Barrister exam today

[DesireeLee]

How did everyone find the exam today? 

[LMP]

I felt it oscillated a lot. One second I'm answering a questions that says "Is it ok to take money from a client's trust account it you leave a lil sticky note saying sorry?" 

And the next I'm trying to figure out some abstract nonsense that's never been explicitly stated. 

Overall though, not the worst. Though sitting for 45 minutes after the exam gave me plenty of time to start to feel dread.

[JanLevinson]

Easier than Emond B but had to guess a lot of answers. Criminal law was the hardest IMO

[LMP]

1 minute ago, JanLevinson said:

Easier than Emond B but had to guess a lot of answers. Criminal law was the hardest IMO

Agreed. 

[DesireeLee]

3 minutes ago, JanLevinson said:

Easier than Emond B but had to guess a lot of answers. Criminal law was the hardest IMO

I felt criminal was the hardest too. Some questions were simple and some were just very hard to answer I had to guess. I felt like I just wasted time looking in the book. 

[loonie]

Also felt like Criminal was by far the hardest section. Overall it felt slightly easier than Emond B but still on the harder side in comparison to most of the practice exams. 

[Turtles]

There's someone on reddit reporting spending the exam in the bathroom with explosive diarrhea.

At the end of the day, shit happens (sometimes literally), and you just gotta roll with it. If we have to rewrite, it's not the end of the world.  But yeah, it was shitty.

[capitalttruth]

I felt like I had to geuss on maybe 25-50 percent of the questions. There were a number of occasions during the exam where I recall seeing the question, trying to find the relevant passage in my materials, and coming up completely short, and having to take an educated guess. If I have to rewrite, not sure how I would prepare. Having done 7 PTs before this exam, there was nothing in the PTs that could have prepared me for the exam, the questions were just too unique, and not easily searchable in the materials. I'm praying for a miracle to pass.

2 hours ago, LMP said:

I felt it oscillated a lot. One second I'm answering a questions that says "Is it ok to take money from a client's trust account it you leave a lil sticky note saying sorry?" 

And the next I'm trying to figure out some abstract nonsense that's never been explicitly stated. 

Overall though, not the worst. Though sitting for 45 minutes after the exam gave me plenty of time to start to feel dread.

You hit the nail on the head, that's exactly what it felt like. Overall, a very unpredictable exam. I feel like I failed, but I've been told not to put too much stock into how I feel about the exam after I write it. I honestly have no idea if I'll pass or not, and I feel like no amount of preparation I would have done would have made me more confident. The exam just seems like a different beast post-cheating scandal.

Edited June 5 by capitalttruth

[JP5553]

I finished 20 mins early but I had to guess for a fair number of questions. 

I noticed that there were multiple questions that required looking more than one thing up to get the right answer (at least I think). That definitely threw me for a loop. 

I found civil pro the hardest (but I always do, it's just not my thing). Crim is my thing so I guess I got lucky. 

I definitely don't know if I passed or not but I don't feel like I bombed it. 

[DesireeLee]

53 minutes ago, capitalttruth said:

I felt like I had to geuss on maybe 25-50 percent of the questions. There were a number of occasions during the exam where I recall seeing the question, trying to find the relevant passage in my materials, and coming up completely short, and having to take an educated guess. If I have to rewrite, not sure how I would prepare. Having done 7 PTs before this exam, there was nothing in the PTs that could have prepared me for the exam, the questions were just too unique, and not easily searchable in the materials. I'm praying for a miracle to pass.

You hit the nail on the head, that's exactly what it felt like. Overall, a very unpredictable exam. I feel like I failed, but I've been told not to put too much stock into how I feel about the exam after I write it. I honestly have no idea if I'll pass or not, and I feel like no amount of preparation I would have done would have made me more confident. The exam just seems like a different beast post-cheating scandal.

I did several practice exams as well and I did not feel like they prepared me for what I experienced today. I don’t think I failed but I also have no idea how I did it’s too hard to tell. I’m hoping they show us all some grace. 
 

Any suggestions on tackling solicitor? 😅 

[ZukoJD]

29 minutes ago, DesireeLee said:

I did several practice exams as well and I did not feel like they prepared me for what I experienced today. I don’t think I failed but I also have no idea how I did it’s too hard to tell. I’m hoping they show us all some grace. 
 

