Want to Study for the Bar While at a Bar? There's An App for That!

WSJ Law Blog:

Here’s the deal: We don’t own an iPhone and we really don’t have much to say about the bar exam.* Nor do we don’t have much about say about Bar/Bri. Nor do we have much knowledge of how the kids these days study for the bar exam. Nor are we in the business of pushing products on our dear readers.

Those delightful disclaimers aside, we were alerted today to a new product put out by Bar/Bri owners Thomson Reuters, which, it seems, could be helpful to all those eyeballing taking the bar at some point soon. It’s an “app” (as they cool kids say these days) for the iPhone that sends out sample bar-exam questions that you can answer right there on your phone.

No, this isn’t going to make or break whether anyone passes the bar exam, in all likelihood. But as another study aid — and one that’s eminently portable — who knows? We do remember, back during that beautiful summer in Seattle, having to decline all kinds of good social opportunities so we could study. Had we had an iPhone stocked with all kinds of bar-exam questions, maybe we could have studied and tagged along. Or maybe that would have been a terrible idea; it’s hard to say. LBers, you’ll have to let us know.

Some other handy apps for law students are Law in a Flash study aids. These are the same questions as found on the popular flash cards from Aspen.

You can work with cards from a specific category or from all categories at once. You can go through the cards in order or shuffle them. For each card you have a question (such as a fact pattern) on one side, and an answer on the other.

You can add your own notes to a card or bookmark a card if you want to return to it later. The app also includes Quick Review cards which contain the key information that you most need to know for your exam. Here is an example on what to look for in jurisdiction fact patterns:

Here is a full list of the available card sets:

• Civil Procedure I
• Civil Procedure II
• Constitutional Law I (National and State Powers)
• Constitutional Law II (Individual Rights)
• Contracts
• Corporations
• Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Evidence
• Federal Income Tax
• Future Interests
• Professional Responsibility
• Real Property
• Sales
• Torts
• Wills & Trusts

Wish they had these when I was a 1L!

The good news is that they have versions for all four classes I'm taking this semester -- Business Associations (Corporations), Criminal Procedure, Professional Responsibility, and Income Tax.

Another app that would come in handy for me this semester is the Internal Revenue Tax Code,

See reviews of other apps for lawyers here and check out the blog iPhone J.D. - Lawyers Using iPhones.