A New Beginning - The Ontario Bar Exam

 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 the Professional Responsibility and Rules of Professional Conduct questions. These questions are spread throughout the Barrister and Solicitor exams. The exams are also open book.

I have passed (actually I did fairly decently) in the Multistate Bar Exam in the U.S.. This exam is also 3.5 hours in two sessions with a lunch break. There are also around 200 questions in the MBE, it covers I think 7 topics and you need to get approximately 145 questions correct to stand a realistic chance at passing the bar. The exam is not open book, the questions are mixed.

Yesterday I began preparing for my exams by starting to prepare my materials. It took my almost 5 hours and 200$ to just get the material from the first PDF that I was sent ready to be printed. This will probably differ for people, but I wanted everything printed in a particular way so that everything is broken up by topic, has tabs, is color coded, and bound in a way that I don't have to flip through 1000 pages in order to find answers. It is a bit of a tedious process, but based on speaking to other attorneys who passed the bar exam, and the format of the exam I have come to the conclusion that it is a waste of my time to try to memorize thousands of pages of material. The purpose of this exams seems to be a test of time management, and the ability to find information quickly. 

I am also planning on taking the Emonds course, though I have watched a sample videos where they talk about things like "your minds castle" which I think is a certain amount of hokum used to justify the 2,000$ they charge for the course. However, having videos which talk about course material has always been particularly for my particular style of learning. Also access to Practice Exams from their website will be good for me. I suspect I will need to take at least 2-3 timed practice exams and approximately 1,000-2,000 practice questions for each exam. This may require me to find a program which is let me create my own randomized multiple choice test bank.

This is a lot of work, but I am confident that if I manage my time correct I should be able to reach my goals prior to the exam. I believe that if I focus on the process based on studied methodology I should be prepared for the examinations.

So far I managed part of the first step. I will try to continue blogging my experience here as a way of holding myself accountable to my goals.

P.S. Nothing in this blog is legal, academic, or any other sort of advice. This is just a journal I am keeping to keep myself moving on what appears to be a challenging process.