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Derek Vinyard wrote:57.8% pass rate. Is this overall, or just for first time test takers??? The july exam was a 71% pass rate, so this is a bit confusing. From what I understand, there are more first time test takers in July and this explains the higher pass rate. I still havent checked my score!!

http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/bars ... b-2018.pdf

57.9% pass rate for people who sat for part A and B for the first time. Last February it was 57.7%.

warrick9 wrote:

Derek Vinyard wrote:57.8% pass rate. Is this overall, or just for first time test takers??? The july exam was a 71% pass rate, so this is a bit confusing. From what I understand, there are more first time test takers in July and this explains the higher pass rate. I still havent checked my score!!

http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/bars ... b-2018.pdf

57.9% pass rate for people who sat for part A and B for the first time. Last February it was 57.7%.

Am I missing something, or does the letter from the FL Board of Bar Examiners have some ambiguity?

"On February 27-28, 2018, 1,762 applicants took the Bar Examination. . .. The Court approved 445 candidates. . .."

On the next page: Number Taking -- Total: 637; Number Passing -- Total: 369. I recognize not all the passes have been approved (MPRE, C&F, etc.), but in that case I would expect the number approved to be lower than the number passing.

Plus, couldn't there be overlap between "Admitted to the Practice of Law" and "non-Florida law schools"? And the Florida law schools, as well?

LOL to the above post. Conspiracy. 57.9 pass rate because my memory failed me. (Becks is on sale). I still havent checked my score yet because drinking becks is a higher prority.

Derek Vinyard wrote:LOL to the above post. Conspiracy. 57.9 pass rate because my memory failed me. (Becks is on sale). I still havent checked my score yet because drinking becks is a higher prority.

Hope you passed bro. Hats off to you for just not giving a crap I was so anxious to see my score

Well I want to see my actual score, not just pass fail. If I look now im going to want to see the number.

Derek Vinyard wrote:LOL to the above post. Conspiracy. 57.9 pass rate because my memory failed me. (Becks is on sale). I still havent checked my score yet because drinking becks is a higher prority.

That is 57.9% of a select group of schools, not the entire base.

Half the room fails Part A every year, even if they pass overall using the combine method. The amount of students passing part A (getting a 136) is low as hell. MBE is a little better. I believe it was Themis that said Fla is basically a 50-55% passing State at this point and a lot of students owe it to the MBE. My brothers roommate passed with a 125+151 or something.

If you do good in 2 of 3 essays and do average in the MC, that might have gotten you a B- in law school, but you won't pass the Bar. How fitting that the Fla Bar won't provide an explanation on how the grading works, right? Nor will they supply students with bar approved outlines.

Conquerer wrote:I’ve taken the bar exam every year since July 2015. I just recently failed on my 6th attempt. On my second attempt I was 3 points short, on my 4th, 5 points short. On my 5th, I was off by more than 10. I’m still waiting for my score report.

I’ve employed a bar exam tutor before but was unsuccessful. The study plans were not conducive to my learning style.

I excelled in law school and have never really had a problem with text anxiety or stress. I’ve put the work in and keep coming up short.

As you can imagine, it’s quite disheartening to keep failing. However, I’m willing to fight the good fight again in July. My app is now stale and I have a small turn around time to get everything in.

I need advice, suggestions, bar exam prep ideas? I’ve heard of Grossman...anyone hired him and been successful? Any others?

Have you tried just focusing on 1 section?

Conquerer wrote:I’ve taken the bar exam every year since July 2015. I just recently failed on my 6th attempt. On my second attempt I was 3 points short, on my 4th, 5 points short. On my 5th, I was off by more than 10. I’m still waiting for my score report.

I’ve employed a bar exam tutor before but was unsuccessful. The study plans were not conducive to my learning style.

I excelled in law school and have never really had a problem with text anxiety or stress. I’ve put the work in and keep coming up short.

As you can imagine, it’s quite disheartening to keep failing. However, I’m willing to fight the good fight again in July. My app is now stale and I have a small turn around time to get everything in.

I need advice, suggestions, bar exam prep ideas? I’ve heard of Grossman...anyone hired him and been successful? Any others?

Sorry to hear this. I don’t know that I have a magic formula, but I’m happy to share how I studied. I’ve been practicing about 20 years and was working full time, so I started studying almost 4 months out and tried to put in at least 4 hours a day at least 5 days a week. I used Themis bar review and did watch all of the lectures and complete all of the lecture outlines. I only perused the big outlines. Literally spent no more than 30 minutes on any of those.

While watching the videos I took a ton of practice quizzes, both MBE and Florida multiple choice quizzes. Themis gives you quite a few Florida quizzes. I’ve heard other bar reviews do not. It helped a lot. I spent very little time doing practice essays beyond just reading them and maybe making some notes on how I would answer them. This worked for me just because I think I’m a decent writer and pretty good at organizing my thoughts quickly.

