The Bar Exam Survival Kit

Rating:
Summary: Adachi's book is a must read for folks studying for the bar.
Review: Adachi has written two excellent books, the Bar Exam Survival Kit and Bar Breaker. I strongly recommend both books, in spite of the somewhat inflated price for both. The material in the two books does not overlap very much, and both volumes are actually worth the money. If you are taking the California bar exam, you can buy the California Bar Exam Survival Kit, which appears to be virtually identical to the Bar Exam Survival Kit.

Adachi reminds the student that discipline is essential, and starts getting the student mentally geared for the bar exam process. In addition, Adachi has a series of outlines of the subject matter that will be covered on the bar exam. Warning: there are a few minor errors, mostly typos, in the outlines.

Rating:
Summary: Helps focus you in on the necessities
Review: I found out about this book halfway through studying for the bar. Although I had done well in law school, I felt completely overwhelmed by the amount of material BarBri handed out. I happened to be wandering through the store one day when I ran into an alum of the school. When I told him my woes he suggested t he book and I ran down to t he bookstore to get it.

It is true that you get the basic attack plans and some common sense approaches to the exam writing, but when you've been inundated with information this can actually be quite helpful and comforting. I used the attack plans to come up with my own spin and memorized the hell out of them for the essay section. This proved crucial because of the 6 essays I had not taken classes in 3 of the subjects.

I also got the books on essay writing and found them to be helpful and more useful/insightful than the feedback I received from BarBri.

Rating:
Summary: Spend your money elsewhere
Review: The title of this book sets the reader up for great expectations that just aren't delivered. 75% of the book is "Law Charts" (condensed outlines), which would be useful for someone who wasn't able, for reasons I can't immagine, to create their own outlines. The remainder of the book contains fairly common sensical suggestions that anyone who survived law school exams would already know.