[blindlaw] Bar Exam and MPRE preparation, courses and their accesibility

Shelley Richards shelleyrichards9 at gmail.com
Fri Jan 30 21:07:49 UTC 2015


I took the New York bar exam twice, the first time I tried Barbri but I did not like it, and a lot of the online aspect of it were not very accessible.  They also used fill in the blank outlines for the lectures which were very difficult for me to use.  They were supposed to send them to meet with everything filled in, but the copies I got from them still had blanks that were not yet filled in.  The second time I took it I used Marino Bar review, it worked out much better for me. All of the lectures were online so I could watch them whenever I needed to and start and stop as I wanted to, that fit my schedule much better. The PDFs that they used were not accessible with any screen reader including voiceover, but I was able to print them and scan them with kurzweil to read them, they offered to send them all to me in a different unprotected PDF format if I needed but it was quicker and easier for me to  just print them myself and scan them since I had a feedthrough scanner. I don't think having them send me the PDFs would have taken a long time but I've started a bit late so I wanted to be able to get them immediately. They also worked with me however I needed to get accommodations done. They also do live tutoring sessions as part of their bar review which were done with FaceTime if you have it or Skype if you do not have FaceTime I have a Nother friend who is blind and also used them and found that they were willing to make whatever accommodations she requested, I don't know exactly what she requested because she can read some print if it is large enough. I also liked that they were cheaper, and that every time I called them a real person answered immediately. I also had personal email addresses for four different people from the company. They were very helpful.  I only took their retake her course however which does not focus on substantive law but focuses on how to answer bar questions and how best to take the bar exam, substantive law mostly came from review lectures that just went over all material very quickly. I don't know how their normal full bar review course is. With the substantive law, but all of their skills workshops would be the same and I found that they were quite useful, especially essay writing and answering MBE  questions workshops  after experiences with both companies I think the best thing to do is figure out what fits your schedule and your learning style and try to find something that is flexible enough for you to do what works best for you and not be forced to much into doing things exactly the way they want you to do them. Also remember to relax a little bit and take some time now and again for yourself. If you push it too hard you're going to be burnt out before the exam even starts. The second time around when I did pass, by quite a bit, I did not study at all the two days right before the exam and gave myself a chance to relax, regroup, and mentally prepare myself for a weeks worth of testing. I did both New York and New Jersey bar exams at the same time and had time and a half, so my testing was spread over five days. Don't let anybody tell you that there was only one way to do it, you need to be flexible and try to do what's going to work best for you. If you don't know what works best for you then try different ways of studying and see what you prefer and what seems to actually work for you to remember and be able to answer better.  I would suggest starting early if you can so that you have an opportunity to figure out what's going to work good luck 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 30, 2015, at 12:13, Simon Singh via blindlaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I would very much appreciate if you can provide some pointers for preparing
> for Bar exam and MPRE exams.
> 
> Did you take courses, preparatory classes?
> How accessible are these?
> Any other advice?
> 
> Thanks for your help
> Simon
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