Akron Law Bar Exam Skills Workshops
Essay Structure Workshop
Wednesday, June 7: 12:30 PM or 5:30 PM – L 325
Graders spend an average of 2-3 minutes reading each of your essays. Those 2-3 minutes will determine whether you will earn a license to practice law. Learn to make your state essays grader-friendly so that those minutes show off your fantastic legal knowledge! [Similar to ALA session on essay structure.]
- Food & informal Q&A starts at 12:30/5:30; the workshop starts at 1:00/6:00 PM and will last no more than an hour and a half.
- Please bring your computer (if you expect to take the exam using a computer), an electronic copy of any essay you have written OR 2 paper copies of your essay and multiple highlighters of different colors)
- Sign up here so I make sure to bring enough food!
Feel free to attend one, or all, of the workshops. Questions? nlr22@uakron.edu
The rest of the Workshop Series
- Wednesday, June 14 – MPT Organizing Strategies: The concept of an MPT is easy – you don’t need to know anything other than how to write like a lawyer. The execution – not so easy. The organizing technique taught in this workshop allows you to organize and write your essay in the 90 minute time frame. This is the longest workshop – it will last approximately 2 hours. [Similar to any ALA class]
- Tuesday, June 20 – Making up the Rules: How to prepare for, and survive, your mind blanking out at the most inopportune time. The rule-making techniques will help you survive the ultimate failure, as well as improving your rule stack for the majority of the time when you remember the rules. [Similar to the Spring 2017 ALA – with different essay snippets for rule generation]
- Thursday, June 29 – MBE Strategies and Tactics: How to approach an MBE question, and a compilation of strategies from multiple sources for avoiding NCBE sneaky tricks, eliminating wrong answers, and choosing between the last two once you’ve eliminated the others. [Similar to the ALA course – with a different set of questions]
- Monday, July 10 – MPT Exam Simulation: Every year, a few foolhardy souls never get around to writing any MPT essays until the morning of the first day of the bar exam. That doesn’t usually end well. Take advantage of the opportunity to write an MPT essay under exam conditions. (I will select an essay that is not used by any vendor this year, and was not used in ALA in 2016-17.)
- Saturday, July 15, 12:00 – 5:00 PM: Half-day Hangout: Homemade food (sloppy joes or a summer soup, multiple varieties of hummus, veggies), an informal repeat of any workshops you missed, a chance to ask whatever you haven’t gotten around to asking, I’ll time essays, MPTs, or MBE sets. Whatever (within reason) will help you make it through this final stretch.