Bar Prep Begins . . . Sort of

In a normal year, my students would all have begun their bar preparation yesterday, coasting on their post-graduation-ceremony momentum right into a seat in front of the first of many lecturers.  But in New York, and more than a third of all U.S. jurisdictions (in which -- again, in a normal year -- more than half of all July examinees would be sitting for the exam), the date of the bar examination has been postponed for six weeks or more, leaving bar students in those jurisdictions with the gift they hate most of all: uncertainty.

What is to be done with all this extra time?  Bar preparation companies cannot agree: some are simply administering their typical ten-week program, just starting it six weeks later than usual, while others have reworked their program schedule, starting it earlier and drawing it out over a longer period, but with shorter study days.  Employers, many contending with their own virus-induced crises, have added variables to the new graduates' calculations, some allowing their new employees to start early and then take time off, others expecting hirees to adhere to their original early-August start dates, and still others unnervingly withdrawing their employment offers indefinitely.  Even we bar support specialists can only make well-educated guesses about how to make use of six extra weeks.  We have no data, no direct experience of how a delay like this will affect individual students or the testing cohort as a whole.  How much more study can a student put in without burning out?  Should the extra time be spread across all aspects of bar study, or should certain skills or subjects receive more attention?  Will MBE scores increase overall for those who take the test in September?  Decrease?  Will the bell curve spread out?  Will this hurt or help examinees?

Sensibly, 43 more days of prep time should be seen as a boon.  In a normal year for bar study, isn't time the most precious resource of all?  In my discussions with students, I have suggested they think of this extra time the way they might think of an unexpected financial windfall.  You don't have to spend it all in one place.  You might devote a large chunk of it to bar study -- that is, after all, the primary focus of the summer -- but how you specifically budget it depends on your own circumstances.  An examinee facing financial pressures might choose to work for a few weeks, then begin studying a few weeks early.  Someone eager to get started studying might begin this week, but set aside a week or two, at strategically placed spots on the calendar, to put study aside, connect with family and friends, or do whatever else helps them refill their gas tank.  It's important not to let the time slip by unnoticed -- it would be bad to turn off the TV one night near the end of June and realize you had not done any bar study -- and that's why it's important to budget the time and actually create a schedule.  And that, for some, is what seems to turn this temporal windfall into a vexation.  In order to budget, you have to make choices.

No one wants their bar prep period to feel like playing endless rounds of "The Lady or the Tiger?"  At every step: choose the right path, and you will be rewarded with contented knowledge and testing skills; choose the wrong path, and you will be mauled by a ravenous UBE with MPT fangs and MBE claws.  In a normal year, examinees only have to be certain that the regimented bar study course they have chosen, which has worked for thousands of examinees before them, will continue to reliably work for them.  This summer, though, because so much is unregimented, some examinees are anxious about being uncertain about so much more.  Am I studying enough?  Am I studying too much?  Am I studying too early?  Am I studying the right things, in the right way, for the right amount of time?

Two propositions can help people in such a tizzy of uncertainty.  First, assure them that they are not feeling this uncertainty because of some character flaw that prevents them from making definitive choices.  They are not losing their heads while all about them are keeping theirs.  This is an inherently uncertain situation -- we can't even be assured the exam will actually be administered in September! -- and so there is no single "correct" choice.  The best they can do is what they've been training to do for the past three years: exercise good judgment based on competent authority and relevant facts.  As long as they are not just guessing, as long as they are talking to us and their mentors and their instructors and applying what they learn to what they already know about themselves and the task before them, they can at least make a good choice.

Second, help them subdue the perception that they are overwhelmed by uncertainty by reminding them of what is certain.  The content and structure of the bar examination remains the same (well, except in Indiana), as do generally those of the reputable bar courses designed to prepare examinees for the test.  They still have their law degrees, and the skill, intelligence, and diligence that helped them earn those degrees.  They have a community of classmates, instructors, and mentors who they can rely on to share perspective and feedback on the decisions they do make.  They have a certain task, they have certain abilities, and they have certain resources.  In the face of uncertainty, those are best certainties to have.

[Bill MacDonald]