Ontario Barristers and Solicitors Exam Blog

 I have continued to slog through the material. There is no way to remember all of this. Am I wasting my time reading this material? Should I just be figuring out a way to access it quickly?

 I have had a few off days, but I have been ploughing through at about 50 Pages of Material a Day. While Reading I learned that the LSO says that eac question will have an answer which is the "best" answer" Which means that more than one answer could be correct in some way and you have to chose the answer which is more correct than the other. I hate questions like that.

I finally got all of them materials from the LSO printed. I went to Staples and they had it all bound and laminated. I gave it a quick glance through and found out that they didn't have some of the dividers in the correct places. Had to get them to fix it. I managed to get through the video for Civil Procedure yesterday. They did a few sample questions during the exam. I have already gotten the impression that if you look at the fact that it's open book and multiple choice, and are expecting questions like : What does rule 3.2-4 of the rules of professional conduct guide an attorney to do? A. Get the most money B. Sue the most people C. Encourage the client to compromise or settle a dispute whenever it is possible to do so on a reasonable basis and shall discourage the client from commencing or continuing useless legal proceedings D. Avoid Sexual Relations with the client You might be in for a bit of a surprise when it comes to Bar Exam time. From what I understand the questio...

My exam prep has continued along, I am watching he Emonds vides and am reading the notes. As I continue along the process it is very apparent to me that there is no way I am going to remember even a fraction of this. I need to remember enough to have a quick way to look up very specific information. I have gotten about 4/6 through Civil Procedure Yesterday my Bar Material was finally ready at Staples. They sent me an email about one of the packages. I went over here to the local Staples to pick it up, then went over to my moms place because I was going to have dinner over there and watch the Leafs game. I did notice that there were two different boxes. When I arrived at my mothers place I opened the box. The smaller box appeared to be fine. I opened the larger box and noticed that the front and back plastic covers I had requested were not on the books. Not a huge deal I suppose. As I got a few books deep, I found that 3 of the books were not only missing the covers, they were also not ...

I started with a civil procedure lecture yesterday. The lecture was about 6 hours long and I got through about 2.5 hours of it. I also worked. The plus side I found was that in this topic, the topic wasn't completely out of left field from me. Issues like Joinder, and Intervenors were not so far out of my experience as a U.S. attorney that I could not recognize them.  At the same time I was reminded just how dull civil procedure is, and it was difficult to maintain my attention. I suppose this isn't unreasonable for a first session, but I have to work on this if I want to have any hope in hell of actually passing the respective barrister and solicitors exams.

 It is May 11th and my printing job still has not arrived from Staples. Last night I subscribed to the Emonds Bar prep course as well as having bought the Practice Questions that they sell.  I am just now opening and looking through the bar prep materials for the Barristers Exam My Barristers Exam is July 6 My Solicitors Exam is July 21 I am don't know what to make of things, because some people tell me they passed the bar exam without studying and some people say they failed multiple times. I kinda look at the fact that I didn't do anything for some days with some guilt. But, I am kinda in a start and go position with regards to studying. Hopefully the Emonds course will help me provide myself with some structure.

 As an update, earlier today I finally finished printing the material for the bar exam. It cost 370$ to print. I was particular about the way I wanted it tabbed, and printed into booklets. I don't want to be having to go through two thousand pages at the time of the exam.  I didn't mention my big concerns in my previous post. The first concern I have is I saw a youtube video of some girl saying that she failed the bar exam three times!! That is frightening, i don't have the energy to retake these exams so often! I need to pass this exam! The second concern I have is that they say that the exam is based on long fact patterns which then require very specific answers which will be worded very similarly. How long will it take to read the question itself? If I have 60-100 seconds to read the question, how much of that time is going to be taken in the reading of the question? I am going to need to do a lot of timed practise questions to make sure I have this skill. 

 After having passed the NCA exams (as a U.S. licensed attorney) I am beginning my journey of preparing for the Ontario Barristers and Solicitors exams. I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about the exam. From what I understand it is the exams are 7 hours long, broken out into 2 sessions of 3.5 hours each with a lunch break in between the sessions. Each session of 3.5 hours has approximately 110-120 multiple choice questions, for a total of 220 – 240 multiple choice questions per exam. This means that I have approximately 1.75 minutes to answer each multiple choice question. All questions are in a multiple-choice format. The questions will include independent multiple-choice and case-based multiple-choice questions. The multiple-choice questions are grouped by topic. This means, for example, that all of the Civil Litigation questions will be together in the Barrister Exam and will not be spread throughout other sections of the exam. The only exceptions to this are ...