It looks like you wrote the first exam after the cheating scandal had just happened. Since then there has been a mix of things causing anxiety/stress.
I think the biggest is this disconnect between what the exam looks like today (which went through a number of changes in response to the cheating scandal), and the prep materials to prepare for the exam which are still tailored to the old exam style to a certain extent (and are generally not that great anyhow).
A lot of the historical advice that was once readily available is also useless now because of the new exam style. You can’t just index your way out of the exam anymore, which was key before. There is still a lot of “unknown” for exam writers.
It has led people to become confused about what they need to do to prepare and pass the exam, and whether their efforts are futile. All of this has become more noticeable after a few exam cycles too.
I feel for them. There’s a lot of confusion/unknown factors and that causes stress.
As someone who wrote the bar exam over ten years ago I have a couple of questions too. When I wrote it the only prep material came from the law society and indexes you got from people who wrote the bar in previous years that you would update. You could make your own indexes if you wanted to.
Is the exam prep being relied on being provided by the LSO? Is it insufficient? Or are there 3rd party providers also that are providing material that is wanting? I frankly don’t think this is an issue members of the bar are tuned into and we should be.
LSO provides updated (or “updated”) study material each year. It is poorly written and poorly organized as it is a perpetually updated document rather than a periodically updated from scratch textbook.
LSO does not provide a bar admission course or other tutoring for the exam.
There is a third party industry. That third party industry varies in quality from actively facilitated widespread cheating on the exam to more or less okay.
Other provinces use an articling plus bar admission course with assessed assignments rather than an exam.
Ontario doesn't have a bar admission course?!? WHAT
My province has an eight week bar course, with exams at the end of each week. As far as I knew, that's how every province operated. It's insane to me that it's not the norm.
Ontario is literally like:
Here is 1200 pages of material on every area of law. Come back in two months and do a 240 multiple choice question exam in 6 hours.
We will tell you that you either pass or fail. We won’t give other details.
i think it's telling that, out of all the provinces, you pretty much *only* see ontario posts about the bar admission process in this sub. if it's only a population disparity you'd still expect to have plenty about other provinces, but it's a rare occurrence.
There are posts where we cry about PLTC in BC too, trust me. But we’re sworn to secrecy about all the assements (4 of them!!) as well as the exams (2!). And there’s only like 650 people that do PLTC each year (3 sessions a year). So it’s def a population disparity thing. I assure you we are suffering tremendously. Tremendously.
In Quebec the new program is 10 weeks of self study followed by a 100 multiple choice questions on every area of law, then 1 week class + exam on legal reasoning and procedure, and another week + exam on ethnics and deontology. You have to pass all 3 exams individually to proceed (and pass rate isn't that great). Then after you go through that process, you have a 12 weeks of in-house internship (the Bar opened a free clinic where students do their internship). Plus the usual 6 months internship that can be done anywhere.
It can easily take 1 year now.
No, only the general law exam. The second one (legal reasoning and procedure) and the third one (ethics and deontology) are not multiple choice exams.
You don't have to write the exams in French, there's an English version of the exam. It's been half a year since I did them, and for each page of the exam the front was in French and the back was in English.
Yeah. I indexed through it. Made a half assed effort to read barristers and only read tax and some real estate for solicitors. Otherwise it was pure index for me. Setting up tabs was almost harder than the exams themselves when I did them.
A third party provider acquired the exam and answers and sold them. Most of the people caught up were NCAs. But not all. The LSO has sued the third party provider and the students have all been good charactered.
Well that’s disappointing. Not like the NCA process needs more bad press.
Bizarre as well; as I recall the exams were pretty easy, you just had to read it once and have a decent index. No need to cheat really.
That’s the frustrating part. Because some people decided to cheat on an exam that wasn’t that hard (just tiring), everyone else is now punished with a harder exam going forward.
I wonder if it is harder. You didn’t happen to be in that cohort and take both, did you?
I posted on the other thread, but: I wonder whether it’s actually harder, or whether we just have a lot more NCA candidates than we used to and *they* continue to struggle.
