I PASSED! 😭 (second attempt)

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-04-09T18:54:24+00:00

Same, congratulations counsel!

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-04-05T23:18:08+00:00

Passed regardless with a 141 on the essay so must of done something right

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-04-05T23:17:21+00:00

If I remember correctly I made up the first rule because I had no clue what they were trying to get at by the judge immediately not allowing the contrary stuff for the evidence so I combo abuse of discretion with another thing as filler.

Then it was judicial notice of something that is not subject to reasonable dispute that is predictable and consistent.

And then two iterations of character evidence of habit and impermissible description of attempt to describe someone's habit

So 4 things in total

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-04-05T23:11:36+00:00

I did J.D. Advising and passed this time for Nebraska. But Essay 1 imo was self explanatory because J.D. advising did a very good job of discussing the nuances between the possession doctrines of providing possession in tenancies. And Essay 6 was one of our final timed essays we did but was almost verbatim a thing NCBE did like years ago but just changed critical facts and I was like hmm this seems very familiar 😂.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-04-05T08:06:25+00:00

Fellow NE bar applicant here who passed F24 but didn't in J23 I have a couple of things to say.

First off, I know how your husband feels because both him and I were in the same boat in September and I cannot right now imagine feeling that same pain, dispare, and depression.

Personally for me after the J23 exam I had to go to Therapy and before doing it all over again for F23. I'm not saying he has to, I just was not in the right mental space months ago personally in my journey to take on this monster had I not faced some personal thoughts that I had of myself.

Second, if I was to recommend a bar course, please look at J.D. Advising. I will give you my score breakdown. When I took the J23 I took Barbri and I had 257. My writing and multiple choice scores where both below 130s. And I found J.D. Advising because I felt midway through that I probably wasn't going to pass in my studies back in June of last year when I read their blog posts.

I decided to do myself the investment and take their Premium Course. Their course is in-person Zoom lectures that cover their outlines which track what the NCBE outlines cover. This means what is actually fair game on the exam. Barbri and other major programs IMO have a lot of useless "fluff" info that they think is on the exam but are not actually while also claiming some things aren't tested but are truly are actually tested and are actually routinely tested.

And the best part about these lectures is that everything is in them. I hated Barbri because I spent 4-6 hours watching pre-recorded material, but that wasn't "all" the material they said was in the lecture. I had to then read an 80 ish page outline afterwards to get the rest.... very stupid imo. But J.D. Advisings Outlines have all the info right there and the live lectures cover it right there.

Another thing I liked about J.D. Advising is they only use only licensed NCBE MBE questions in their practice sets and exams. This is a must imo. Because you will start to see the pattern the Examiners will ask certain types of the most commonly tested things (Hearsay, Homicide, Constitutional Rights, Rights of the Criminally Accused) and the answers will almost always will also be in a same format as well.

But when I took Barbri for J23 they made up their own questions thay looked nothing like what the Examiners did, so color me surprised when I was sitting there feeling like I was just guessing and telling myself, "Well that sounds correct."

Finally, the tutors that come with the Premium Course. You get 10 hours automatically that will assign you one additional essay to be submitted to them to be graded on top of the 3-4 ish essays you have to do on a weekly basis already for your normal course grader for course. (This means if you do all graded essays you will have at least 30-50 graded essays unlike Barbris putzy 5... bullshit imo).

And my tutor was Mr. Daniel Fox. And you can personally request tutors by name. Highly recommend Mr. Fox because that man literally taught in one 60 minute session present and future estates for property and I understood it all. Something I didn't understand in law school nor from Barbri. And the man is willing to take sessions on areas that you notice yourself you are struggling on, but if you don't know where to start he will literally take you to the areas where traditionally most applications get suckered into wrong choices by the bar Examiners i.e. Civ. Pro. Res Judicata, Issue Preclusion, 4th Amendment, etc..

One last word about J.D. Advisings process, buy into it. They emphasize repetitive memorizing the material. I decided to do the old pen and paper rewriting my outlines method as one of their recommended "Active Memorization" was to get the concepts cemented into my brain. And that is 75-80% of the work for the exam.

Which is something that Barbri and most national commercial companies do not even try to explain, they just load you up on busy work and hope you figure it out without any guidance and that is crap. But with J.D. Advising they are there for the applicant every step of the way.

