8 Reasons Not To Take A Bar Exam Course
If you're a newly-minted or soon-to-be law school graduate, here's some advice you won't hear: Do not sign up for a bar exam course.
That's right. You just read that correctly. Don't do it.
Every year, I cringe as I watch student after student pay thousands of dollars for a bar exam course and get so little value out of them.
You don't need to take a bar exam course. You can purchase the books on your own, save well over $2,000, study and practice by yourself, and actually do better than those who take a course.
I'm not talking gibberish. I've been there. I took the Florida bar exam in 2005, and I took a course to prepare for it. I passed. Barely. So I've been there, and you can trust that I know what I'm talking about. This is a sincere plea not to take a course.
In fact, here are eight reasons why you should not be taking a bar exam course:
1) Your chances of passing the bar exam have very little to do with the course you take.
2) Taking a course will be one of the worst studying experiences of your life. It was for me, and it will be for you, too.
3) A course exposes you to an environment full of stressed-out, aspiring lawyers that you don't need to be around. That's what you were exposed to in law school. Trust me: you don't need to deal with it when preparing for the bar exam (which, coincidentally, is quite important since it will determine whether you can be a practicing lawyer).
4) Courses cost around $3,000. That is a lot of money for a law graduate with no money. Why go into debt for a useless course?
5) The lecturers at these courses bring their own perspectives, opinions, and organizational preferences about the legal material into the classroom. These factors detract from the substance you actually have to learn: the law.
6) A bar exam course does not place enough emphasis on doing practice questions, essays, and exams. Remember that practice makes perfect. Not reading and listening to lectures. You didn't learn how to ride a bicycle from reading about it. You learned by doing.
7) Which brings me to my next point. Because these courses focus too little on doing practice questions and exams, they focus too much on the substantive material. Remember that the bar exam is . . . an exam. There is a certain way to approach exam-taking, and these courses don't teach you how to take exams.
8) My final reason . . . and this one should give you a little bit of a chill. If you take a course, you are more likely to fail than if you did not take one. Why? Because a bar exam course simply distracts, overwhelms, and confuses you.
Armed with the same materials (that you can buy from this website for much, much cheaper), you can study and prepare more effectively by yourself and save much-needed time and money. Don't let a bar exam course drag you down.