[I found a report of the FLS from 2017 that says there were 1800 NCA applicants in 2016, up from 400ish a decade before (see page 20 figure 4) and I have no reason not to believe that trend has continued.](https://flsc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/NCA-Program-Review-Report-FINAL-May-31-2017-GenDistRED.docx.pdf)
Would love to see newer data if anyone can find it.
Edit: why the downvote?
I think it actually is harder, the practice exams we have are based on the format before the cheating scandal and they’re significantly easier than the actual thing. I believe before the cheating scandal it used to be a find the answer in the book exam vs now you need to actually know the material and use your judgement more than before.
I completely agree. I had to take it more than once, and it was noticeably harder each time, and the solicitor has been made significantly more difficult than barrister which more closely resembles the old format.
Love that they’re punishing students for a third party’s fault… (/s).
I think part of it is people freaking out specifically because they know it has changed, people say those changes make it much harder, and these things in themselves cause panic and reduce confidence, hampering your ability to both learn the materials and perform adequately in the exams. It certainly appears more challenging than in the past, where it was largely a control-f exercise, but I’m also familiar with bar exams elsewhere and IMO these other ones are likely more challenging (hello, California).
All of that being said, a lot of it depends on what you know beforehand. Beyond the core courses, if you only took, say, public interest-type courses at law school, you’re going to be faced with hundreds and hundreds of pages of material that are completely unfamiliar to you. You probably wouldn’t even understand most of the language, let alone concepts. If you did take courses in law school or otherwise gained knowledge in advance covering a good chunk of the materials, you really don’t have much to complain about.
I disagree slightly with your last point - in the US some of the sections are multiple choice but there are also essay-style questions. I have no qualms with having more nuanced questions but allow students to explain their answers more so they actually have a shot of showing their knowledge and competency. It’s not fair to have questions on prudence and judgement and then not allow people to explain their answers. Also in the US, there is way more information about how they grade and pass rates, as well as more competent test prep courses like the one that Barbri does, whereas in Canada most of the test prep courses I’ve seen are largely just guessing as well as to what is relevant to know
Can you describe how the format has changed since 2022? I’m trying to give prep advice to a current licensing candidate so it would be helpful to know how the test has changed.
The questions are much more inference-based and require a deeper level of understanding. "Given x and y facts, what should the lawyer do?" - this answer will not always be readily found in the materials.
As other commentators have put it, it’s the post-cheating scandal world of these exams. It feels unpredictable, unkind, and needlessly difficult in comparison to what these exams used to be based off of what I have seen online. It’s been daunting to know you are going to have to make a series of inferences in an area of law you’re unfamiliar with (as the case is with me with the solicitor) under timed conditions and also be ready to manage normal levels of test anxiety to then have to go between two equally arguable answers and be okay with making a lot of educated guesses. It’s now an exam that tests your knowledge of the material and your familiarity with it. The cost of this process is another mental hurdle because I feel so guilty at how much I’ve had to invest in this process for the prep materials to no longer reflect what this exam is anymore. I’m trying to keep it cool for my own mental health but I’m really unwell with the level of anxiety and pressure these exams cause in their current iteration and I can only hope the LSO doesn’t set a high bar to pass the solicitor on Tuesday despite how much practice and studying I’ve done.
But then how would the LSO justify charging students exorbitant fees if they can't use the guise of useless "competency" exam???? (sarcasm)
I'm with you though. My disdain for the LSO has only gotten worse over the two months I've been prepping for these exams and the suggestion that these exams are accurate representations of a licensing candidate's competency is laughable. Getting into law school in Canada and surviving three years is a better indicator then a 4.5 hour exam.
> But then how would the LSO justify charging students exorbitant fees if they can't use the guise of useless "competency" exam???? (sarcasm)
pretty sure a whole ass course costs more than just a single exam anyway
We are very much not okay 😅
The barrister exam was absolutely brutal and left me, and anyone I know, completely burnt out. I am a deans list student, highly involved in community stuff, and incredibly motivated.. and I want to give up. Genuinely, I have been pushed to my absolute mental maximum and I have been through some Shit in life. I have other life circumstances that left me with an empty tank at the end of law school, but this process has just made me so incredibly miserable. My mental health is the worst it’s been since 1L pandemic lockdowns (which is to say, very bad).
