Conviser Mini Review? I mean, that's like 6 hours of reading, if you're really trying to read.

Also. Is it really necessary to have so many different books? Maybe they should color code them or something. And of course, the biggest book we have to carry to class everyday.

I also bought a pack of raisins and nuts from Starbucks. Folks, do *not* eat any raisins and nuts from Starbucks.

Update

Well I'm here in SF. Much has happened since the last post; I'm not sure where to begin. Movers threw my stuff in their truck. Stayed with aunt one night. Final dinner and party with friends. Went home for two days instead of going to graduation. Flight. Lease signing. Shopping for air mattress. Dropped off rental car and rode bart back to the city. Attended first day of Barbri. Now waiting for the phone people to show up.

Here are some of my thoughts:
1) SF is really a bit cold, even though it's sunny right now.
2) The rent is really expensive.
3) There is a shortage of parking space in SF. I would get somewhere and then waste another 15 minutes looking for a parking space.
4) Barbri will fill my days. There is no way I can do anything else if I just stuck to the Barbri schedule.
5) I didn't realize there was such a huge lecture hall under St. Mary's. It's kinda ugly.

Logistical Nightmare

I wake up to a call today. Apparently, the apartment promised to me in SF is no longer available. They were doing their walk thru today and to their surprise, someone was still living there! I'm not sure if they're holdover tenants or there was a leasing office screw up, but for about 4 hours today I had no place to live. I composed a very polite email explaining my problems, asking for accomodations, and most important, hinting at a lawsuit. By the afternoon I had another "better" apartment. I'd like to think my email did the trick but chances are they had a backup unit all along and was just trying to manage my emotions. (You see, if they waited 4 hours, I'd be incredibly grateful instead of just pissed. I was actually pretty grateful. I think I actually used the word "awesome" in one email.) I spent about an hour changing all my mail forwarding.

The second "crisis" had to do with my comforter. The dry cleaners wouldn't give it back to me. It was due back last week, but every time I go back they tell me to come back the next day. Well I thought the movers were coming today so I had to have it back. I went in there today all ready to throw my well-rehearsed fit. I don't throw fits spontaneously so I have to think about what to say ahead of time. Anyhow to my relief they had it and I didn't get to deliver my speech on good customer relationships. When I got back, the movers left a message saying they won't be here until tomorrow morning.

Right now, I'm eating a yogurt. I forgot which box I put my spoons in so I'm just using my finger.

Another Post about Nothing

Life has been hectic. Lots of get-togethers etc. I'm living out of boxes at the moment. Move is in a few days.

I haven't been doing any of the MBE's like I'd planned to. Barbri starts in a week and I'm in no better shape than any other law student.

In total I have done about 100 MBE's. I have not done any practice essays or performance tests. I read a book on California Community Property, and also tried to learn Criminal Procedure via PMBR audio CDs. I also listened to a worthless Remedies CD. Finally I read some strategy books, from which I've retained nothing.

Clearly I do not have the discipline for self-study and I need to take Barbri.

Movers

I called a few movers and chose one. The move will cost $2000, which the firm will reimburse. The apartment is a huge mess. I need some boxes. Will visit U-Haul tomorrow.

Parents are coming over this weekend to help me clean up a bit. I think maybe I should back a suitcase and have them take it.

Unfair Torts Question

So I've started slowing doing practice MBE's again. Here is a torts question that I missed.

Husband is working in the yard. Killer comes up and shoots him, right in front of Alice, Husband's wife. Alice sues Killer for mental anguish. She will:

B) win, b/c it is highly probable that Killer's outrageous conduct would cause emtional distress to Alice.
D) win, b/c she is Husband's wife.

Here is the explanation. Under Section 46 of the Restatement of Torts 2d, one who by extreme and outrageous conduct intentionally or recklessly causes severe emtional distress to another is subject to liability for such emotional distress. Moreover, where such conduct is directed at a third person, the actor is subject to liability if he intentionally or recklessly causes severe emtional distress to a member of such person's immediate family who is present at the time. Answer: B.

Seems to me that not only is D correct, but it is also the more specific answer b/c this is a third-party situation. I picked D.

Here is sort of a parallel:

Bob is heavily near-sighted; he always wear his glasses to read. He bought a book. He will:
A) be able to read the book, b/c he always wears his glasses.
B) be able to read the book, b/c he knows how to read.

Technically, both A and B are correct. But what would you choose? You'd have to go with the more specific answer, here, one that addresses his near-sighted-ness. Right?

Done with School!

I coulda left early today from my last exam. But I didn't. I sat there for the final ten minutes just taking it all in. The students with the frustrated looks on their faces, the classroom that's been like a second home, the clicking on the keyboards. I couldn't believe it was all over. When it ended, some of the 3L hugged.

That was 12 hours ago. I took a nap afterwards. Now watching TV. Many chores to catch up on. But not today.

Let's once again review the application checklist.

• Complete the necessary general education; (check)
• Register with the Committee of Bar Examiners as a law student or attorney applicant; (check)
• Complete the requisite legal education; (check)
• File an application to take the First-Year Law Students' Examination and pass, or establish exemption from the examination; (not necessary)
• File an application to take the bar examination and after eligibility has been confirmed, take and pass the examination; (waiting to take)
• File an application for a moral character determination and receive a positive moral character determination from the Committee of Bar Examiners; (check)
• File an application, take and pass the MPRE with a scaled score of 79.00 or greater, which examination is administered and graded by the National Conference of Bar Examiners; (check)
• Be in compliance with California court ordered child or family support obligations. (check)

Resurfacing

I am still in the middle of finals. Tomorrow is my last (PR). I still have eight days worth of notes to go over. Then some unwinding. Then the move.

Around the blogosphere, CA Feb takers are getting nervous. Results come out May 25. I know at least one person who is waiting. I feel nervous for yall.

Passing

Moral Character Application - Approved!

From the Office of Admissions:

The processing of your Application for Determination of Moral Character has been completed.

The Committee of Bar Examiners is please to advise you that you have been found to possess the good moral character required for certification to practice law in California. This positive determination will remain valid through [April 30, 2009.] If you do not fulfill all admission requirements before your determination expires, you will be required to file an Application for Extension of Determination for Moral Character[.]
...
Until you are certified to the Supreme Court, you are under an on-going obligation to update your responses to questions on the moral character application[.]

This is terrible lawyer writing. But I'm happy this hurdle is out of the way.

I took the Wills final today. Also turned in my journal office keys.

Conan in San Francisco

The people actually clapped when he mentioned that the freeway is down. What the?

In the midst of studying for wills right now. Gah!