I was working on some torts questions tonight and found several of them pretty funny, for no reason other than just the ridiculousness of the situation. Since I wouldn't want to spoil the fun of anyone who may be doing them concurrently, I will just reveal the highlights of the fact patterns rather than the actual questions.
One of them dealt with a cat defecating on a rosebush. Another had a store employee tell a fat customer that they didn't have the dress she wanted in hippo size. The third had a guy drink a dead mouse from his milk container. Perhaps because I was distracted by the hilarity, I got none of these particular ones right. Nevertheless...
Still another question dealt with a fast food customer who was irate that they wouldn't serve him food and so he shot at the employee. Ironically, this short tale is similar to the guy who flipped out and shot a Wendy's employee for not getting some extra chili sauce a couple of weeks ago.
More barbri fun videos tomorrow. Super fun!
Also, I've gotten two emails in the same number of days from PMBR requesting me to fill out a satisfaction survey. They claim it will only take seven minutes of my time. I'm not bothered so much with their desire for free research as I am that I got a reminder not even a day after they sent the first solicitation. Give me a break.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
fun with torts
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Bar review week 2
I noticed today that some (but not a lot) of my fellow bar reviewers are wearing various t-shirts and clothes with (presumably) their various law schools on it. I find this sort of funny, but only if it is being done intentionally.
I also have found that my patience for sitting really starts to wear out after the three hour mark. These videos and lectures that run longer than three hours have become a real test of mental fortitude. I think I'm going to go shoot some hoops and try not to think about what liability I would incur if I accidentally threw a basketball at someone.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
One week of bar review down; eight or so more to go
So for the first time in a long time (and by long time, I mean ever), I am spending Memorial Day studying. It sucks. Bar review is worse than finals because you have the stress of finals for two straight months. I'm probably going to take tomorrow off though just to try and recharge.
And I love how some of these PMBR questions say "C or D" or something like that. While the real test may have two correct answers as a matter of statistical analysis, PMBR's questions should be more centered and focused. For the most part, they appear to be; I may try to do 50 barbri today just to mix things up and see if they are any better.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Lost: Through the Looking Glass (2) - Season finale quick review
Spoilers abound.
I thought the finale was great. With about five minutes left, I realized that it might have been a flash forward and sure enough it was. There were about five or six storylines that were happening, but over a two-hour span, it played out well. Charlie, prior to his drowning death (which seems somewhat pointless), talks to Desmond's Penny and has just enough time and just enough magic marker to warn Desmond that Naomi (the parachuter who most people didn't believe was genuine) was "not [from] Penny's boat." Unfortunately, at the same time Charlie's death was happening, Locke had shot Naomi, and Jack made contact with "the bad ones" (to paraphrase Ben, who seemed pretty helpless at this point, having lost control of half of his camp).
Walt, aged a solid 2-3 years in teenage years, saved Locke, which would purport to indicate that perhaps him and Desmond will be able to prevent the future that we saw Jack in. The writers all along have been saying that this storyline will make perfect scientific sense, and perhaps it will, but I think the finale has taken it into a new direction, it's well worth watching, and if you had given up on Lost for whatever reason (including it's bonehead move to 10 PM, which hopefully will change back in Feb. 2008), you need to get the season 3 DVDs and sit through them. The storyline gets better and with only 36 episodes left (a long three more seasons when you think about it), one can only hope the writers are on a path to somewhere, as opposed to aimlessly drifting as they had in parts of season 2 and the earlier parts of season 3.
The fact that we have to wait almost seven months to figure out what happens next should drive most fansites up the wall with speculation, which is probably good for ratings next season.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Bar review days... are not too much fun
So the first couple days of bar review have consisted of watching videos and re-learning fun things like parol evidence and statute of frauds. At least Epstein tries to make it interesting and has kept me focused for at least 50 out of each 60 minute video. That being said, it certainly is draining after three-plus hours.
If you watched any of the Barbri videos during your first year, the content is largely the same, but by now you should understand it (and if not, you should be smart enough to figure out how to understand it in the next couple months).
Now, to work until either dinner or the Lost finale. Or both.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Heroes Season Finale quick review
I haven't seen the 24 season finale yet (and for me it will be the 24 series finale), but I did watch the Heroes season finale, How to Stop an Exploding Man. This entry definitely has spoilers, so don't say you weren't warned.
For how much the show has developed over the last eight or nine episodes, I found the ending (including the Hiro part) a little lame. And by a little, I mean, it epitomized anti-climactic.
First, I thought it was going to be two-hours, so by 9:54 or so, I was thinking, things are set up well, the next hour is going to be great. And then the whole thing with Nathan picking Peter up and flying with him? Lame. Wouldn't a nuclear bomb going off in the atmosphere be about a thousand times worse than it detonating in a city? The invisible guy knocked Peter out with his hand, couldn't they have done the same (or similar) thing? Peter going back in time to talk to the old guy was the best part of the episode; I guess he did absorb Hiro's power after all.
