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How much did you study for the Ontario Bar Exams and how difficult did you find them?


Apollo14

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Apollo14
  • Law Student

Hi all, I'm just looking to gauge some of your personal experiences as I don't have many people to talk to about this. 

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CleanHands
  • Lawyer

Some really, really dumb sacks of shit who can't comprehend anything have passed them. I wouldn't stress it.

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Vitron
  • Articling Student

You can do it with two weeks for each exam studying full-time (aka 9-5). 

3 weeks for each exam is probably the perfect amount if you want to actually read all the materials (not necessary). 

Anything more than 3 weeks is unnecessary imo.

It’s not a hard exam. 

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QueensDenning
  • Articling Student

Reading through these materials are painful. This is way worse than the LSAT. I feel like I'm not being very efficient here. Would it be really stupid to just do practice tests rather than try to read through and highlight every page? 

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chaboywb
  • Lawyer
1 minute ago, QueensDenning said:

Reading through these materials are painful. This is way worse than the LSAT. I feel like I'm not being very efficient here. Would it be really stupid to just do practice tests rather than try to read through and highlight every page? 

Honestly, I didn't find any of the practice tests (and I did quite a few, though I don't remember which) reflected the actual material on the exam. I actually found the exam harder than any practice test, though still relatively straightforward (the sheer number of obvious professional responsibility questions helps a lot).

I would try to get through it at least once. Don't try to absorb everything. Focus on how it all fits together. I focused on the headings but skimmed the text, so I at least spent a bit of time on each section. But there's no point reading every word.

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Kimura
  • Lawyer

I found practice tests were useful for learning how to navigate the index. 

The exam is one of finding information. Just read through the material as quickly as you can and highlight/make margin notes so you can locate information as quickly as you can on the exam.

Notes/highlighting were especially helpful on pages full of text with no headings. However, if I were to do it again, I'd keep my margin notes and highlighting to strictly key words/categories. I didn't have time to read through any of my longer notes during the exam. 

It's a boring and drawn out process but try to chip away at X amount of pages every day until you can start doing practice tests. That should be enough to pass. 

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erin otoole
  • Lawyer

Buy some practice questions to learn how to find answers via your index and you are good. You will never remember the small details of every area of law tested after reading them. 

But I would memorize how to properly count days. Easy free marks when added to the PR questions. 

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QueensDenning
  • Articling Student
37 minutes ago, Kimura said:

I found practice tests were useful for learning how to navigate the index. 

Does everyone just use the UofT index (once it's released)? 

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Case
  • Lawyer

Probably one to two weeks of "full time" studying for each test. Read through the materials once, then familiarized myself with the Table of Contents with several rounds of timed practice testing. Reading through the materials is mostly to have a general feeling for the categories and headings and how the content is laid out, and to absorb some substance for the areas of law that I barely studied in school. Don't go insane with multiple highlighters. If it's an area of law you did not study in school and you want to highlight stuff that seems like probable test content, then go ahead.

If you are not sure whether to use an Index or the Table of Contents, then figure that out early on so you have time to practice your method of choice. 

TIMED practice tests are key. There is a certain pace to the real exam that you should be trying to replicate and exceed with decent accuracy on the practice tests. I don't remember exactly but when I took the exams it was like 2 or 2.5 minutes per question. You can make a little chart or table tool to keep an eye on your pace during the actual exam. 

The exams are not hard. I would guess that most of the people who fail have some disadvantage (severe test anxiety, English is their second language, etc.) or they have simply done something fundamentally wrong (didn't study at all, studied but in a very inefficient or misdirected way). 

Edited by Case
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I didn't study full time. I had to work, so I read for an hour in the morning before work and for a little while after work. I think I started doing that a few weeks ahead of the exams. I took a day off before each exam and did a practice exam.

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Kimura
  • Lawyer
2 hours ago, QueensDenning said:

Does everyone just use the UofT index (once it's released)? 

Some people do, but I didn't. I didn't trust an index drafted by other students that I don't know lol. I just bought an index from a company. I think there are a few out there. One of them is Affordable Bar Prep. 

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PalomaBlanca

I used the UofT Index - I liked it.  Some people I know relied solely on the expanded index included in the materials. I have tried to make sense of their approach, but have failed every time. Their brains must work differently.

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The exam is hard enough that more than hundred candidates chose to risk being caught cheating on the November 2021 exam, and were penalized by having their exam results voided or being removed from the licensing process.

The exam now is not what it used to be, you can't  anymore find the answer to most questions by just relying on the index using key words.  You'll now need to understand the concepts and guess the right answer.  On the practice exams, I focused on using the indexes and was confident with about 90% of my answers since I found the exact section in the materials the question was based on using the index.  On the actual exam, it was closer to 40% because key words weren't popping out.  The practice exams don't seem reflective of the real exam, but they are useful to review the materials and to learn using the index.

 

 

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BlushAndTheBar
  • Law Student
2 hours ago, myth000 said:

The exam is hard enough that more than hundred candidates chose to risk being caught cheating on the November 2021 exam, and were penalized by having their exam results voided or being removed from the licensing process.

The exam now is not what it used to be, you can't  anymore find the answer to most questions by just relying on the index using key words.  You'll now need to understand the concepts and guess the right answer.  On the practice exams, I focused on using the indexes and was confident with about 90% of my answers since I found the exact section in the materials the question was based on using the index.  On the actual exam, it was closer to 40% because key words weren't popping out.  The practice exams don't seem reflective of the real exam, but they are useful to review the materials and to learn using the index.

