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When bar exam season arrives, both in winter and summer, Professor Joe Buffington, Albany Law School’s Director of Bar Success, has a pretty comprehensive picture of how prepared each Albany Law examinee is. For nearly all Albany Law students, he knows their strengths and weaknesses as well as their strategies for success on the exam. For most of them, he knows which areas on the exam are giving them the most grief. For many of them, he knows how much rest they’re getting and how much coffee they’re drinking. And for some of them, he knows that they’re not receiving any texts during their bar review lectures, because they’ve asked him to hold onto their phones when their lectures are in session.
In some ways, bar prep at Albany Law begins in the students’ first year: 1L subjects comprise the majority of substantive law that bar examinees are tested on, and many faculty members who teach first-year courses have started including questions from prior bar exams in their curriculum as a way of familiarizing students with what will eventually be expected of them on the Uniform Bar Exam.
For most of them, he knows which areas on the exam are giving them the most grief. For many of them, he knows how much rest they’re getting and how much coffee they’re drinking.
More specific attention to the bar exam begins in the students’ second year, when students take a diagnostic exam designed to measure whether a student is on track to pass the bar exam with respect to the subjects in the students’ first-year courses.
“This diagnostic has no impact on the students’ grades,” said Professor Buffington. “The point is to give students an idea of where they stand with respect to what they know about first-year subjects and how they can improve.”
Students who perform below the median score in both skills and knowledge as measured by the diagnostic are required to take Advanced Legal Analysis I, which was taught for the first time last year by Prof. Buffington, but the course is open to all students who wish to take it, and last year there were several students who took the course voluntarily.
“This class is designed as a bridge between the 1L doctrinal courses and preparing for the bar exam as a 3L or 4L,” Professor Buffington said. “We focus on both substance and strategy: How can I take all of the material I was exposed to in my first year of law school and distill it into something manageable, so that when I get tested on multiple subjects on a single exam, I’m prepared to succeed?” Advanced Legal Analysis I also focuses on bar-tested content that typically goes beyond what can be covered in a first-year course.
In addition, Professor Buffington teaches Advanced Legal Analysis II, a class designed to be taken in a student’s final semester as a direct segue from law school to full participation in a commercial bar review course. Students practice with real former bar exam questions and learn how to approach the test smartly.
“Not all subjects are equal,” Professor Buffington explained. “Some topics are always included on the test. Some aren’t. In many ways, some subjects are two to three times more important than others, and if you know that, you better prepared to organize your study time.”
Albany Law’s dedication to its students’ success on the bar exam does not end there. In the months preceding both the February and the July bar exams, in additional to individual appointments, essay and performance test workshops, opportunities for practice and review with Kanika Johar (class of 2013) - a former essay grader at the New York Board of Law Examiners - Professor Buffington offers daily “Q&A lunches,” where students are invited to have some food and ask questions that might be lingering in their minds even after fully participating in their commercial bar review courses.
“Some of the students come for the food at first, but before long they get hooked,” he joked. He encourages them to “try to love being wrong” during their bar prep because “that’s where the learning is.” So many students make the mistake of waiting until they feel expert in a given area before doing practice questions in that area,” Professor Buffington says. “What we know from learning science is that it just doesn’t work that way. You learn best by doing, and doing involves making mistakes. And no one ever feels like an expert on the bar exam. They just get to a point where they feel they know enough to pass - and that’s an incredible feeling.”
He continues, “In so many ways, the entire bar exam process is an exercise in imperfection, and accepting that you won’t get every question correct is a big part of the process.” Professor Buffington is fond of reminding students that a score of 65 percent on the multiple choice section of the exam (the “MBE”) is usually sufficient for a passing score on that section. “I’m pretty sure that in my high school that 65% correct was a D, but you can pretty much miss every third question on the MBE and still pass.” He says that the bar exam is a test of minimum competence, not deep expertise. But that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to pass - Indeed, he recommends that students target a minimum of 70% performance to feel confident that they’re going to pass. What it does mean is that students sometimes make the bar exam harder than it already is by letting perfectionism get in the way. “I spend a lot of time counseling students individually,” he added. “We go through this together.”
Professor Buffington says that preparing for the bar exam is often one of the hardest things that students and graduates have done and possibly one of the hardest things that they will ever do. “So we discuss the importance of having strong support systems in place during the 10-week prep season, which can include faculty members who serve as bar exam coaches, who are there for emotional support as much as substantive help. We also discuss techniques coping with the stress of preparing for the exam and strategies handling the life events that sometimes disrupt the bar prep experience.”
“No one wants to go through this twice,” he cautions. “And we believe that if students take full advantage of what we have to offer, they shouldn’t have to.”