About a month before the test I condensed the lecture outlines into flash cards and highlighted some areas I wasn’t confident I already knew very well.

About two weeks before the test I spent all day everyday studying just flash cards and the highlighted portions of my outlines, basically memorizing about 6 subjects a day and then going back and re-reviewing over the two weeks.

I passed both portions so this seemed to work for me at least. My years of practice really only gave me a leg up on Civ Pro, evidence and torts.

not guilty wrote:

Conquerer wrote:I’ve taken the bar exam every year since July 2015. I just recently failed on my 6th attempt. On my second attempt I was 3 points short, on my 4th, 5 points short. On my 5th, I was off by more than 10. I’m still waiting for my score report.

I’ve employed a bar exam tutor before but was unsuccessful. The study plans were not conducive to my learning style.

I excelled in law school and have never really had a problem with text anxiety or stress. I’ve put the work in and keep coming up short.

As you can imagine, it’s quite disheartening to keep failing. However, I’m willing to fight the good fight again in July. My app is now stale and I have a small turn around time to get everything in.

I need advice, suggestions, bar exam prep ideas? I’ve heard of Grossman...anyone hired him and been successful? Any others?

Have you tried just focusing on 1 section?

Perhaps taking the full Barbri course? Not trying to be mean but maybe you just weren't meant to be a lawyer

Got my results in the mail:
Part A 151
Part B 142

Felt good about the crim essay and ok about FL Con law and knew that I bombed the property one. Must have done well on the FL MC questions. On my MBE practice questions I was scoring around 62-64% between Themis and Adaptibar.

did the score come with the oath that u need to get signed?

got mine
a: 137
B: 144
Never took a practice test before

Any advice for a bar tutor in FL (Miami) or virtual?

I have tried Grossman but I’d like a few more ideas/ names

So I wish someone could explain this to me but
Part A: 135
Part B: 134

Missed it, even though I did better than the mean raw score on 5 out of the 6 Florida subjects. I scored 11 points higher than the mean essay averages and scored only 1.9 points below the Florida MC average. I had a raw score of 175 scaled down to 135. Honestly I don't understand it at all. I am thinking about having them reread my essays in hopes of maybe getting an extra scaled point so I do not need to retake Florida again...anyone know of a tutor in south florida? I dont want to leave anything to chance for the 3rd time.

Just sent just the notarized oath back to the FL Board of Bar Examiners. I'm good to go, right? I can practice?

Hmmm, so the score reports have already been received? I dont have mine yet, nor did I check the website. Im delaying it, so when I see my score I'm going to flip out no matter what. This will most likely be friday or saturday for me.

That one guy who does the webcasts and the post exam briefing videos on facebook said that it is extremely rare to fail the florida exam or the mbe by only a point or 2. That may not be very accurate. I have read about lots of people who failed by 2 or 3 points.

alexgreat wrote:So I wish someone could explain this to me but
Part A: 135
Part B: 134

Missed it, even though I did better than the mean raw score on 5 out of the 6 Florida subjects. I scored 11 points higher than the mean essay averages and scored only 1.9 points below the Florida MC average. I had a raw score of 175 scaled down to 135. Honestly I don't understand it at all. I am thinking about having them reread my essays in hopes of maybe getting an extra scaled point so I do not need to retake Florida again...anyone know of a tutor in south florida? I dont want to leave anything to chance for the 3rd time.

I'm not sure if they re-read again?

Hoping someone who has taken the FL bar could give me some insights. I am taking the FL bar this July, but I'm only doing the FL section (Part A), as I'm transferring my MBE score from another jurisdiction. I don't want to purchase a bar prep course--I plan on buying a BARBRI conviser mini review and practice essay book from ebay. I am also going to review the FL study guides that the state publishes, but I'm wondering if this will be enough? I know that there are FL specific multiple choice questions I need to prepare for, but how difficult is this section? I'm wondering if there are other resources outside of typical bar prep materials that are available and would help me prepare?

sallysitwell wrote:Hoping someone who has taken the FL bar could give me some insights. I am taking the FL bar this July, but I'm only doing the FL section (Part A), as I'm transferring my MBE score from another jurisdiction. I don't want to purchase a bar prep course--I plan on buying a BARBRI conviser mini review and practice essay book from ebay. I am also going to review the FL study guides that the state publishes, but I'm wondering if this will be enough? I know that there are FL specific multiple choice questions I need to prepare for, but how difficult is this section? I'm wondering if there are other resources outside of typical bar prep materials that are available and would help me prepare?

Unless you're working with a really high MBE score, I would take the FL portion much more seriously than this. Plan on at least one very difficult essay and some extremely vaguely worded multiple choice questions that are much harder than the MBE questions.

sallysitwell wrote:Hoping someone who has taken the FL bar could give me some insights. I am taking the FL bar this July, but I'm only doing the FL section (Part A), as I'm transferring my MBE score from another jurisdiction. I don't want to purchase a bar prep course--I plan on buying a BARBRI conviser mini review and practice essay book from ebay. I am also going to review the FL study guides that the state publishes, but I'm wondering if this will be enough? I know that there are FL specific multiple choice questions I need to prepare for, but how difficult is this section? I'm wondering if there are other resources outside of typical bar prep materials that are available and would help me prepare?

