Sixty-Five-Year-Old Man Takes Bar Exam

I thought that for a few weeks. Bar review courses are expensive, between $1500 and almost $3,000; occasionally a promotion can make the price of some of them closer to $1,000. I thought I could review hornbooks or study aids and learn the law I need to pass the exam. After all, I used to be a lawyer once, right?

Fortunately, I did not close myself to the advice of others – both folks I know and folks who write books on the subject of how to pass the exam. The former group included the brother of my son-in-law Will, Patrick, and Patrick’s wife, Amanda. Both took the N.C. exam a few years ago, and I sent Patrick an email asking for his thoughts. He was kind enough to respond, and he added Amanda’s thoughts on the subject. Both were adamant about the crucial need to take a full-blown review course.

I also skimmed one of the study aid books available to me at the UC Law Library, my place of work. As a law librarian, I am not about to ignore the resources we offer our students. A few of these are devoted to giving advice on passing the bar, and the one I had chosen was also insistent that a bar review course is a prerequisite to passing the exam. I subsequently looked at some questions from recent exams, and I had to admit that I had no clue what the right answer would be.

Finally, I thought practically about the cost. I had spent about $1,800 just to apply for the exam, and several hundred more for related activities. In most states, including North Carolina, applicants who have been admitted elsewhere pay about twice the fee as do recent law school graduates. If I did not ante up for the review course, it was a sure bet that I had thrown away that $1,800. So I bought the bullet, though I did manage to get a significant discount on the price of the course.

I had also already decided to take the bar legal analysis and writing course offered by our school’s academic success officer, Joel. He offers two versions – one for Ohio and other states that don’t use the Uniform Bar Exam (Ohio will start using it in July, 2020) and one for those that do, such as North Carolina. The class is keeping me busy; today I worked for nearly six hours on building a mind map for the subject of negligence. Creating mind maps and them using them for review to successfully encode information to long-term memory is recommended by Joel and the author of one of our texts. The class is also an interesting environment, in that several of the students are former students in classes I teach, and they are of a different generation. Working with them in groups is invigorating to me, and I think provides them some benefit.

As to the MPRE, I’ve been working hard on the review course for that subject – offered free by several bar review vendors – and taking the practice exams. I’m consistently scoring at 80% or better, and I hope to move that higher as that exam draws closer. I take it on March 23rd.

One interesting observation: I can’t remembered the last time I purchased pencils. I last took a standardized test in 1987, and our youngest child finished high school six years ago. Pencils at discount stores now come already pre-sharpened. Talk about advanced technology!