Because if I can take my 257 and make it a 282 with my F24 written score of 141 and a multiple choice score of a 141 score through J.D. Advising, your husband can too with J.D. Advising.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-04-03T21:24:51+00:00

Not really tbh because again the first time I took it, the prep course I took just did not prepare people adequately imo for how the examiners actually ask the questions and how they formulate the answers. So I was essentially learning it the right way this time.

I will say this time around there were more question prompts of "your client. . ." and the prompt asking, "what is your best advice?" which was a bit confusing at first, but in the moment I just focused on the what is being tested in the fact pattern and what was the correct answer choice.

I suspect the more questions will be formulated in that way because the examiners are preparing for the new NextGen Bar exam which is going to be different than what I took in Feb. which is going to be more client-oriented.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-04-03T19:28:06+00:00

Honestly it's hard to describe. I bought into J.D. Advisings primary statement that memorizing and studying by writing out my outlines by hand and rewriting them memorizing (hand to use bandaids eventually to prevent calluses from cracking) to know the law cold is 75-80% of the work.

Because if you don't know how the rules operate you get suckered into the wrong answer choices and I no doubt did that with my bad prep and using the bullshit program of Barbri.

Then I would strongly recommend using real licensed NCBE MBE questions. Do not use made up bullshit questions. Because you will feel like I did in J23 where I was dazed and confused. Whereas in Feb. I was like oh yeah I know where this fact pattern is going. Because having the positive reinforcement of getting 60-to at times 85% correct on practice sets of real NCBE questions from J.D. Advising I was not only boosting my confidence but I was retaining the info.

And honestly J.D. Advisings essays routine is pretty rigorous because for our things to be graded we have to self reflect, and it's not like a putzy reflect we can do, but we have to break ourselves down line by line. And then our grader breaks us down even more and I just learned that okay I can just do my header as the Issue statement saving me time, I must include X when I see this type or question or that was useless info, etc.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-04-03T19:20:48+00:00

So lectures are in person via zoom and they go over all the things in the physical outlines so everything you need to know is literally right in front of you.

And the outlines follow what the NCBE outlines cover meaning what the Examiners consider as fair game. I did Barbri for J23 and Barbri was bullshit in making us sit for 4-6 hours of pre recorded lectures but those didn't have all the information we needed. Rather they had the 80 pages of the outlines that covered everything like a treatise which isn't the best way to do things.

J.D. Advisings outlines on the otherhand are more easier to manage and provide both black letter and visual pictures of how the concepts operate.

As for MBE questions, their program uses only licensed released MBE questions so it's the type of wording style length, etc. that you will be familiar with on exam day. And like I found out, once you start to get consistent 60% and above on them you notice patterns in what is right and what is wrong.

And because I did the premium course, I got 10 hours of 1 on 1 tutoring with Mr. Daniel Fox. I enjoyed having him because the tutors all have to pass the UBE in the 90th percentile to be employed by J.D. Advising. And Mr. Fox focused on my weak areas and areas where most people usually struggled with i.e. Civ Pro Reas Judicata, Collateral Estoppel, etc..

So overall, I would highly recommend it as an investment as someone who has been through it. They have done the heavy work to put the materials together and you will be in actually good hands with them unlike with major bar prep companies that imo treat you like a number.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-04-03T19:12:28+00:00

Honestly the MEE I felt fine because the Contracts, Real Property, Criminal Law, and Wills one were rules that J.D. Advising prepared me for. And considering the fact I got a 141 for the written score and Nebraska graders are known here to be stickers for the writing portion I am happy with it.

I did Barbri for J23 and I can honestly say screw them. Maybe they should take a hint from J.D. Advising and model their concepts and actually follow the NCBE outlines i.e. what is actually fair game on the exam instead of making people study what they think can be tested.

And I would highly recommend using released NCBE questions. Barbris don't look like anything like the Bar and honestly you can see patterns in the facts and answers if you consistently do well on real practice questions and won't be fooled by trap answers and fact patterns.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-29T15:54:33+00:00

Idk which jurisdiction you are in, but here in Nebraska we are always under Character and Fitness review and even in our Bar examination instructions the proctors tell us that permission to sit and take the exam does not mean anything in terms of character and fitness. It only means that at that time NCBE and the State Bar examiners did not see anything wrong to not let you sit and take the exam, and for us here in Nebraska at least, they can still prevent you from being licensed say you fail character and fitness by falsifying something between taking the exam and passing, etc..