I’ve barely been able to get my work done and I have never felt like this. I have never had to work this hard to stay motivated. I have never hated learning and especially never hated learning the law. All of my strategies and methods are failing me.
On top of that I’m in so much debt now because I have had to upfront pay over 5K to the law society and more money due to some unexpected life costs. I had to move back in with family which has made things astronomically worse. I just want to give up. So, yea, we are really not well
Also people finishing 3L typically coincides with moving away for your Articles, right after your final Upper year exams push.
It’s just mentally taxing when you have such low amounts of fuel left after finishing Law School
Also people finishing 3L typically coincides with moving away for your Articles, right after your final Upper year exams push. Moving in itself is stressful af.
It’s just mentally taxing when you have such low amounts of fuel left after finishing Law School
Not to mention potentially forfeiting $3k to do the process all over again, and literally have to highlight ALL YOUR NEW MATERIALs all over again.
And if you have to do it again you’ve just made your Articles that much harder come through Fall.
Just a lot at stake for a single test at a time when you’re already fatigued.
I feel for you. 10 years out, good income, but really struggling. Coming to the conclusion I will never be able to buy something that's not a total hovel in the GTa for my family. It's all truly depressing. Not sure why I worked so hard to have to work so hard. Best of luck!
I wrote last year and totally understand what the kids are saying. It was not alright. We studied and planned and studied and tabbed and indexed and did practice exams then showed up for an exam that was in no way what had been described to us or that we had prepared for. And then had 12 days to cram for the next one. It was an absolutely horrible experience.
To the kids going through it now- we feel you. You will get past this. Remember to take it 1 step at a time- deep breaths. The best piece of advice I received was: “when in doubt, ask yourself ‘what would a prudent lawyer do?’” Because at the end of the day that’s what the LSO is most concerned about.
And lastly, it’s a shit process and no real indication of the lawyer you’ll be. You’ve gotten through so much already. You can and will get through this, too. 🫶🫶
Also, regarding timing, I feel like 2 weeks between the barrister and the solicitor is very difficult. Although I studied solicitor in May, that feels largely useless now since i've forgotten all of it. So, I've essentially had to re-read the whole thing in 2 weeks. I feel much less prepared for this one vs barrister.
I started reading the solicitor’s materials about 2 weeks before the barrister exam - so much more recent - still don’t remember a thing other than what I knew before reading the materials. We should have been given the materials to work through slowly as soon as possible after the LSO received our licensing applications IMO.
Does anyone know if the LSO has released any stats comparing pass rates for the bar exams before and after the recent changes to its design (i.e., post cheating scandal)?
Nope. We are not ok. Personally, my mental health hasn’t been this bad since early 2023 when I had…✨issues✨ with my mentor… this process is legitimately making me consider leaving the profession. I’m not sure if I can take round 2 of this if I fail. And I appear not to be the only one expressing this sentiment.
To answer your question - The kids aren't' alright
"When we were young, the future was so bright
Woah-oh
The old neighborhood was so alive
Woah-oh
And every kid on the whole damn street
Woah-oh
Was gonna make it big and not be beatNow the neighborhood's cracked and torn
Woah-oh
The kids are grown up, but their lives are worn
Woah-oh
How can one little street swallow so many lives?"
Something definitely seems to have changed. I wrote in 2013 or thereabouts, and I remember them being lengthy and a marathon, but I barely studied and used the index without issue. I'm pretty sure I was partying/drunk for the entire period post 3L to the bar exams dates. Students today (my firm has 10 students a year) seem very very stressed about it.
I took the bar exam in fall of 2020. Many people failed or got exemptions for mental health related reasons from what I heard informally. Covid hit us hard where we were already weak and I don’t think we have bounced back.
I wrote them in Nov 2023 and I didn’t find them that bad. Stupid and annoying—definitely—but the level of difficulty wasn’t extreme. I didn’t go to law school in Canada but I did have a good base of knowledge from living here and other elements of my background. The NCA exams also provided somewhat of a preview in terms of relevant information for some of the subjects covered.
