How Many Weeks does the Average Person Need to Study for the Bar? Going on Exchange SOS

[IDK123456]

I'm a 3L in Ontario and I'm going on exchange next semester to Europe. I'm very excited about it, but I'm starting to get worried about what happens when I get back and need to start studying for the Bar. My term in Europe ends at the beginning of May, and I need to book my flight back to Canada. I'm just wondering if anyone has a very general idea of how many weeks the average student takes to study for the Bar exam? I realize there are two, but in general, how many weeks prior to the exam do most people start studying? 

I'm trying to figure out if I need to start studying while on exchange, or if I can just start when I get back to Canada at the beginning of May. 

If anyone has any insight into how long it took them, or just any other advice on how I should go about this, I'd be really grateful. 

[QMT20]

7 minutes ago, IDK123456 said:

I'm a 3L in Ontario and I'm going on exchange next semester to Europe. I'm very excited about it, but I'm starting to get worried about what happens when I get back and need to start studying for the Bar. My term in Europe ends at the beginning of May, and I need to book my flight back to Canada. I'm just wondering if anyone has a very general idea of how many weeks the average student takes to study for the Bar exam? I realize there are two, but in general, how many weeks prior to the exam do most people start studying? 

I'm trying to figure out if I need to start studying while on exchange, or if I can just start when I get back to Canada at the beginning of May. 

If anyone has any insight into how long it took them, or just any other advice on how I should go about this, I'd be really grateful. 

I started studying for the Barristers at the beginning of May and didn't touch the Solicitors materials until after I wrote the Barristers in June. I found that I had enough time to get through all the materials and do practice exams. Of course, that depends on how committed you'll be to studying everyday. The materials are very dry. I was able to force myself to read at a pace of about 50-70 pages a day and leave a week for practice exams before each of the Barristers and the Solicitors. It was pretty painful though. 

[blonderachelzane]

I started in May and wrote my barrister in June and wrote the solicitor 3 weeks later. I personally didn't study for the solicitor until after the barrister but it was a pretty intense time crunch to get through the material so I recommend either taking the solicitor later or begin studying for the solicitor earlier like before you write the barrister. I think for weeks for both is a good amount of time leaving one of those weeks to strictly do practice tests. That would probably be the ideal. I still managed to pass both in the time crunch but wouldn't recommend because I did a lot of late night cramming sessions to get through extremely dry solicitor material. 

[Apple]

Same as the above posters, I studied for four weeks for barrister and then three weeks for solicitor after I finished the barrister exam. I passed both. 

Edited October 1, 2021 by Apple

[hdhfbskefjhbsjk]

It took me about four and a half weeks to read through the materials for both, treating it as a full time job. And when I say read, I mean process the words on the page enough to highlight the important elements on the page, not actually understanding everything. I took my Barristers first, followed by my Solicitors 10 days later, so I started with the Solicitors material, and then the Barristers (so it would be fresher in my head, and since it was my weaker of the two), then I took about two weeks for Barrister practice exams every other day and going over them (and taking a breath). After the Barrister, I then did Solicitor practice exams for the 10 days before actually taking it. I also took a day to organize and tab everything and figure out my colour coding for highlighting before I began.

I don't think I could really cut out any of it, even though I know some people say they don't even read through the materials, and I completely get how that could work if you work well with the detailed table of contents and whatever index you use, but being able to go to a page, and know that all of the important dates for example are highlighted in orange, so I could just look for that colour and have my answer REALLY helped in terms of time. I had about 30 mins left over for both to review questions I had flagged and I think that was super helpful. You could definitely do less practice exams but I found them to be helpful, and especially being able to take lots of time off in-between the practice exams to chill a little before exams helped my brain after so much studying.

So all in all, fourish weeks of actual reading, and three weeks of practice exams / trying to relax a bit beforehand. I started after school ended in May (LSO was late in getting the materials out), and was done both exams by June 22nd, and was called to the bar end of August.

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by hdhfbskefjhbsjk

[BlockedQuebecois]

Sad to see my strategy of "don't bother studying" has not caught on. 

Edited October 4, 2021 by BlockedQuebecois

[Darth Vader]

I studied for around 3 days for the Barrister and 1 week for the Solicitors. The Solicitors took longer for me just because I found the material so incredibly boring - particularly the real estate section which is the bulk of what you will be tested on. This isn't a test that needs studying as it is an open-book speed test. Whether you pass or not depends on how familiar you are with your index and table of contents to look up key words quickly and flip the pages. 

[criminallyminded]

On 10/4/2021 at 9:08 AM, BlockedQuebecois said:

Sad to see my strategy of "don't bother studying" has not caught on. 

Honestly, after barely bothering with the solicitor material and really just focusing on practice exams with an index, I can see how your strategy can work.

Its not like I know anything from the solicitor and yet I still passed. 

[ginarocks]

If I plan to take the bar exam on June 10th would it be okay if i go on a week-long trip on May? 

[Rashabon]

Are you asking permission?

[Brisingr1502]

On 10/4/2021 at 9:08 AM, BlockedQuebecois said:

Sad to see my strategy of "don't bother studying" has not caught on. 

I know it has been a while since you posted that comment but what strategy would you recommend? I am leaning towards only using the detailed table of contents and not even bother reading sections I won't use in my practice.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Brisingr1502

[Fruitdealer]

1 hour ago, Brisingr1502 said:

I know it has been a while since you posted that comment but what strategy would you recommend? I am leaning towards only using the detailed table of contents and not even bother reading sections I won't use in my practice.

Honestly, I just studied the weekend before each of the Bar exams. I acquired indices from a friend and familiarized myself with them + the table of contents. I skimmed through the actual materials over the weekend. There is something like 1000 pages of material per exam, so if you skim quickly, you can more or less make it through over 2 days.

Most of the ethics/professionalism questions are ridiculously easy, basically the answer is always a) do a conflict check; b) yes, ask your client what they want to do; c) do your CPD; and for anything else d) do what a normal non-scummy individual would do.

For substantive law portions, hopefully you actually know the law in a few areas and can answer those questions quickly, giving you enough time to look up whatever other answers you need to look up.