With all the set up though (in the episode and prior to it), everything resolved itself far too quickly. I don't think comic books would have done it like that in one fell swoop, and the fact that the show resolved that story line in that particular manner shows an utter lack of creativity. And while they attempted to set themselves up for a worse villain than Sylar for the next season through the girl (who was scared he would see her), they also had Sylar crawl away into a manhole so he didn't really die either. Hopefully Sylar kills the new villain or vice versa.
In the end, I stand by my belief that Heroes was one of the best new shows on television this season, primarily for being original. But if they were trying to move away from doing a serialized show and wrap everything up in one neat bow with some carry over for next season, they did a piss poor job. Very unsatisfying. Even if they had just had Peter stop glowing and everyone just walk away that probably would have been better than what they did.
Hopefully the previews for "volume II" are a little bit better than seeing George Takei fighting people in seventeenth century Japan and Hiro appearing in the middle of the conflict in the final scene. Hopefully they abandon that storyline pretty quickly, but after tonight's episode, it would be difficult to predict with any certainty how they could change the storyline. Or maybe Hiro's father's "gift" is that he lives forever, like the guy in Highlander, and Volume II will copy that show much like it did to the X-Men. Regardless, the last five minutes were the worst of the season and hopefully didn't completely kill all of the momentum the show had gained over the past few months. So, if you didn't see the last five minutes and turned it off, you will probably get as much out of your imaginary ending than you would for the real thing.
Back to reading bar outlines.
Jericho cancelled? And Katie Couric stays?
Only had to pick up the dozen or so 100+ page books for bar review today, and so after lugging them back to my car, I have the rest of the day off. Which is good since (a) I can hit some golf balls and (b) there are still new tv shows to watch and talk about (at least for a couple more days). Speaking of which...
I saw the other day that Jericho got cancelled. See CBS ends 'Jericho' in new schedule. My recent comments on Jericho should emphasize my disappointment in this turn of events, although with its ratings being mediocre at best, I am not that surprised.
It's a shame really because Jericho was probably one of the more unique and creative shows on television as of late. And for a network that is already struggling to bring up the rear in the ratings, they probably do need to cut their losses. Oh well. For me it will be one less show to get hooked into. And with 24 getting the boot from me as well, that frees up even more of my time to be spent on whatever clerkship type work I'll be working on.
What I really get a kick out of from CBS's announcement that Jericho got the ax are these humorous lines from the article:
"CBS' only new show that is heavily serialized, "Swingtown," will start in midseason and run uninterrupted until the end of the season. The series is set in the shag-carpeted 1970s, with Chicago-area couples navigating the sexual freedom of the era."
"To counter its stodgy image, CBS has scheduled a handful of edgy new shows for the fall: a drama about a vampire, a musical and a drama about a Cuban-American family running a sugar business in Florida."
I can state with absolute certainty that Swingtown will flop based on that description for wont of a target audience, a drama about a vampire will flop faster than that buffy show, a musical needs no commentary about its success on network television, and a drama about a sugar business in Florida will do as well as a drama about watching paint dry. If this is what they are banking on to get their ratings up, they must be operating in the bizarro world. Maybe it's time for the board of directors of Viacom or CBS to put the pressure on Les Moonves to open his golden parachute to make room for some new blood.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
PMBR conclusion thoughts and hearsay about practicing these multiple choice questions from a NY atty
Most of my sentiments from the PMBR halfway post are still the same. I think that if you are disciplined and can study on your own, the 6-day course isn't worth it. The 3-day course is probably worth it just to get the workbooks, but again, I think you can save your money and time and just get the books on ebay and work through them on your own.
The lectures are solid and useful. Although I found myself disagreeing with many of the points on technical grounds, and I also believe that several of PMBR's questions and answers have erroneous and misleading clauses to them, I have no reasonable basis to believe that the MBE isn't the same way (although I would think that as a professional multiple choice test, it would not have such patent ambiguities on certain questions).
So, if you don't take the 6-day course, don't worry, you didn't miss anything. If you do take it, it certainly won't hurt you, and probably is helpful to put you in the mindset of studying that you need to be in.
On another related note, from speaking to one of my friends who passed the NY bar last year, he (surprisingly) said that Barbri's questions were closer to the real thing. He did qualify that by saying that it's not so much the questions but the repetition of practicing 33-50 questions a day and just getting used to the law. He said that PMBR's questions were harder and, as a result, less indicative of the real thing, but at the same time were good since it made the real thing more bearable. He also said that regardless of whether you concentrate on Barbri's or PMBR's questions, stick to one system and just follow their study schedule. Hopefully that works for me as well.
Bar review starts tomorrow. Hopefully I can get in a quick 9 before my life disappears for the next two months.
Friday, May 18, 2007
PMBR day 5
I had to go to a baseball game with a bunch of my friends so I chose to prioritize that over PMBR day 4. I hear it was as enthralling as the first four days so I don't think I missed anything.