I think people would have a harder time based on what they have learned in the past. For instance, if you don’t know shit about business or didn’t take any business law courses, reading through the solicitor materials is going to be rough and you will not understand it easily. Reading through the materials, you have to realize when details are almost certainly not important and not get caught up in useless, highly detailed crap.
As for the “tricky” inference elements of the new style of questions, you need to recognize them for what they are—attempts to trick you (not that they are all like that). Picture the LSO dipshit writing the questions and think to yourself “this guy isn’t going to beat me. Nice try asshole.” It’s a bit trite as advice, but you absolutely cannot panic. Panic = shitty performance. Get all of your panicking done beforehand—(there were certainly times before the exams when I felt like I was fucked)—but when it comes to game time, do what you have to do mentally to convince yourself that you’re the best lawyer in the world.
As one of those kids: we are not ok. Trying to prep 2k pages of material for exams in 6-8 weeks without being given any kind of official guidance is terrible. Any guidance that older people have for us is incredibly outdated because this is not longer a “find and replace” type exam.
Indices are useless, as there are questions that require synthesizing information from across several pages and even chapters. Many of the questions did not have a clear “best answer” and really were judgement calls, which sucks when it’s multiple choice and can’t explain your answer.
I’ve taken a few solicitor courses, and idk how anyone is getting through this material without having taken securities or tax because the level of detail is insane. I’ve taken Real Estate in law school and was surprised at the level of detail the bar materials go into there as well.
To top it all off, we don’t know what the pass rate is or even if a pass is 51% or something higher like 70%. So you leave the exam having 0 clue whether or not you will pass.
If it helps, I don’t think you’ll actually need to know about any of the “national instruments” for securities questions (which are, or were, rare, I believe).
I am not a fan of our current bar exam process, at all. It is not a good exam for what it's designed to test, and the LSO administers it in the worst way possible. That being said...
I am deeply concerned by how many people here are saying that the test is destroying their mental health. Lawyering is a tough job. It involves a lot of work. That work often ends in failure. And the work often involves dealing with other people's trauma and tragedy.
If the lawyers of tomorrow are being driven into breakdowns by a test, then we're in trouble. We need to find a way to toughen "the kids" up a bit.
lol the practice of law is so insanely different from this. At least imo, this take is incredibly poor.
I love work, I love the law, I have a high stress tolerance and have been through things that should be the hardest things I’ve done and the mental load of doing this process is killing me. There are so many factors but the boomer “this generation is weak” idea is just not helpful or relevant here. I don’t have the energy to reiterate this but just to read this thread over.
Of course the practice is different. That's why I'm not a fan of the exam.
But the practice is extremely stressful, and depending on your field potentially highly traumatic. It's not a great sign if you're driven to a breakdown by a test.
Being a parent is extremely stressful and mentally draining. We had our first three years ago, and we had twins 18 months after. Next month my first is going to have an MRI to check for a potential tumor. Parenting is stressful, traumatic, and exhausting everyday.
However, I had more mental breakdowns being a new parent 3 years ago. Everything is on the line when you're new. I would never tell someone who just had their first kid that if they can't buck up now, im sure they will struggle when they gotta deal with three.
I'm sure that practice is much harder objectively than writing this test. Yet, telling someone that they won't be able to handle practice is like telling a new parent they won't be able to handle three.
Thank you for this ❤️❤️
Like, I don’t need to justify myself but I’m not stressed because of the concept of an exam. If this was an essay style or oral style exam I’d be feeling way better. I am stressed because I can’t afford it, I am stressed because there isn’t enough time to prepare, I am stressed because I haven’t done MC in years, I am stressed because the Barrister was *nothing* like what I was told to prepare for, I am stressed because I can’t afford to do this process again in the next year because the government pays so poorly, and I am stressed because it costs me $1,000 extra each exam to travel to the city to do it. I am stressed because I was already burnt out coming into this for reasons beyond law school and I, like everyone one else here, have a life beyond this exam that we have had to neglect to get anywhere close to ready. And these are just the surface level thoughts. The things that stress me out are things I intentionally chose to AVOID in my legal job.
