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Good MC Question focused supplement for Property?

Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 1:33 am
by LawyerSawyer102
I thought I was doing fine. Class materials have been super easy, I am ahead of most of classmates and I haven't had any difficulty understanding concepts so far, but then I met Future Interest this week. The concept isn't too hard and I consider myself pretty intelligent but I foresee my professor throwing in lots of curveballs related to future interest in the exam; it's a tricky subject and if I were the professor I can see myself having lots of fun torturing my students with this topic alone. FYI, the format of the Final exam is expected to be half MC Qs, and half essays.

I'm currently using Sprankling's Understanding Property Law as my sole supplement and it's helped a lot. But the book just explains concepts more clearly but has no problems that I can work off of. I'm looking for a challenging book that is full of MC Questions and Hypos.

Thanks in advance

Re: Good MC Question focused supplement for Property?

Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 2:51 am
by McChicken
If you can, try to find out if your professor models his MC after a certain bar prep brand/supplement (Barbri, Kaplan, Siegels, etc). He/she might even pull questions straight out of those books/supplements. If you prepare using books from that brand, you will have a huge advantage. Most professors are too lazy to make up their own questions or don't want to risk their questions having loopholes/more than 1 correct answer. MBE type questions from Barbri, etc are generally the hardest. If your professor uses MBE difficulty questions, expect to put in a lot of time if you want to do well the MC section.

Some professors do make up their own questions though, and you definitely want to know if that's the case. My Civ Pro professor made all his own questions and they were very different from anything you would find in a supplement. They were so unique that you could really only study from questions from his old finals.

Q&A and Siegels are pretty good, but they might be too easy if your professor uses MBE difficulty questions. Finals, Kaplan, and Rigos are awesome because they have indexes separating questions by category (rule against perpetuities, landlord-tenant, etc). You can go through each main topic your professor teaches and drill a bunch of questions from each. After that, if you still want more practice, just use any book with property MBEs.

I found this out really late, but the key to doing well on MC is doing a lot of them and reviewing every question you do (just like the LSAT). Hopefully your school's library lets you borrow supplements so you can scan a bunch of questions. If not, as stated above, try to figure out what style questions your professors uses and get a book with those types of questions.

Re: Good MC Question focused supplement for Property?

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 4:21 pm
by LawyerSawyer102
McChicken wrote:If you can, try to find out if your professor models his MC after a certain bar prep brand/supplement (Barbri, Kaplan, Siegels, etc). He/she might even pull questions straight out of those books/supplements. If you prepare using books from that brand, you will have a huge advantage. Most professors are too lazy to make up their own questions or don't want to risk their questions having loopholes/more than 1 correct answer. MBE type questions from Barbri, etc are generally the hardest. If your professor uses MBE difficulty questions, expect to put in a lot of time if you want to do well the MC section.

Some professors do make up their own questions though, and you definitely want to know if that's the case. My Civ Pro professor made all his own questions and they were very different from anything you would find in a supplement. They were so unique that you could really only study from questions from his old finals.

Q&A and Siegels are pretty good, but they might be too easy if your professor uses MBE difficulty questions. Finals, Kaplan, and Rigos are awesome because they have indexes separating questions by category (rule against perpetuities, landlord-tenant, etc). You can go through each main topic your professor teaches and drill a bunch of questions from each. After that, if you still want more practice, just use any book with property MBEs.

I found this out really late, but the key to doing well on MC is doing a lot of them and reviewing every question you do (just like the LSAT). Hopefully your school's library lets you borrow supplements so you can scan a bunch of questions. If not, as stated above, try to figure out what style questions your professors uses and get a book with those types of questions.
Thanks for this. Can you recommend me books with MBEs? I don't know what MBE is.

Re: Good MC Question focused supplement for Property?

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:58 pm
by McChicken
MBE just stands for multistate bar exam. MBE's are multiple choice questions, but they are much more nuanced. They tend to turn on very narrow points of law, exceptions, or difficult judgement calls between multiple possible applications of law. Supplements with MBE's either recycle old bar exam questions or try to make up questions approaching their difficulty.