Any suggestions on tackling solicitor? 😅 

Based on today, try to cram as much knowledge into your brain as possible. This is no control F anymore. You have to have a solid understanding of the material to correctly answer many of the questions now. 

[capitalttruth]

1 hour ago, ZukoJD said:

Based on today, try to cram as much knowledge into your brain as possible. This is no control F anymore. You have to have a solid understanding of the material to correctly answer many of the questions now. 

This. The practice tests haven't caught up to the way the LSO designs the tests after the cheating scandal, so I feel like instead of doing practice tests, I should try and read the materials multiple times, which is a bit of a daunting task (especially for the solicitor). 

[ZukoJD]

7 hours ago, capitalttruth said:

This. The practice tests haven't caught up to the way the LSO designs the tests after the cheating scandal, so I feel like instead of doing practice tests, I should try and read the materials multiple times, which is a bit of a daunting task (especially for the solicitor). 

But the LSO says you can read them 3 times!!! 

[SNAILS]

I felt I did OK. I will be very surprised if I did not pass. I agree that it would be very hard to find many of these answers in the study materials. On the other hand, I think there were quite a few softball questions, almost all Professional responsibility, that you could answer just with common sense.

2 hours ago, ZukoJD said:

But the LSO says you can read them 3 times!!! 

Well, for people writing in the Fall or Winter, that might be true. And if any of us fail, we'll be onto our 2nd or third reading anyway.

I am going to do a "partial" re-read of the materials I have the most trouble with, which will be business law and anything dealing with taxes.

[ZukoJD]

3 hours ago, SNAILS said:

I felt I did OK. I will be very surprised if I did not pass. I agree that it would be very hard to find many of these answers in the study materials. On the other hand, I think there were quite a few softball questions, almost all Professional responsibility, that you could answer just with common sense.

Well, for people writing in the Fall or Winter, that might be true. And if any of us fail, we'll be onto our 2nd or third reading anyway.

I am going to do a "partial" re-read of the materials I have the most trouble with, which will be business law and anything dealing with taxes.

Sure but everyone here is talking about the June sittings, and their advice is not qualified as you’ve laid out. Hence why I poked fun at it. 

[capitalttruth]

The idea of having to study and do this exam again is unfathomable.

[hairpins]

To add my two cents, I have a very good memory, and there were a few questions that stuck out to me after the exam, so I searched the materials and still could not find an answer. It is bonkers to me that they can ask questions without grounding in the material. 

Overall, I felt really not great about that exam but I also hate multiple choice. I would not be surprised if I failed *but* if I sincerely hope I passed lol

[loonie]

Quote

I am pretty confident that we could just chalk this up as an outlier as the consensus seems to be that it was somewhat unfair. 

My bad for the above quote in a different thread everyone, lol. Little did we know that Emond B would turn out to be the best encapsulation of what the actual exam would be like. 

All in all, I think we're probably catastrophizing a bit. Everyone probably did much better than they think. Even if anyone has to end up re-writing, it's not the end of the world. But in the mean-time, just focus on the Solicitor Exam and use yesterday's experience as a learning process of what to better expect now. 

Congrats to everyone on (hopefully) being half-way done! 

[capitalttruth]

How is everyone studying for the solicitor? I feel like the old ways of studying (doing practice tests) aren't sufficient anymore.

[secunda]

After the exam yesterday and having to change my study plans, I'm going to be focusing on:

• Re-reading PR. I was able to retain the key concepts from reading it already for the bar, but re-reading the PR section entirely is what I did today, and it helped me feel more confident in that section. I heard that the solicitor is more PR-focused, so I assume there may be more PR questions on it.
• Supplementing the materials with the UofT summaries. I'm not familiar with the content on the solicitor as much as I was for the bar, so I'm going to focus on broader understanding of the actual material itself and feeling comfortable with substance of the materials, so if I have to make a few inferences like the bar exam yesterday, I'm (hopefully) going to more comfortable doing so. I feel like this is ambitious so I'm hoping doing this with the practice exams will help me feel more familiar with the content.
• Being okay/comfortable with the fact that after yesterday's experience, I will in fact be anxious while writing, and probably have to make educated guesses and/or inferences again just to be able to work through the answer choices. Due to normal test anxiety, I did panic inside while writing and I momentarily froze a couple of times, especially when I couldn't find the materials for some of the questions, so I want to train myself to know that it's okay if that happens again, I just have to acknowledge it's normal to have test anxiety and to take the questions one-step at a time, even if that involves having to choose the "best" answer.
  • This might be silly, but just mentally making a plan for knowing how to handle what exactly will happen if I get to a question I can't answer. So, making a mental map of telling myself "don't re-read the question multiple times in exasperation, find the key concept in the question, try to find it in the materials from the DTOC, eliminate the answer choices the best I can, and move on."
• Still do the practice exams under timed conditions like I would have otherwise so I can get familiar with the DTOC.