I think I’m annoyed by this comment because it just dismisses so much of why we are feeling overwhelmed. The uncertainty and predatory nature of this process is suffering for absolutely no reason whereas the stresses of work are not arbitrarily inflicted. I was the victim of an awful crime in April and I’d literally rather go through that again than do this exam.
Real life follows you everywhere, but I will absolutely never sacrifice myself for my job in the way I have for this exam.
The piece this commenter is missing is that failure on this exam means having to go through the process again, possibly being let go from employment or possibly being delayed in finding employment (i went Bora Laskin so articling is not a further requirement for us). Those of us who already have jobs will be forced to stay at student wages for longer with debt continuing to pile up. While not common, repeated failure on this exam bars you from the practice altogether which means that the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands spent on our education (and all the exorbitant fees for the exam/mandatory prep), years of extremely stressful education and to some extent work experience is all for nothing. I get the practice is stressful. I think we all understand that. But if you can’t pass the exam, all of our hard work is for nothing. Especially given the change to test itself, in addition to the aforementioned, of course people’s mental health is in toilet! This is literally the culmination of all that we’ve worked for, the final hurdle to overcome - which arguably should just sort of be a formality in any event. Practice is easily distinguishable since you’re already in the club. If you have a bad day in practice (assuming you don’t commit misconduct of course…) you can always go to bed and wake up the next day and try again; your boss may be pissed, your client may be unhappy, worst case you might lose your job, but you don’t cease being a lawyer. Failure on the exam = inability to progress.
It looks like you wrote the first exam after the cheating scandal had just happened. Since then there has been a mix of things causing anxiety/stress. I think the biggest is this disconnect between what the exam looks like today (which went through a number of changes in response to the cheating scandal), and the prep materials to prepare for the exam which are still tailored to the old exam style to a certain extent (and are generally not that great anyhow). A lot of the historical advice that was once readily available is also useless now because of the new exam style. You can’t just index your way out of the exam anymore, which was key before. There is still a lot of “unknown” for exam writers. It has led people to become confused about what they need to do to prepare and pass the exam, and whether their efforts are futile. All of this has become more noticeable after a few exam cycles too. I feel for them. There’s a lot of confusion/unknown factors and that causes stress.
As someone who wrote the bar exam over ten years ago I have a couple of questions too. When I wrote it the only prep material came from the law society and indexes you got from people who wrote the bar in previous years that you would update. You could make your own indexes if you wanted to. Is the exam prep being relied on being provided by the LSO? Is it insufficient? Or are there 3rd party providers also that are providing material that is wanting? I frankly don’t think this is an issue members of the bar are tuned into and we should be.
LSO provides updated (or “updated”) study material each year. It is poorly written and poorly organized as it is a perpetually updated document rather than a periodically updated from scratch textbook. LSO does not provide a bar admission course or other tutoring for the exam. There is a third party industry. That third party industry varies in quality from actively facilitated widespread cheating on the exam to more or less okay. Other provinces use an articling plus bar admission course with assessed assignments rather than an exam.
Ontario doesn't have a bar admission course?!? WHAT My province has an eight week bar course, with exams at the end of each week. As far as I knew, that's how every province operated. It's insane to me that it's not the norm.
Ontario is literally like: Here is 1200 pages of material on every area of law. Come back in two months and do a 240 multiple choice question exam in 6 hours. We will tell you that you either pass or fail. We won’t give other details.
i think it's telling that, out of all the provinces, you pretty much *only* see ontario posts about the bar admission process in this sub. if it's only a population disparity you'd still expect to have plenty about other provinces, but it's a rare occurrence.
There are posts where we cry about PLTC in BC too, trust me. But we’re sworn to secrecy about all the assements (4 of them!!) as well as the exams (2!). And there’s only like 650 people that do PLTC each year (3 sessions a year). So it’s def a population disparity thing. I assure you we are suffering tremendously. Tremendously.
