Books
In conjunction with your online course, you have a set of print materials. Throughout your studies you will be assigned to use some of your print materials for practice. We also encourage you to utilize Outline and Bar Points books to help fill in any learning gaps and look-up questions you may have along the way.
Your Outline books are a great resource to understand the overall structure of a subject and how different key topics fit within that subject. If you are struggling with a particular topic within a subject, you will want to dive into your Outline books for additional details and clarity on the topic. They contain helpful citations and examples. Your Bar Points books have been provided to help highlight the most important, and highly testable, areas within each subject. Your Bar Points flag important rules, definitions, exceptions, and exam tips. We highly recommend that you spend time reviewing these flagged items and the provided charts within each subject.
Bar Notes
Because you retain more information when you are actively engaged with the material, we have created a unique set of Bar Notes for each subject lecture. These Bar Notes can be found as a link right below the video. Bar Notes are word documents that allow you to directly edit, add to, and take your own, personalized notes during the lecture. Bar Notes contain key take-aways and heavily tested material.
It is important to remember that these are intended to help you actively engage with the lecture material; thus, you should not become distracted with trying to write down every single point the professor makes during your lecture. You can also take your own notes in s a separate Word document if that helps you to learn and stay focused. Remember, all of the substantive law covered in your lectures can also be found in your Outline books and the most critical and frequently tested material is also highlighted in your Bar Points books.
Lectures
Lectures are not optional and are a crucial part of your overall success on the bar exam. Our lectures have been carefully designed to highlight and cover only the most heavily tested topics within each subject. Therefore, it is important that you do not allow yourself to zone out during your lectures.
We strongly encourage you to stay actively engaged in your lectures by taking notes and participating in the hypotheticals and examples presented throughout.
QBank Assignments & Quizzes
In addition to the exam-like multiple choice questions found in your print materials, you will also be assigned QBank questions and pre-designed MCQ quizzes throughout your course. You further have the ability to design your own personalized quizzes for additional practice.
Remember, on exam-day you have roughly 1.8 minutes per question (or a goal of roughly 33 questions per hour). Therefore, it is important that you challenge yourself to practice at this pace. Do not allow yourself to dwell too much on your performance on these quizzes. At the start of your course, it is ok to score between a 40%-50% on these quizzes; however, by the end of your course, you will want to aim to score between a 65%-70%. Instead of focusing on your score, you should focus on identifying your relative strengths and weaknesses and spending time with the answer explanations provided for each question.
Checkpoint Quizzes
Checkpoint Quizzes are assigned throughout your course. Unlike QBank questions (which simulate exam-like practice), Checkpoint Quizzes are designed to aid you in assessing your retention of the material covered in your lecture.
It is common to score lower on these quizzes—that’s ok! When assigned, you are still processing this new material. The benefit of these quizzes is found in the self-awareness of your strengths and weaknesses so that you may focus your study efforts accordingly moving forward in your studies.
Essays
You will be assigned real, past bar exam essays throughout your course. Because there is benefit in both personalized feedback and also self-assessment, some of your essay assignments will be for submission, and you will receive personalized feedback from our certified, attorney graders, while other essay assignments you will learn through guided, self-assessment. All essays assignments are assigned directly on your syllabus.
Please keep in mind, while you may submit any of the additional essays from your Essay Bank to our certified, attorney graders for feedback, self-assessment is also a critical process to continue throughout your studies.
Although your overall score on an essay is beneficial to evaluate how you performed on a particular essay, this score is not predictive of how you will perform on the bar exam, nor is it even predictive of how you will perform on future practice essays. Instead of solely concentrating on your overall score, shift your focus to your personalized feedback from your graders. Do you see a pattern in your comments—where can you improve? Does your essay lack organization and clarity? Are you missing key issues presented by the essay prompt? Internalize this feedback and use it as a guide to help improve your essay writing (and ultimately your score) on future essays. Do not cheat yourself by submitting essays for grading in which you used the sample answer or other outside resources to aid in your drafting. By doing so, the grader is not able to provide any meaningful feedback, as the work submitted is not a true reflection of your own work. By the month of your bar exam, it is critical that you practice all essays under exam-like conditions (timed and without study resources).
If you have any questions on where to find a particular resource or who to contact for a particular question, please reach out to your Directors of Legal Education.