I continue to slog through the material. I have basically gotten through all of the material for the Barristers Exam, I am doing practice questions at the moment. I am scoring about 85-90% on practice exams. I am a little perplexed by the fact that I see people online stating that they failed the exams like 2 or 3 times.
Here is an example of things I find online
"The truth is many students fail the Ontario bar, and it is not because they are stupid or did not study. It is simply because the Ontario bar is an enigma — completely unknowable" - Wela Quan
Meanwhile BarStudy.ca Provides this advice
- Don’t worry too much! This means worry just enough to study but don’t think that you won’t have a legal career or become a lawyer just because you failed the bar exam. People might not talk about the fact that that they failed the bar exam once or twice but it actually happens fairly often and it happens to people who go on to become excellent lawyers.
- Get to know the materials better, especially the indices to the materials. By indices I mean the actual detailed indices in the front of the barrister and solicitor materials – not an “index” purchased online or created by someone else. In order to succeed on the bar exam you need to be able to answer a good portion of the questions quickly. You may know the answer to some questions without looking at the materials, but for many you will have to turn to the materials and this means you need to know where to look. The bar exam materials provided by the Law Society of Ontario are redone by lawyers each year and while they’re very informative the fact that they are constantly reorganized and edited means that the layout is not intuitive: topics are not always covered where you think they will be. By spending time with the indices provided in the materials you learn have to navigate them quickly and will get to know the layout which saves you time on each question when you do have to look answers up. Also, label each chapter, the exam is open book but there is no time during the exam to find flip through pages.
- Similar to the last point, don’t rely too much on expert indices that you didn’t make. The fact is that they do sometimes contain errors and worse by using them you don’t get to know the actual materials. If a candidate is not able to answer the question from the indices they can’t easily turn the materials unless they are familiar with them. Again, you want to put yourself in a position to take advantage of the fact that the exam is open book – all the answers are contained in the materials provided by the Law Society – you just need to learn where to look.
- Realize you may need to understand the background of some legal topics in order to understand the details found in the bar exam materials. The materials are dense and tend to assume that candidates have already learned the basics in law school. But it’s not uncommon for some students not to have studied some of the topics in detail if they focused their studies on one area of the law and especially if they graduated from a law school outside of Canada. If you’re not familiar with one of the topics then reviewing some basic background can be a big help when trying to understand the materials. For example, if you know nothing about real estate law, reading just the introduction on the Wikipedia page for the Torrens title system may help you understand what the real estate pages are actually talking about.
- Finally, trust your instincts when you think you know the answer and don’t be afraid to guess on the ones you don’t know, or on the questions that you know will take you a long time to answer. There is no point in spending 15 minutes to get a corporate tax question right if it means you’ll leave the exam with 10 questions unanswered!
The Barrister and Solicitor exams are two open book exams which test candidates on select black letter law and professional responsibility. When I wrote these exams, each exam was 7 hours and 240 multiple choice questions. (Due to Covid-19, the length and number of questions on the exams has since been reduced). These exams are a search and find exercise, written under strict time constraints. I am of the firm belief — and I don’t believe I am alone in this thought — that these exams do not accurately test or reflect one’s competence or minimum skill level for entrance to the legal profession
Though I am noticing that a lot of people talk about failing the solicitors exam. Should I worry less about practicing for the Barristers exam at this moment and jump into the solicitors material? Or should I do some more practise and start later into the solicitors material?
The subjects of the Solicitors Exam are obviously difficult
Business Law
Bankruptcy Law
Tax Law
Real Estate Law
Estate Law
Is that why?
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