My Own Two Cents To Passing The Bar Exams… In Three Days.

Who would prepare for the bar exams for just three days?

I would agree to anyone saying five years, to include the four years in law school, would be a fair bet. But right now, that’s not going to help. If you’re taking the 2012 bar exams and reading this, you only have three days left to prepare, so sober up and steel your nerves.

 Take Stock Of Your Guns. 

When you’re fighting your biggest battle in three days, you had better know what you have in your arsenal to strategize your assaults with.

How’s your knowledge of the Codal provisions of the law?

I know by now you would have clearly understood the importance of knowing the nuances of the Codal provisions, or if you’ve been playing it down, go over them: phrases like motu proprio; on motion; with prejudice, etc.etc.

How’s your handwriting skills?

It covers not only your penmanship (legibility), but includes the ease by which you do it, or your comfort level doing it. I say this because I remember I did not pay so much attention to it: I thought I wrote fairly legibly.

I realized there’s more to what you think when you factor in the tension of “the moment.” I labored to scribble my memorandum and legal opinion with frozen, frigid, and stiff hand so bad I wrote by strokes of the hand, instead of by the wrist.

So psyche yourself up to that moment and write to settle your nerves.

How’s your health?

The bar exam demands a triple A bill of health. Convinced? You better be, for the simple reason that anything that goes wrong with your health will inevitably affect your chances, your performance if your gunning for the top post. You can Google how to physically and emotionally prepare for a strenuous exam like the bar exam that suits your lifestyle and personality. There’s NO one-size-fits-all approach to this.

Certainly, a sedentary dude would require a different exercise regimen from a sport buff.  Remember, you can’t drive a square peg into a round hole. If your stubborn gung-ho little brother inside you would want to dare challenge this, for goodness’ sake, not this time.

How’s your English; your language skill?

Even with MCQ made part of the bar exam, there’s still a sizable percentage left to essay type, for a good and understandable reason. Surely, this one, just like the first, should have been made part of 75% of your preparation.

Stick to the experts’ advice of keeping it concise, not sinuous or winding, but DIRECT to the point. Be considerate to the examiners going through thousands of test papers, so your verbiage will likely punish you. 

This time, BREVITY & SUBSTANCE is the name of the game.

Deal With Your Demons.

Having assessed your readiness or lack of it, it’s time to draw up a fight plan. Most of it has to do with dealing with your demons.

Most if not all of the demons you have to deal with are those of the above in which you feel seriously wanting.

This time though, practical approach will deliver results than any of those written grand winded protocols to beating or slaying the bar. There’s no time for it.

What you have is what you go with!

If you're enrolled in a review, you might want to listen intently to the reviewers: there's a reason they're paid, they have the craft and experience. Overtime, they have developed a cunning knack at predicting what figures in the bar exams. 

No matter what happens, the odds of you preparing for the right questions are decently in your favor when you trust what these sage men & women say.

I want to add, to square off with the right questions, you have to understand the objective of the bar exams: to prepare a would-be lawyer in his first year of practice. Certainly, a tyro lawyer would not be entrusted with a complex merger and acquisition case. So keep your head on the surface, that's where the fish are likely to hover.

Take note of the keywords to aid the inherent handicap in everyone's memory. Endeavor to understand the provisions than memorize. When you memorize, you answer to a specifically framed question that it's difficult to fit the answer to the same-substance but rephrased question. When you understand the provision, you recognize the question in any form it may take, so you apply the right answer.

First things first. Focus on the subjects as they come in order. Political Law and Labor should be your cup of tea this week, and so forth and so on.

Embrace your English proficiency no matter how bad it is. The point is: Don't make issues against yourself. Keep your sentences short and active-voiced (subject-verb combination) for easy understanding. Mind your subject-verb agreement.

Stay away from highfalutin terms if you're not sure you have attained that level of language sophistication. You misjudge this, it will backfire on you.

Listen to your reviewers, they must have taught you how NOT to irk an examiner checking your paper: Write legibly; keep your sentences brief, but complete and direct; organize your thoughts before you work your pen; stick to the structure, i.e. (1) categorical answer, (2) cite the law on which you base your answer, (3) conclude. 

That way your answer flows along the conditioned mental landscape of the examiner. You disarrange that, and you create a friction that could set off your examiner.

If all else fails, and you don't know or remember the laws or provisions that the questions call for, turn to your common sense. A lot of our laws are an aggregation of common sense ideas that respond to changing demands of civilized society. If we have the Dangerous Drugs Act, or the Cyber Crime Law, it's because modern society developments have necessitated their enactments. 

No matter what they say about resting early on Saturday to wake up fresh and alert on Bar day, there's no guarantee you'll get a good night sleep. The feeling of anticipation & excitement will likely disrupt your sleep pattern. 

Deal with this, do not feel diminished just because you barely slept. Be up early, do your routine morning rituals (whatever suits you). If you anticipate to take energy drink on bar day, make sure you have tried it days before to accustom your system to it. 

For barristers coming from the provinces, the examination room can be intimidating and overwhelming. Metro barristers are in huge numbers and they come in droves. There's a chance a few of them will be assigned to the same room. That's advantage to them, because that settles them faster, while it unsettles you and widens your imaginary island. 

Be in the room early. Look out for lone barristers who may be in the same situation as you are. Greet to shake off those butterflies in the belly. You are your own man now, but be quick to recognize opportunities to liaise or coalesce. As they say, there is strength in number. 

