By Thea Chhun, Legal Apprentice 

I’ve always loved and dreaded deadlines.  For us apprentices, we become eligible to take the First Year Law Student’s Exam (affectionately known as the Baby Bar) a year into the program.  So having that oh so far away FYLSE a year away made for a more…flexible… schedule.   We could play around with trying out law books, exploring different learning styles (flow charts, online media, videos), and even testing our knowledge with a good ol’ Jeopardy game.

…And then the New Year rolled around.  Some of us apprentices become eligible to take the FYLSE in June, 2014, which is…YIIKES…only six short months away!!!  That’s the dread part—knowing that you have only so much time left before a deadline.  But the good news—it really helps focus in on what’s important.  The FYLSE is a day-long exam: 3 topics (Torts, Criminal Law, and Contracts), 3 hours to answer 100 multiple choice questions, and 4 hours allotted for 4 essay questions.  By working backwards from June 2014 to now, January 2014, we were able to create a schedule that took into account which books worked for us, what we needed to know for the exam, the different ways we were going to be tested (through essays and multiple choice questions), and how long we had to cover each of the 3 topics (6 months for 3 topics).

The first 6 exploratory months were useful in realizing which books worked for us in what capacity and that’s how we ended up choosing the ones that we did.  For example, we realized that the Examples and Explanations series are great in providing both overviews and in-depth discussions of the topics, the Crunchtime series are great for a brush-up/refresher, and the Barbri series are great as detailed outlines and references to important concepts and terms.

And through one hella productive January 2, 2014 morning, we hammered out a game plan/lesson plan.  Drum roll please:

Click here to see the Sample Curriculum for FYSLE Prep!

Happy studying!