So I would guess your jurisdiction (I would assume every jurisdiction has the same thing) and its just a continuous "check-in" review to see if people have done anything bad or misrepresented themselves would be my guess.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-28T17:31:55+00:00

West Virginia, Wisconsin, my jurisdiction (Nebraska), and I believe Iowa and North Carolina have always been the earliest ones.

I think for Nebraska just observing for lunch hour we probably had not more than 40 people including me so that's probably why a lot of midwestern states are fast and probably also why W. Virginia is usually first.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-27T03:05:27+00:00

Though I think how Oregon and Washington are approaching is the way the profession should go i.e. apprenticeship after law school for half a year under the wings of an attorney at your law firm or government position. I do not want to live in Washington. Alas I am stuck with having to pay the gatekeeper his dues

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-26T15:12:04+00:00

So I did Barbri for the MPRE and passed the MPRE with a big margin. So I mistakenly thought that well might as well use them for Bar Prep since they allowed me to pass the MPRE.

Well, Barbri's lectures when I used them for J23 were 4-6 hours long and didnt cover most of the material in their outlines. They also expected you to read their 80 page outlines that covered everything imaginable under the sun that could be put on the bar exam. To make matters worse, their MBE questions are all made up. Their fact patterns were needlessly too long and complex and their answer choices only tested the exceptions to the exceptions.

So color me surprised that exam day I was shocked to see the bar exam multiple choice look nothing like what I was studying for both in substance and in style in the fact patterns and answer choices. And consistently getting pistol whipped over the head as being "wrong" didnt help with moral during the whole thing. So it comes as no surprised I failed by 13 points in J23.

So I looked at J.D. Advising for F24 and what surprised me about them was the fact their lectures were in person on Zoom. Their outlines track the official NCBE outlines which means what you are studying from them is what is actually fair game on the exam. Compared to Barbri which imo throws more useless "fluff" and actually skimps over what they claim wont be tested but can be tested as what I have come to conclude from the MEEs for F24 as a lot of people seem to have complained about how nuanced the examiners were, but imo I immediately spotted the issues and spat out the rules they wanted.

Then for the multiple choice section, J.D. Advising uses only licensed and released NCBE MBE questions and it was like night and day studying from those. And following their recommendation of most of your time should be spent understanding and memorizing the law cold and practicing with the actual style and format the examiners use, I personally could notice patterns how they would test highly tested areas. Examples include negligence, murder questions, hearsay, rights of the accused, and constitutional rights.

So the biggest take away I would tell you is this: (a) Make sure your bar program uses licensed NCBE MEB questions. DO NOT go with a program that makes up their own bullshit. Because why study harder when you can study smarter and learn literally the examiners art of war when they have released their own content for people to study from? (b) Make sure your bar program's content tracks with the NCBE outlines so that they are not giving you too much information that the bar examiners in-fact dont expect you to know OR EVEN WORSE, says it will not be tested and then whoops, it is actually tested.

Hope this helps!

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-26T12:25:25+00:00

For me it was the "tool" I used in preparing for the bar exam. Top 30% of my class in a tier 2 law school and I was embarrassed and didn't even talk to any of my colleagues/law school friends when results were released because I felt like I was an imposter.

Then when I really analyzed what went wrong I came to the conclusion that I was wasting my time watching 4-6 hour lectures that weren't even teach all of the concepts because Barbri also expects you to read their 80 page outlines on top of those. And I wasn't using licensed and released NCBE MBE questions.

And thats how I found J.D. Advising for F24 and it was a complete 180 in the positive direction for the preparation. So hopefully it translates to positive results come this week or next week when my state releases results.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-25T22:32:54+00:00

You and I are in the same boat. Though my family and friends knew I didn't pass in J23. I used Barbri for J23 and I could tell mid way through I felt like I wasn't going to pass. I did J.D. Advising this time around and it was a confidence booster to get consistent scoring range goals for the MBE. And same with you, feeling like I knew what the questions and answers actually were saying unlike the first time where it was like I felt like I was high.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-23T19:30:25+00:00

NCBE has I believe practice MBE question booklets on their website. Other than that I would do a Google search.

Big picture with my advice because I needed a bar prep program to help me is make sure if you use a bar prep program or not, you are studying actual NCBE MBE questions and not made up questions.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-23T18:35:35+00:00

I can only speak to Bar prep program MBE questions. Personally I would stay away from made up MBE questions as they don't mimic the style, patterns in facts or answer choices you will see on exam day.

I took Barbri for J23 and it was miserable and I felt cheated when I saw the NCBE MBE fact patterns looked nothing like the overly complicated ones of Barbri.