 

 

^^^ I agree with this. Be wary of advice from anyone who wrote the exam pre-cheating scandal. 

Edited by BlushAndTheBar
better wording
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Apollo14
  • Law Student
7 hours ago, myth000 said:

The exam is hard enough that more than hundred candidates chose to risk being caught cheating on the November 2021 exam, and were penalized by having their exam results voided or being removed from the licensing process.

The exam now is not what it used to be, you can't  anymore find the answer to most questions by just relying on the index using key words.  You'll now need to understand the concepts and guess the right answer.  On the practice exams, I focused on using the indexes and was confident with about 90% of my answers since I found the exact section in the materials the question was based on using the index.  On the actual exam, it was closer to 40% because key words weren't popping out.  The practice exams don't seem reflective of the real exam, but they are useful to review the materials and to learn using the index.

 

 

Thanks for your reply, I haven't heard this before. I have heard that the actual exam is not similar to the practice exams (even pre-cheating scandal) but I still can't really figure out how this is possible after so many years of the bar exam. It is a bit frightening to be honest! 

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Kimura
  • Lawyer

I wrote after the scandal and I did not spend significant time trying to understand concepts. The questions were hard in that they were long, and the answers were also long, so they took time to read through. 

Admittedly, I did a fair bit of guessing during the exam because I was running out of time, but it was still largely an exercise of locating information. 

It was already difficult enough trying to get through all of the material once. If I didn't understand something, I may have read it over again, but I didn't study concepts, make charts or memorize anything. 

Everyone in my circle read the material, highlighted and made some margin notes, and wrote practice exams. Everyone in my circle passed. 

It's already stressful enough. Don't over complicate the process. 

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Bachtowork
  • Articling Student

Is it better to get your materials spiral bound or to just hole punch the materials and insert them into binders? I think most people opt for the former, but I'm hesitant because then I wouldn't be able to make changes. 

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18 minutes ago, Bachtowork said:

Is it better to get your materials spiral bound or to just hole punch the materials and insert them into binders? I think most people opt for the former, but I'm hesitant because then I wouldn't be able to make changes. 

Personal preference, but i recommend spiral bound.

I started with hole punch but once I started practice tests i found that pages got caught on the rings often, which results in me being slower to find the answers. Ended up taking my hole punched material to be bound prior to the exams (which was its own headache).

sure if i “messed up” highlighting i could reprint the page, but i think i did that maybe once. More often I just used white out.

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TobyFlenderson
  • Lawyer

I hole-punched the materials and bound the indices. I liked that I could immediately identify the materials by binder colour, and I didn’t really have any issues with pages getting stuck or torn. I also liked being able to immediately identify what was index and what was bar material.

Putting everything in binders would make for a lot of binders and would get unwieldy, I think. Would definitely recommend spiral binding at least some things.

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Bachtowork
  • Articling Student
19 minutes ago, 123sueme said:

Personal preference, but i recommend spiral bound.

I started with hole punch but once I started practice tests i found that pages got caught on the rings often, which results in me being slower to find the answers. Ended up taking my hole punched material to be bound prior to the exams (which was its own headache).

sure if i “messed up” highlighting i could reprint the page, but i think i did that maybe once. More often I just used white out.

 

15 minutes ago, TobyFlenderson said:

I hole-punched the materials and bound the indices. I liked that I could immediately identify the materials by binder colour, and I didn’t really have any issues with pages getting stuck or torn. I also liked being able to immediately identify what was index and what was bar material.

Putting everything in binders would make for a lot of binders and would get unwieldy, I think. Would definitely recommend spiral binding at least some things.

Seems both methods could work. Since I'm inclined to divide up all the chapters, spiral binding may be better (so that I don't have to take 4-5 binders to each exam). 

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Case
  • Lawyer
1 hour ago, TobyFlenderson said:

I hole-punched the materials and bound the indices. I liked that I could immediately identify the materials by binder colour, and I didn’t really have any issues with pages getting stuck or torn. I also liked being able to immediately identify what was index and what was bar material.

Putting everything in binders would make for a lot of binders and would get unwieldy, I think. Would definitely recommend spiral binding at least some things.

I did this as well. Hole punched materials in a couple of binder but spiral bound the Table of Contents. 
I may have also spiral bound the PR materials... don't remember. 

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lawgal_2020
  • Articling Student

Anyone have an idea when the UofT index gets released?

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ruthlessfox
  • Law Student
8 hours ago, lawgal_2020 said:

Anyone have an idea when the UofT index gets released?

Mid-May probably. Not for at least another week.

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yunglawyer
  • Lawyer

Spend most of your time on practice tests under simulated test conditions. There are now tons of providers on the market (Ontario Bar Prep, OLE, Emond, etc.). The biggest struggle writers have is they take too long to locate the answers in their materials and run out of time at the end of the exam. Figure out if you work better with your indices or DTOC. 

Reading the materials diligently is overrated. The exam is a massive flipping exercise, so make sure your strategy is sound before writing.

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Bachtowork
  • Articling Student
1 hour ago, yunglawyer said:

Spend most of your time on practice tests under simulated test conditions. There are now tons of providers on the market (Ontario Bar Prep, OLE, Emond, etc.). The biggest struggle writers have is they take too long to locate the answers in their materials and run out of time at the end of the exam. Figure out if you work better with your indices or DTOC. 

Reading the materials diligently is overrated. The exam is a massive flipping exercise, so make sure your strategy is sound before writing.

When did you write the exams? 

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