To: Law School Academic Support Faculty

Have you thought of starting your own bar review course at your law school? While we sell review books for all four sections of the NCBE's bar exam, the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) is the most challenging section of most states' bar exam. Therefore, most law school sponsored review efforts and courses focus on the MBE.

Part of the reason why students struggle with passing the bar exam is that students are thrown in the deep end of this complex exam without a good grounding in the basics and without enough time to practice working thousands of questions. Traditional bar review courses try to cram the depth and breadth of MBE substantive coverage and exam strategy into a few days’ or weeks’ time.

One fundamental misperception that perpetuates use of the “cramming” technique is this: students have already studied these topics in law school, so MBE preparation is really just a "refresher course." This philosophy is dead wrong. What students learn in law school courses bears only a passing resemblance to what they must know to survive the MBE. The tricks, red herrings, and fine-line distinctions that are the hallmark of MBE multiple-choice questions are not, and should not be, the subject matter of the traditional Socratic law school teaching and learning method.

The Primer Series^® MBE Review Course provides complete, thorough, and effective preparation tailored to the MBE. A law school may use it to start its own bar review course merely by adding live instructors.

We build students’ knowledge from the ground up. First, they learn and memorize the MBE-tested substantive law using our innovative, interactive teaching tools. Second, students work practice questions using our unique software that allows them to (1) focus their practice on challenging issues of law, (2) practice at random in set sizes of their choosing, and (3) culminate their hard work in a final, timed mock MBE that tracks their error rate and allows them to identify any remaining weak areas.

This review course is useful both in a law school sponsored bar review course and later as a self-study supplement to a traditional bar review course. While students may complete it at any time, there are three self-study models.

• A Big Head Start: 1L’s can use the Primer Series^® for succinct review of first year topics and to prepare their Magic Memory Outlines® on powerful software for their spring final exams.
• A Mid-Course Boost: 2L’s can use the Primer Series^® over the summer between school years to gain a head start on bar review and a refocused review of the 1L subjects tested on the MBE. A few enlightened law schools now require this of 2L students in the lower third of the class.
• Home-Stretch Sprint: 3L’s can complete their own MBE preparation using the Primer Series® as a companion to a traditional course that also covers essay and performance testing.

Your Law School May Also Start Its Own Review Course: We can help your professors organize your own course using the Primer Series ^® material and our "seamless process" student learning system. ABA Standard Interpretation 302-7 now allows accredited law schools to offer bar preparation classes for academic credit.

Primer Series^® MBE Review offers a varied menu of instructional techniques that help bar candidates in five ways to:

LEARN: The course provides succinct yet thorough exposition of all six MBE subjects tested containing integrated practice "learning questions." By pointing out common MBE pitfalls, nuances, and fine-line distinctions, students learn how to select the correct answer on difficult and uncertain questions.
APPLICATION: Built into the text is 75 multiple-choice "learning" questions per topic. This shows the student exactly how the examiners test the subject.
RECALL: Acronyms and Mnemonics help candidates quickly and accurately recall information, and Magic Memory Outlines^® are provided to aid candidates in condensing and memorizing the material.
PRACTICE: Our review books have over 1,700 different MBE questions, which make them a great source of additional practice questions for your students enrolled in a traditional bar review course. “Make Your Own Exam” CD-ROM software allows candidates to make their own personally-tailored practice exams. Two 3-hour, 100-question practice MBE exams are also included.
ASSESS: Practice questions are at all levels, including 25% that are more difficult than the actual MBE. All have detailed analyses/rationales of all possible answers, and students receive feedback on error rate and by topic.

From our 27-year review course experience, the effort that students must make to improve their bar exam results is relatively small if it is not restricted to an 8 week period. We can share with you positive experiences of law schools that are currently recommending Primer Series^® to their 2L students during the summer of their second year or otherwise integrating a review course into the law school years. If they follow this program, the students will review and relearn the black letter law that they studied as 1L's, not in the Socratic method, but rather in the way it is to be tested on the MBE.

Our review has a different focus - a focus on building the foundation for MBE success from the ground up. If students use our learning tools and work the 1,700+ learning, practice, and final exam questions (on paper or CD-ROM), they get a head start on bar preparation and the necessary increased awareness of the high level of competition they will face on the MBE. Students will have an early appreciation of fine-line distinctions. This creates an enlightened foundation for the bar review course students will take after graduation. The two-volume course costs $194, and if a law school buys in volume, they are eligible for quantity discounts.

Don’t take our word for it. Evaluate the Primer Series^® MBE Review Course for yourself. A review copy is available at no charge to law school academic support faculty who agree to conduct a detailed review. Send us an email at admin@multistatebarreview.com or call 1-800-636-0716 today to order your copy or get more information.