I just took and passed Part A only this past February (previously passed the MBE, working full-time, etc.). The Florida Board of Bar Examiners releases past essay questions and answers on their website, which I found immensely more helpful than the Barbri model answers. I also used the Barbri Florida testing book for the multiple choice questions. Florida's multiple choice questions are notoriously convoluted and more poorly-written than MBE questions, and the Board of Bar Examiners releases only a very limited number of sample questions.

somethingpunny wrote:

sallysitwell wrote:Hoping someone who has taken the FL bar could give me some insights. I am taking the FL bar this July, but I'm only doing the FL section (Part A), as I'm transferring my MBE score from another jurisdiction. I don't want to purchase a bar prep course--I plan on buying a BARBRI conviser mini review and practice essay book from ebay. I am also going to review the FL study guides that the state publishes, but I'm wondering if this will be enough? I know that there are FL specific multiple choice questions I need to prepare for, but how difficult is this section? I'm wondering if there are other resources outside of typical bar prep materials that are available and would help me prepare?

I just took and passed Part A only this past February (previously passed the MBE, working full-time, etc.). The Florida Board of Bar Examiners releases past essay questions and answers on their website, which I found immensely more helpful than the Barbri model answers. I also used the Barbri Florida testing book for the multiple choice questions. Florida's multiple choice questions are notoriously convoluted and more poorly-written than MBE questions, and the Board of Bar Examiners releases only a very limited number of sample questions.

This is helpful, thank you! I didn't realize that there was a Barbri FL testing book that included multiple choice questions. Will definitely be buying that as well. Congrats on passing!

camturner wrote:

sallysitwell wrote:Hoping someone who has taken the FL bar could give me some insights. I am taking the FL bar this July, but I'm only doing the FL section (Part A), as I'm transferring my MBE score from another jurisdiction. I don't want to purchase a bar prep course--I plan on buying a BARBRI conviser mini review and practice essay book from ebay. I am also going to review the FL study guides that the state publishes, but I'm wondering if this will be enough? I know that there are FL specific multiple choice questions I need to prepare for, but how difficult is this section? I'm wondering if there are other resources outside of typical bar prep materials that are available and would help me prepare?

Unless you're working with a really high MBE score, I would take the FL portion much more seriously than this. Plan on at least one very difficult essay and some extremely vaguely worded multiple choice questions that are much harder than the MBE questions.

My MBE score is very average (144), so I definitely need to take the FL seriously. Any other resources you would recommend?

sallysitwell wrote:

camturner wrote:

sallysitwell wrote:Hoping someone who has taken the FL bar could give me some insights. I am taking the FL bar this July, but I'm only doing the FL section (Part A), as I'm transferring my MBE score from another jurisdiction. I don't want to purchase a bar prep course--I plan on buying a BARBRI conviser mini review and practice essay book from ebay. I am also going to review the FL study guides that the state publishes, but I'm wondering if this will be enough? I know that there are FL specific multiple choice questions I need to prepare for, but how difficult is this section? I'm wondering if there are other resources outside of typical bar prep materials that are available and would help me prepare?

Unless you're working with a really high MBE score, I would take the FL portion much more seriously than this. Plan on at least one very difficult essay and some extremely vaguely worded multiple choice questions that are much harder than the MBE questions.

My MBE score is very average (144), so I definitely need to take the FL seriously. Any other resources you would recommend?

I'm sure you've heard that the essays can really be any of the topics listed on the FL Bar Exam website, so you unfortunately have to study all of the topics and learn the Florida distinctions. February essays were basically Con Law; Crim Law/Pro; and Property/Homestead with a bit of Secured Transactions. FL Civ Pro, FL Crim Pro and Evidence will be on the FL multiple choice section and then either Wills/Estates or Corporations/Partnerships. This last time around it was Wills, but who knows what they will go with in July. Get your hands on as many FL multiple choice practice quizzes as you can. Themis had several of them, but I did them all online and don't have hard copies of them.

re: Grading

I'm told several graders grade each essay topic. So essay #1 may have 15 different people grading all of our essays. Does that not seem unfairly subjective (based on your grader) and leave a lot of room for inconsistent/unbalanced scores? i.e. I wrote a better essay #2 than you, but my grader was a Fla Con Law genius that noticed my lack of analysis more so than your grader noticed with you.

The only way to pass or to get a high enough score is to break down the differences between FL and MBE law. They usually hit those areas and throw in one that your most likely wouldn't look at, so expect a surprise essay and deal with it on your feet (dependency, article 3, etc.). Your eyes will hurt and the barbri book should be held together by silver tape from you studying so much. They won't be making these any easier. There aren't many good sources for FL MC questions. Good luck!