Bar comes like clockwork, but before that there's alway a chance to suit up to the battle. Believe me, whatever you think of your state of preparedness, you have done just that.

Pen your thoughts in the pride of your family, your city, your country. Go get them!

                                          PRAY... PRAY... PRAY... Good luck.

Three Months to the Bar.

Remember I have been blogging about the challenges I have been wrestling to overcome in regard of Chanroblesbar online review particularly on its video streaming efficiency? I've written them several times to bring the issue to their attention, and I was informed that my predicament was an isolated one, and they suggested that it was peculiar to me. What can I do, I wish I knew some reviewees who use the same service. I have been googling using all possible keywords or combination of keywords that anyone having trouble with it would google-type in search for answers, but to no luck.

Does this mean there's no entry of those keywords because there's no such streaming problem in general, and I am just a poor unlucky guy that all possible wrongs that could go with the use of the site have funneled like rain on me? I doubt so, you see I don't give up easily. It could be that not all who use the internet turn to googling for answers to problems, others simply don't know how to do that, or get too exasperated to even bother taking the extra time on the same electronic monitor trying to find an antidote to a problem. Or are there even enough number of users of the site to even dent the google algorithm for searches, I mean as basis for statistics. I'd like to think so, but sans any proof , I would consider the latter more plausible.

In all honesty, I would like to believe that many have enrolled in this for obvious plus on convenience. Strangely, there's no forum site, so you don't have any idea how many users there are, or whether you ridiculously feel crowded by yourself, shucks!

So anyone out who knows someone using the service please help hook-net me up. Email add or fb would do.  Would appreciate that. Meantime, I am trying my luck again, just finished cleaning my PC. As they say: 'hope springs eternal."

And the quest continues...

A Case of Overstretched IPR Concern?

Yesterday, I posted that ever since signing up to this Chanroblesbar internet bar review some three months ago, I have been hounded by this unrelenting video streaming problem. Video streaming quality is the whole thing if you want make sense of this online review. On my end, I have done everything I possibly could.

Just the other day I engaged the services of a programmer and information specialist to check on all that could possibly contribute to how my PC and connection performs. He checked on all the specs and found them decently over the minimum requirement, but this site's video streaming continued its lethargic pace, a seeming eternal buffering. I have reasons to be confident of my systems: I have tested youtube video streaming and online movies and they seem seamless, and notably they are free sites.

I suspect may be because Chanrobles has always asserted its proprietary copyright interest on these materials (and rightly so, no debate on that), they may have over-secured them with layers of encryption that ultimately substantially compromised its very accessibility. All is not too late though, if Chanrobles  wants to make this so-called revolutionary review format of any use at all, it had better called in its IT people and do the necessary modification to make them truly useful. Right now, it's all but frustrating experience and a huge waste of time.

I wonder if they themselves try to stream their own posted videos.

As a quick help to the enrolled users, Chanrobles should upload audio versions as they are less connection-capacity intensive, after all it is what the lecturers say that audience are most interested in. I doubt videogenics would help a barrister remember any provision come bar exams.

ChanRobles Online Bar Review

 re

Battle is Won not by the  Sword, but by the Warrior Who Wields it!

I have enrolled in the online review of the country's "revolutionary" online bar review service. I definitely loved the idea of being able to do what otherwise would be an expensive and daunting traffic-negotiating engagement, right at the comfort of my own home, even my room, scratch that, even while enjoying the sunset on the beach, which is literally doable where I come, Calbayog City, Samar.

It's easy to see from the get-go what advantages this format offers compared to the traditional brick-and-mortar review, though, admittedly live face-to-face review could sometimes be fun as lecturers can play up with their audience to hold their attention.In that sense, it is more effective at wielding focus, in contrast to online's nagging distractions of fb, and other tempting else to-do right at a strike of a key. The latter demands discipline, the mere mention of which gets you hives, if you're anything like me. Overall, the trade-off is fair,  and I insist that the latter suits me fine.

However, I have always had this problem of video buffering, such that by the time I get to the end of an hour or so video clip, I have a hard tie recalling what the early parts were about. I tried to get all the help. Just recently I needed to hire a programmer to look at my PC systems vis-a-vis its compliance with the requirement and they're all fine (dual core processor an a gigabit of RAM). I had the system purged of any unnecessary programs that could be compromising its performance.  I checked my wimax connectivity and it's almost seamless it seemed at the time the tech guy was running his diagnostics (but my, globe has not always been like this either and I am praying this holds). All suggests I should be breezing through, except that I am not.

In fact, I tried youtube stuffs just to test its streaming speed quality and it's been the fastest I have seen since this wimax was installed. But chanroblesbar videos refused to share the sprint game, and continue to drag their feet.Sans all these glitches, I have no doubt the course is up to scale considering the roster of reviewers. The more that it excites me and the downtime frustrates me. But I am testing it now in light of some four hours of tweaking with the systems done by the tech guy, which I did not understand completely, but obliged to give my aha nods anyway. I want to put it more like I didn't want to steal his tech trade secrets, though he was kind enough to volunteer some do-it-yourself stuff.

The BIG problem is, we're fast careening to that DAY. I'm not getting cold feet, but this genuinely concerns me, so for you guys out there who may had had this kind of troubles, please shoot me some suggestions.

Good luck and God bless!