If you know your prof will use MBE difficulty questions, you should try to find some bar prep books. Think Barbri, Kaplan, Rigos and any other bar prep books containing MBE questions. The ones eith indexes seperating questions by type are the best. Check if your library let's you borrow these kinds of books so you can scan a bunch of questions.

You could try to do a couple once a week, but I wouldn't recommend prepping really hard until finals time. Just focus on learning the law for now. Taking law related MC is a skill in it of itself and you shouldn't burn yourself out tackling that yet. At any rate, you should probably focus on learning how to write law school essays because it tends to be the distinguishing factor on exams rather than MC.

Re: Good MC Question focused supplement for Property?

Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 7:35 pm
by LawyerSawyer102
McChicken wrote:MBE just stands for multistate bar exam. MBE's are multiple choice questions, but they are much more nuanced. They tend to turn on very narrow points of law, exceptions, or difficult judgement calls between multiple possible applications of law. Supplements with MBE's either recycle old bar exam questions or try to make up questions approaching their difficulty.

If you know your prof will use MBE difficulty questions, you should try to find some bar prep books. Think Barbri, Kaplan, Rigos and any other bar prep books containing MBE questions. The ones eith indexes seperating questions by type are the best. Check if your library let's you borrow these kinds of books so you can scan a bunch of questions.

You could try to do a couple once a week, but I wouldn't recommend prepping really hard until finals time. Just focus on learning the law for now. Taking law related MC is a skill in it of itself and you shouldn't burn yourself out tackling that yet. At any rate, you should probably focus on learning how to write law school essays because it tends to be the distinguishing factor on exams rather than MC.
Thanks for all of this.

Do you have any advice specifically for Future Interest and Rules against Perpetuities? I've been working on this topic the whole weekend, mostly using CALI lesson. I think I have Future Interest down, I am pretty comfortable with the concept, but as I was working through the RAP problems for the past 5 hours, I realized how little I understood the rule and I seriously think I need to spend a week doing nothing but RAP problems to get an idea of what the hell I'm doing. It's a nasty rule and I already hate it with passion, I'm on the verge of throwing up. **** the RAP.

Re: Good MC Question focused supplement for Property?

Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 9:15 pm
by McChicken
LawyerSawyer102 wrote:
McChicken wrote:MBE just stands for multistate bar exam. MBE's are multiple choice questions, but they are much more nuanced. They tend to turn on very narrow points of law, exceptions, or difficult judgement calls between multiple possible applications of law. Supplements with MBE's either recycle old bar exam questions or try to make up questions approaching their difficulty.

If you know your prof will use MBE difficulty questions, you should try to find some bar prep books. Think Barbri, Kaplan, Rigos and any other bar prep books containing MBE questions. The ones eith indexes seperating questions by type are the best. Check if your library let's you borrow these kinds of books so you can scan a bunch of questions.

You could try to do a couple once a week, but I wouldn't recommend prepping really hard until finals time. Just focus on learning the law for now. Taking law related MC is a skill in it of itself and you shouldn't burn yourself out tackling that yet. At any rate, you should probably focus on learning how to write law school essays because it tends to be the distinguishing factor on exams rather than MC.
Thanks for all of this.

Do you have any advice specifically for Future Interest and Rules against Perpetuities? I've been working on this topic the whole weekend, mostly using CALI lesson. I think I have Future Interest down, I am pretty comfortable with the concept, but as I was working through the RAP problems for the past 5 hours, I realized how little I understood the rule and I seriously think I need to spend a week doing nothing but RAP problems to get an idea of what the hell I'm doing. It's a nasty rule and I already hate it with passion, I'm on the verge of throwing up. **** the RAP.
I used the explanations and exercises from this book to really get the Rule Against Perpetuities down. Try to find it in your library if you can or buy it used i guess.

https://www.amazon.com/Possessory-Estat ... +interests

The author has a really simple methodology and some useful shortcuts for tackling RAP. There are lengthy exercises specifically geared to certain tricky RAP situations too.

Re: Good MC Question focused supplement for Property?

Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 9:40 pm
by LawyerSawyer102
McChicken wrote:
LawyerSawyer102 wrote:
McChicken wrote:MBE just stands for multistate bar exam. MBE's are multiple choice questions, but they are much more nuanced. They tend to turn on very narrow points of law, exceptions, or difficult judgement calls between multiple possible applications of law. Supplements with MBE's either recycle old bar exam questions or try to make up questions approaching their difficulty.

If you know your prof will use MBE difficulty questions, you should try to find some bar prep books. Think Barbri, Kaplan, Rigos and any other bar prep books containing MBE questions. The ones eith indexes seperating questions by type are the best. Check if your library let's you borrow these kinds of books so you can scan a bunch of questions.

You could try to do a couple once a week, but I wouldn't recommend prepping really hard until finals time. Just focus on learning the law for now. Taking law related MC is a skill in it of itself and you shouldn't burn yourself out tackling that yet. At any rate, you should probably focus on learning how to write law school essays because it tends to be the distinguishing factor on exams rather than MC.
Thanks for all of this.

Do you have any advice specifically for Future Interest and Rules against Perpetuities? I've been working on this topic the whole weekend, mostly using CALI lesson. I think I have Future Interest down, I am pretty comfortable with the concept, but as I was working through the RAP problems for the past 5 hours, I realized how little I understood the rule and I seriously think I need to spend a week doing nothing but RAP problems to get an idea of what the hell I'm doing. It's a nasty rule and I already hate it with passion, I'm on the verge of throwing up. **** the RAP.
I used the explanations and exercises from this book to really get the Rule Against Perpetuities down. Try to find it in your library if you can or buy it used i guess.

https://www.amazon.com/Possessory-Estat ... +interests

The author has a really simple methodology and some useful shortcuts for tackling RAP. There are lengthy exercises specifically geared to certain tricky RAP situations too.
Thanks man! You are a god send! I looked up on the law library catalog and was able to reserve one for pick up tomorrow. I will also look into purchasing the MBE books as well. Property's such a pain in the ass..

Re: Good MC Question focused supplement for Property?

Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 12:12 am
by McChicken
LawyerSawyer102 wrote:
McChicken wrote:
LawyerSawyer102 wrote:
McChicken wrote:MBE just stands for multistate bar exam. MBE's are multiple choice questions, but they are much more nuanced. They tend to turn on very narrow points of law, exceptions, or difficult judgement calls between multiple possible applications of law. Supplements with MBE's either recycle old bar exam questions or try to make up questions approaching their difficulty.

If you know your prof will use MBE difficulty questions, you should try to find some bar prep books. Think Barbri, Kaplan, Rigos and any other bar prep books containing MBE questions. The ones eith indexes seperating questions by type are the best. Check if your library let's you borrow these kinds of books so you can scan a bunch of questions.

You could try to do a couple once a week, but I wouldn't recommend prepping really hard until finals time. Just focus on learning the law for now. Taking law related MC is a skill in it of itself and you shouldn't burn yourself out tackling that yet. At any rate, you should probably focus on learning how to write law school essays because it tends to be the distinguishing factor on exams rather than MC.
Thanks for all of this.

Do you have any advice specifically for Future Interest and Rules against Perpetuities? I've been working on this topic the whole weekend, mostly using CALI lesson. I think I have Future Interest down, I am pretty comfortable with the concept, but as I was working through the RAP problems for the past 5 hours, I realized how little I understood the rule and I seriously think I need to spend a week doing nothing but RAP problems to get an idea of what the hell I'm doing. It's a nasty rule and I already hate it with passion, I'm on the verge of throwing up. **** the RAP.
I used the explanations and exercises from this book to really get the Rule Against Perpetuities down. Try to find it in your library if you can or buy it used i guess.

https://www.amazon.com/Possessory-Estat ... +interests

The author has a really simple methodology and some useful shortcuts for tackling RAP. There are lengthy exercises specifically geared to certain tricky RAP situations too.
Thanks man! You are a god send! I looked up on the law library catalog and was able to reserve one for pick up tomorrow. I will also look into purchasing the MBE books as well. Property's such a pain in the ass..
Np man. I hope you checked your law library for any bar prep books before you go buying them. They can be pretty expensive (although you can probably reuse them come the bar exam).