I am feeling very overwhelmed with essay material. Right now I am reviewing the material in barbri and outlines but then when I get to the example questions I get flustered. I feel as if the review is taking too much time and maybe not enough in reviewing the questions. Does anyone have any advice on how to allocate time to review/memorization and reviewing old questions or writing them out?

What state are you talking about? For the two states I know, NY and NJ, I would have very different answers. Oh, and are you also taking the MBE on top of it?

Since many people here are taking NY, I'm going to guess that's where you're taking it. For NY essay and not MBE, you need to be spending more time reading and memorizing and less time writing. But you need to be reading, not so much your BarBri outlines, although you need to be doing that too, you need to be reading the NY Bar Bri essay book intently and going through the answers (and somewhat the questions, but mostly the answers) and you need to make a big chart or bunches of pages organized in a systemmatic way of all the things that frquently come up in that NY answer book. Organize them by subject, then by concept. First write (or copy it from the book or your outlines) the common law version and then the version in the essay book (NY law treatment). You don't care about stuff that only comes up occasionally unless/until you've mastered all the rest. Then have this book of your own, in essence, to memorize, or to learn, depending your style. my girlfriend memorized it; i learned most and memorized some, the stuff that didn't go in so easily. these are gonna be all the paragraphs that you will lift out of your brain and put into the essays, maybe verbatim, on test day. You have to be flexible enough to mix and match, to not use the whole paragraph if it doesn't work for that question. But in essence, you're going to arrive at essay day with your essays already written in your head--or at least all the ingredients will be already written for deposit on the paper/laptop, like a chinese food menu, two from column a and three from column b and one from column c. that way you won't have to think too hard while you're actually writing your answers.

good luck.

If you study to take the exam, you will never pass.  If you study to advise your clients, you will never fail.  Know the difference.

Bobby

--- On Wed, 2/3/10,

Posted By brupal on 04 Feb 2010 10:53 PM
If you study to take the exam, you will never pass.  If you study to advise your clients, you will never fail.  Know the difference.

Bobby

--- On Wed, 2/3/10,

What the hell does that mean, and what relevance does it have to studying for the bar? It's an exam, the OP needs to study for an exam, not muse fancifully on some shit about how to be a good lawyer.

Most bar passers agree that the bar exam has very LITTLE to do with the real practice of law. You could be a great lawyer and do poorly because you're using practical knowledge and experience instead of theoretical memorization of BLL.

In fact, the very subject matter that I had practiced for 18 years was the same subject that garnished my lowest grade in all of law school. I didn't memorize the stupid (and often erroneous) definitions because I knew how to describe the terms and law in real life examples. Got me my worst grade in law school and a very poor grade on the bar exam for that subject.

Don't believe the farce above. This is a game. You need to know the rules of the game and how to appease the bar examiners, and that's nothing at all like what you'll need to be a good practicing lawyer.

OP, I feel just as overwhelmed as you... it is insane the amount of info we're expected to know... all with the pressure that if I forgot a single issue my career could be delayed for another 6 months. My only solace is that I'm doing what I reasonably can, and if it doesn't end up being enough, then well i guess i just have to study more next time. there's not a lot you can do, it's likely you're study strategy is fine, u might just need more of it....