How To Take The Bar Exams: The Review

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Choose carefully the books you are going to use during the review. You only have a limited time to go over them so make it count. Me, I chose only one reviewer per subject. I stuck with that and the codal during the first and the second reading. I read those books same time as the codal. One eye at the book and the other at the codal. Mweheheh.

During the second reading, I just skimmed thru my reviewers and relied more on the codal. I’m poor at memorizing so I don’t. I just try to understand how the law would work given a situation. I visualized. What I memorized were catch all provisions/concepts like “taxation is the lifeblood of the nation” or Art. 19 of the Civil Code.

The question is, when do you find time to read the review materials you are flooded with? See, the ones that earn the most during review are not the reviewers or the review school. but the photocopy operators. Everyday, rumors come out that the examiner is going to be Justice X or Professor Y and he has a book and these are his decisions or favorite exam questions. And people will just rush and photocopy these materials. You thus end up with a stack of review materials taller than you. What does one do with these materials? Read it. It may contain useful information. However, (emphasis on this point) your priority should be the codal and the reviewer. These materials should only be supplementary, something to read when you have run out of things to read or when you are tiered of reading your books. Sift thru these materials, take what is important. Remember that most of these materials are made by law students and hence, not so high on the reliability scale.

When we were doing the bar ops thing in our senior year, one professor made us go thru the previous bar exam questions and take notes on the questions asked and tally them. It turns out that some legal provisions have been cropping up in the bar exams almost every year and will likely keep on appearing.

Now, I may have been giving the impression that I did nothing in the review but study. The impression is WRONG! I also made time to shower and to eat. Seriously, during the review, I wake up at 6 in the morning, shower and eat breakfast and by 8 am, I am already on my desk, reading. I stop to take lunch, and since I don’t take naps, read again till 5pm. At 5 pm, we hear mass, have dinner. After dinner, we play tong-its. After dinner, I shower again (to freshen up my brain and my body) and read again til 10 in the evening. On Thursdays, we watch Ally Macbeal before studying again. Day in and day out, it’s like this. On Sundays, we take a break, hear mass, do the laundry, watch movies or just hung out with friends and catch up on gossip. We do anything except study. If we didn’t take a break, baka we would find ourselves playing patintero on the highway.

With that schedule, did I ever attend review classes which my parents paid for for me to attend? Hardly. I only attended the ones I felt I should be attending. I didn’t want to waste my time listening to some guy lecturing on topics I can comprehend by reading the codal and my reviewer. There’s this reviewer who would do nothing but tell jokes during review classes. When he is tired of telling jokes, he lectures by reading from his book. With all due respect, if I wanted to spend money and listen to jokes, I would have gone to Punchline or similar places.

Now, with your study hours, it really depends if you are a morning or a night person. If you feel you can study more at night time, go ahead. However, come August, you have to start changing your sleep habits so that you will be alert in the daytime on September. You wouldn’t want to be sluggish and sleepy while taking the bar, would you?

This early, start practicing your handwriting. It should be neat and easy to read. Not too tiny, not too large.

One important thing to remember: know when to give yourself a break. When you start hating your books, go out and take a long walk. When you feel your brain cannot take any more information, take a longer walk. When you start hating on your roommate, go home for a few days. When fed up with studying, my friends would go around the campus at night and spy on those making out in the oval or on the Sunken Garden. I feed the ducks at the Lagoon and walk barefoot on the grass. Anything just to get away from the books. A day’s break or a few hour’s break should be fine. Don’t end up like a friend of mine who, every time he hears of a store sale, is compelled to go there. He had to take the bar twice.