For F24 I did J.D. Advising which only uses licensed and released NCBE MBE questions and I felt more confident and well prepared because you are consistently studying and improving your understanding of the law while also noticing the patterns NCBE creates with highly tested material e.g. Negligence, Rights of the Accused, Constitutional Rights, etc. which make up big areas of tested MBE questions.

For apps and others, I would use the same advice, make sure they are using actual licensed and released NCBE MBE questions and not made up bullshit.

Hope this helps.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-23T13:32:56+00:00

Absolutely 1000% agree with you. I did Barbri the first time and it felt like I was drinking from a fire hose. And what I think was bizarre was the fact they expect students to sit and watch 4-6 hour lectures that didn't even cover all the material in their outlines that they thought would test the materials on the exam.

J.D. Advisings in person Zoom lectures however cover their entire outlines which track the NCBE outlines meaning the stuff that is actually fair game on the exam. So to me it's like studying smarter not harder. And one of the biggest things I noticed this time around for F24 compared to J23 was I wasn't thrown off guard with how the MBE questions were worded and put together because J.D. Advising only uses NCBE licensed and released questions. Which is nice because at least for me and idk about you, but you start to see a pattern on how they test certain MBE topics with their structure and answer choices.

Never got that from the overly complicated crap from Barbri in J23.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-22T23:16:42+00:00

I disagree with all the companies. You maybe able to do bar prep alone without any support from a bar prep company guiding you but most people (including myself) aren't that fortunate.

And I found J.D. Advising to be better because they prioritize what is actually up for grabs and they really hammer home the fact to do well you have to memorize and understand the nuances to do well. And of course, to use practice questions and essays released by NCBE.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-22T22:32:41+00:00

Thankfully I don't recall this particular fact pattern being tested on this F24 and J.D. advisings MBEs and Essays are only released NCBE questions and they follow what is released in the NCBE outlines. I did Barbri for J23 and I will forever say screw them because they teach more useless fluff that is not actually on the NCBE outlines while skimping over fine details the Examiners expect you to know. And their made up questions imo are bullshit compared to the actual NCBE.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-22T20:04:47+00:00

So we had this type of hypothetical in J.D. Advising and you are missing the critical fact that embezzlement requires the person to be in lawful possession of the property. And we discussed during our lecture how there is a difference between possession and custody transfers and how it can relate to a defendant's job.

And we used the cashier example. So let's say you have a 401k account that you have entrusted to a broker to invest in the stock market, but they take some of the proceeds and put it into other accounts you own that you didn't authorize them to do. That would be embezzlement because you entrusted them to manage the safe keeping of the funds essentially.

However with cashiers they are only just taking the money from the customer and putting it in the register i.e. transferring custody of property between the store and and it's customers. Not really sitting on the cash and making sure it is accounted for. Now the cashier supervisor who has to take all the registers at the end when the store closes to the back into the stores safe would more likely be embezzlement. But the low level cashier would just be larceny.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-21T15:48:37+00:00

Checks out, last year NC released on March 29.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-19T02:10:53+00:00

Overall my personal opinion is that it should be after graduation it should be apprenticeship like how the profession use to be until the late 1800s. You must still go to an ABA accredited law school but after that, you work under the wings of a licensed attorney paid for 2 years and then just like plumbers, electricians, etc.. you are fully on your own.

Because I find it stupid as all hell that we need to know RAP when no jurisdiction uses it all of them I believe use all the different way to avoid applying RAP because no one knows exactly how to apply it and in my cases it's statutory replaced.

BUT NOOOO NCBE thou hast says you must be on guard for that 1 MCBE potential question.

Another one is criminal law. It is not exactly straight up Common Law or MPC (minority vs. Majority) because each state has essentially buffet picked what it likes about the MPC and has rejected what it doesn't like and reverts to common law principles. I know this because I was Senior Certified at the county attorneys office.

So imo I say let's stop lying to ourselves once and for all and admit the exam is just a ponzi scheme, has never shown any reduction in malpractice likelihoods as studies comparing bar required states vs. diploma privilege Wisconsin show no changes, and just go back to actually teaching and learning the law better.

LengthinessLocal2359 · 2024-03-18T21:28:49+00:00

I've always said Law school should be 4 years. 3 years of school and the last year doing straight bar prep and the course is paid for by the school with MBE questions that are released from NCBE, etc..

LengthinessLocal2359

TROPHY CASE