Perfection

It’s not really perfection, but I like the one-word titles. “It” is my Criminal Law outline, which I finished this evening. Three down, ten to go. I love that the Conviser outline says that for a crime to be arson, the building must be at least charred; scorching isn’t sufficient. I told some of my non-lawyer friends about it and even they knew that you would have to pay some expert a huge hourly fee to determine whether your building was “scorched” or “charred.” Anyway.

So I’m feeling good about some decisions I have made about my ever-evolving bar study method. I decided yesterday that for Crim Law I would base my outline on the Conviser Mini-Review, augmented with any additional material in the red PMBR book. I did that, and the additions from the PMBR book took up only about half a page, and used up only about half an hour of my time. So I think I will stick with that method of outlining for now. At some point I will have to distill each of my outlines into a mini outline of 5-10 pages, but I won’t be ready for that for a while. To the extent that I’m reviewing my outlines, I want to keep reading through the full-length ones in the hope that as much as possible will sink in.

The other decision I made yesterday or today is that I am going to do all of my outlines first, which will take me up to 32 days before the exam, then spend that 32 days doing tons of practicing of MBEs, essays, and performance tests. I know that everyone says a common pitfall is spending too much time outlining/learning the law and not enough time practicing/applying it, but I am feeling antsy about not having all of my outlines done so want to finish them as soon as possible. I like to feel like I can wrap my arms around the universe of what I need to know, and finishing my outlines will help me do that. Also, I like to set goals and then exceed them, so I will try to be done with all of my outlines sooner than 32 days before the exam. This plan probably sounds crazy to some people, but I think it’s what will work best for me. Plus, when I get to that last 32 days I’ll have a fire under my ass to catch up with the Barbri kids on practice questions. So that’s the plan (for now).

Tomorrow is June 1, then there will be only one more calendar page to flip over before the bar exam. Pretty serious stuff.

Almost 11 p.m. I could go to bed but maybe I will start on my Crim Pro outline so I can wake up tomorrow and feel ahead of the game.

Speaking of feeling, I’m still feeling calm and confident about the exam – I don’t think any real stress or worry has set in. I’m sure that will change as July 24 approaches, but at least I will be spared the collective stress that is bound to accumulate in the Barbri classes. Today I read California Bar Girl Goes to Work’s blog entries for the three months before she took the bar exam, which was interesting because you could really track the progression of her stress level (and also because she’s hilarious – I recommend her blog at calbargirl.blogspot.com). It will be interesting to try to manage that over the next couple of months.

Speaking again of feeling, a couple of people have asked me if I regret having decided not to take a bar prep class, and my answer is no – not in the least. I tend to resist one-size-fits-all approaches to a lot of things, and like the challenge of figuring out the best way to do something regardless of the way most other people think it should be done. I’m ten or twelve years older than the average law student (or at least the average law student at my school), and I think I know myself well enough to figure out what will and won’t work for me. Time will tell if I’m right!

Okay, a little bit of Crim Pro then off to bed.