Jeanette A. Berryman

When I was deciding which of the bar review courses to enroll in, I considered several factors. I wanted to take a course that was comprehensive in scope and yet manageable in course content. Also important were practical exercises and feedback on writing and issue spotting skills. Finally, I wanted to take a course where class sizes were not so large as to preclude interaction with the instructor or the quality of the instruction.
When I looked at the Rigos Bar Review, I was admittedly concerned about a few points. I originally thought that the outlines might be too brief to give me an adequate grasp of the law, especially in the areas that I had not taken a course in law school. I also had slight apprehension about the conduct of the classes in that Rigos students are allowed to ask questions during the class (we all know how annoying some people can be with irrelevant questions). Despite my initial concerns, I decided to enroll in Rigos, basing my decision on the many recommendations I received from other people who had previously taken the course, as well as Rigos’s outstanding passage rate.
My initial apprehensions were quickly set aside. While the Rigos outlines are brief, they are nothing less than outstanding in their coverage. The minutia of the law is not what you need to know to pass the Washington bar exam. The exam covers a broad scope of subjects on a rather superficial level. It is therefore more important to learn how to spot issues and to understand the generalities of the law, not the finer points as in law school. The Rigos outlines give you a good structure of the law and enough information and knowledge to pass the bar exam. The outlines are detailed enough to allow you to understand an area of law, even if you have not taken a course in that area before, and yet are brief and concise enough to quickly learn the area and begin to commit it to memory.
The Rigos Magic Memory Outlines are so good that my friends who had enrolled in other review courses asked me several times if they could look at mine to help them distill the information down to a manageable size. They had enrolled in a course where the content was simply too much to digest in the limited amount of time that can be given to each subject. For them, the greatest challenge was cutting the information down to a manageable size that they could outline and commit to memory. The Rigos information came in a manageable size that I could immediately begin to commit to memory.
With regard to writing skills, I quickly discovered that the most important point was learning to write in a very brief and concise fashion. Each bar question contains enough issues to give you just enough room to state the issue, write the rule of law, and state a conclusion. I basically had to learn a new writing style after three years of law school writing where a premium is placed on in depth analysis.
The Rigos writing program helped me to quickly learn this new style by integrating the writing instruction into the class instruction. We were given a sample essay question for every subject right as we covered it in class. Each question was scored in the same way that the bar questions are scored. However, Rigos also provided us with feedback on how to improve our writing and issue spotting skills. In addition to the ongoing writing instruction, Rigos also sponsored mock bar exams where we answered three questions in an exam setting. I was so fully prepared by the writing instruction that one of my answers was selected by the bar examiners as the top model essay for the Summer 1999 bar exam.
Finally, I realized after the course began that the instructors are very aware of the fact that we must stay within the allotted class time in order to allow the students sufficient time to prepare for the next day’s class. Questions were therefore kept to a minimum, yet always adequately addressed. Usually, we all had the same question and were relieved when someone else spoke up. On the rare occasion that an irrelevant question was asked, the instructor was always willing to discuss the issue with the person on the break or after class.
In summary, I found that the Rigos Bar Review course was an excellent way to prepare for the bar exam. The course content was outstanding and the writing feedback was very helpful. I felt very prepared on the day the bar exam began and very confident that I had passed when it was over. Unfortunately for my friends who had taken other courses, they did not feel so prepared and confident. Many of them told me that they wished they had taken the Rigos course instead. I would highly recommend the Rigos Bar Review course to anyone who is serious about passing the Washington bar exam at the first sitting.