Day 5 was just as fun as the other three days. As far as actual test takers, it was pretty empty, but that made it nice and quiet. Of the 50 today, I hit 28 or 29, which according to the lecturer makes me "a super all-star." I beg to differ, but I'll take the compliments where I can get them. Someone else in my row got 32, so obviously they must be a "super super all-star."
I wonder how many of these mneumonics I'm going to actually remember. I tend to remember the mneumonic but not what it actually stands for. Hopefully that changes over the next couple months. Only one more day to go. The fact that it's on a saturday morning just sucks.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
PMBR 6-day (halfway through) evaluation - don't do it!
I've now gone through three of the six days of the 6-day PMBR course. Here are my initial thoughts: The six-day course may be overkill. I would go as far to say that if you have carried above a B average in law school, you probably don't need it. In fact, I would say that unless you either need a good kick in the butt to study, have some sort of delay between graduation and barbri and have some psychotic studying fetish or simply that you need some sort of wake up call, you probably are just as well off just doing the 3-day.
Since I got suckered into the PMBR six-day course though, here are my thoughts so future law students can make a more informed decision.
First, as I mentioned, if you have any discipline at all, the 6-day course is overkill. Do the 3-day course and get the workbooks with all of PMBR's infringing questions and answers and do an hour's worth a day as they recommend. I realize that in saying the 6-day course is overkill that perhaps the 3-day is also, but I will reserve comment on that until I have taken it. Regarding the six-day course, I will give the lecturer props for giving some helpful mnemonic devices, but I've seen some of them before, and I am sure that Barbri will give similar if not identical ones. Perhaps not.
In the alternative to buying from PMBR, a used book for the pmbr 6-day course with the same questions you'll be doing in the six day course is probably available on ebay at the relevant times of the year, so I'm sure you can save some money if you look around long and hard enough. If you are doing the 3-day course, you get the workbooks anyway and if you can do 33 questions (1 hour) a day, that should be good enough. If not, they are on ebay also. The other bonus items you get with the 6-day course is all of the MBE PMBR cds (29) (I think you get your choice of three subjects with the 3-day course). But you can find all of the pmbr cds on ebay also. In the alternative, you can just buy the PMBR materials from PMBR without doing any of the courses, and I think they charge close to $400. For that, you may as well just do the 3-day course and get them from them.
Second, if you do take the course, and have any discipline to do the test on your own, you should not waste your morning taking the test in PMBR's setting. I'm not sure how realistic it is to have students walk in late and leave early for the real MBE, so you may be better off just going to your library for 1.5-2 hours and doing the test on your own. You can always come in later to hear the lecture. Each day has experienced a significant drop in attendance in the morning testing environment, so I'm telling you in advance to save yourself the time and hassel. On the other hand, if you need to get used to waking up early or have a long commute, it certainly doesn't hurt to go in and take it under their setting either.
Third, the lecture basically emphasizes what is in the answer book and doesn't really add that much to it, so I'm not even sure how worthwhile the lecture is. In listening to the lecture, I've heard several times now where the lecturer represented that "we recreated the problem from last July's MBE." Apparently PMBR isn't following the terms of their injunction, which can be found in the hilarious E.D. Pa. opinion, reported in 458 F.Supp.2d 252. The full opinion can also be found for free here. Oh well. Good for those with the PMBR materials I guess. That being said, I will say that hearing the various high points about the subjects is somewhat useful.
Fourth, I find myself disagreeing with some of the multiple choice answers and some of them distinctly have two right answers, so I'm not sure what PMBR is aiming to get at. I have a strong suspicion they make these questions overly technical and difficult to simply scare people into using their materials, which is probably a good thing overall, so I can't complain about that. For the most part, however, the answers appear to be correct.
While doing through these answers, I am finding myself wondering (more and more) how many of PMBR's questions are actually representative of the real thing. Obviously based on the PMBR lawsuit some of them are copycat questions, but others seem pretty hypertechnical for a typical standardized test. I guess I'll know for sure in July.
Fifth, I haven't taken the 3-day course yet, so I can't comment intelligently on it...yet. It may be worth it, but again, if you have the materials and are disciplined to do the work on your own, it's probably not worth the money. It may be worth it to do a dry run of the MBE in June or July (as PMBR schedules), just to gauge where you are.
Conclusion: I would NOT recommend the six-day PMBR course if you have any sort of discipline to study on your own. Obviously it is a good wake up call for a lot of people. For me though, I am upset at myself that I got suckered in and second, that am going to count as a PMBR statistic when I pass the bar. I'm assuming that PMBR just looks everybody's name up and cross references them so I can't avoid them short of suing them to not count me, which would be a sure loser (and snoozer) of a suit.
All for now. These 50-question exams are killer for a number of reasons, but at least I'm done by 3:30. It's not going to be as bad as some of my friends who are going to suffer through dual days of Barbri and PMBR for the first six days of bar review. Sucks to be them...