[capitalttruth]

3 hours ago, secunda said:

After the exam yesterday and having to change my study plans, I'm going to be focusing on:

• Re-reading PR. I was able to retain the key concepts from reading it already for the bar, but re-reading the PR section entirely is what I did today, and it helped me feel more confident in that section. I heard that the solicitor is more PR-focused, so I assume there may be more PR questions on it.
• Supplementing the materials with the UofT summaries. I'm not familiar with the content on the solicitor as much as I was for the bar, so I'm going to focus on broader understanding of the actual material itself and feeling comfortable with substance of the materials, so if I have to make a few inferences like the bar exam yesterday, I'm (hopefully) going to more comfortable doing so. I feel like this is ambitious so I'm hoping doing this with the practice exams will help me feel more familiar with the content.
• Being okay/comfortable with the fact that after yesterday's experience, I will in fact be anxious while writing, and probably have to make educated guesses and/or inferences again just to be able to work through the answer choices. Due to normal test anxiety, I did panic inside while writing and I momentarily froze a couple of times, especially when I couldn't find the materials for some of the questions, so I want to train myself to know that it's okay if that happens again, I just have to acknowledge it's normal to have test anxiety and to take the questions one-step at a time, even if that involves having to choose the "best" answer.
  • This might be silly, but just mentally making a plan for knowing how to handle what exactly will happen if I get to a question I can't answer. So, making a mental map of telling myself "don't re-read the question multiple times in exasperation, find the key concept in the question, try to find it in the materials from the DTOC, eliminate the answer choices the best I can, and move on."
• Still do the practice exams under timed conditions like I would have otherwise so I can get familiar with the DTOC.

Fantastic advice. I'm going to be doing the same.

[notellewoods]

anyone else who didn't have enough time for public law and pretty much had to randomly guess the majority of them? Hate to learn that it was not a very hard section.

[capitalttruth]

58 minutes ago, notellewoods said:

anyone else who didn't have enough time for public law and pretty much had to randomly guess the majority of them? Hate to learn that it was not a very hard section.

If it makes you feel any better, I felt like I had to randomly guess for the majority of the exam!

[loonie]

1 hour ago, notellewoods said:

anyone else who didn't have enough time for public law and pretty much had to randomly guess the majority of them? Hate to learn that it was not a very hard section.

Everyone has their different strength areas, but I actually found the Public section to be the easiest personally. Close second was Family Law. Civ Lit felt harder than normal and the Crim questions felt particularly atrocious.

The PR questions felt pretty reasonable for the most part - at least IMO. I know some people were complaining that they felt like multiple answers were correct when it came to PR. I didn't really find that although it was a bit annoying how many Theory of the Case questions there were solely because I felt like that was one of the areas that weren't tested much on any of the practice exams (always seemed to be about confidentiality or about book-keeping obligations for the most part), but they still weren't that bad. 

It sucks that you ran out of time and had to guess that majority of Public, but it was a very short section, so I'm sure you'll be fine. Also, on a positive note, that means you allocated more of your time to the other sections so hopefully that will pay off for you. 

EDIT: Felt like my post didn't effectively convey that it was a hard exam. By me saying what sections felt the easiest to me personally should not take away from the fact of how different that felt than other practice questions. I definitely had to guess my fair share of questions as well throughout the exam. 

Edited June 6 by loonie

[sarcasticlemon]

I felt the barrister exam was more difficult than any practise test I took. And I did tests from emond, access bar prep and Ontario law exams. I’m incredibly nervous for the solicitor because my introductory knowledge of the material is already lower, and the material is very dense and less common sense. 

I found family the worst section because of all the “which is the BEST answer” and “what would you do FIRST” questions.

Edited June 7 by sarcasticlemon