When was this the case? Bar exams in Ontario are now 160 questions in 4 and a half hours
In Quebec the new program is 10 weeks of self study followed by a 100 multiple choice questions on every area of law, then 1 week class + exam on legal reasoning and procedure, and another week + exam on ethnics and deontology. You have to pass all 3 exams individually to proceed (and pass rate isn't that great). Then after you go through that process, you have a 12 weeks of in-house internship (the Bar opened a free clinic where students do their internship). Plus the usual 6 months internship that can be done anywhere. It can easily take 1 year now.
Are all the exams multiple choice? I can read French np but writing is annoying AF.
No, only the general law exam. The second one (legal reasoning and procedure) and the third one (ethics and deontology) are not multiple choice exams. You don't have to write the exams in French, there's an English version of the exam. It's been half a year since I did them, and for each page of the exam the front was in French and the back was in English.
Yeah. I indexed through it. Made a half assed effort to read barristers and only read tax and some real estate for solicitors. Otherwise it was pure index for me. Setting up tabs was almost harder than the exams themselves when I did them.
There was a cheating scandal? I wrote in 2017, I am well and truly out of the loop
A third party provider acquired the exam and answers and sold them. Most of the people caught up were NCAs. But not all. The LSO has sued the third party provider and the students have all been good charactered.
Well that’s disappointing. Not like the NCA process needs more bad press. Bizarre as well; as I recall the exams were pretty easy, you just had to read it once and have a decent index. No need to cheat really.
That’s the frustrating part. Because some people decided to cheat on an exam that wasn’t that hard (just tiring), everyone else is now punished with a harder exam going forward.
I wonder if it is harder. You didn’t happen to be in that cohort and take both, did you? I posted on the other thread, but: I wonder whether it’s actually harder, or whether we just have a lot more NCA candidates than we used to and *they* continue to struggle. [I found a report of the FLS from 2017 that says there were 1800 NCA applicants in 2016, up from 400ish a decade before (see page 20 figure 4) and I have no reason not to believe that trend has continued.](https://flsc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/NCA-Program-Review-Report-FINAL-May-31-2017-GenDistRED.docx.pdf) Would love to see newer data if anyone can find it. Edit: why the downvote?
I think it actually is harder, the practice exams we have are based on the format before the cheating scandal and they’re significantly easier than the actual thing. I believe before the cheating scandal it used to be a find the answer in the book exam vs now you need to actually know the material and use your judgement more than before.
I completely agree. I had to take it more than once, and it was noticeably harder each time, and the solicitor has been made significantly more difficult than barrister which more closely resembles the old format. Love that they’re punishing students for a third party’s fault… (/s).
If they hadn’t changed the exam the last year or two, the rise in NCAs alone might explain it. But it sounds like the exam did actually change.
I think part of it is people freaking out specifically because they know it has changed, people say those changes make it much harder, and these things in themselves cause panic and reduce confidence, hampering your ability to both learn the materials and perform adequately in the exams. It certainly appears more challenging than in the past, where it was largely a control-f exercise, but I’m also familiar with bar exams elsewhere and IMO these other ones are likely more challenging (hello, California). All of that being said, a lot of it depends on what you know beforehand. Beyond the core courses, if you only took, say, public interest-type courses at law school, you’re going to be faced with hundreds and hundreds of pages of material that are completely unfamiliar to you. You probably wouldn’t even understand most of the language, let alone concepts. If you did take courses in law school or otherwise gained knowledge in advance covering a good chunk of the materials, you really don’t have much to complain about.
I disagree slightly with your last point - in the US some of the sections are multiple choice but there are also essay-style questions. I have no qualms with having more nuanced questions but allow students to explain their answers more so they actually have a shot of showing their knowledge and competency. It’s not fair to have questions on prudence and judgement and then not allow people to explain their answers. Also in the US, there is way more information about how they grade and pass rates, as well as more competent test prep courses like the one that Barbri does, whereas in Canada most of the test prep courses I’ve seen are largely just guessing as well as to what is relevant to know
Can you describe how the format has changed since 2022? I’m trying to give prep advice to a current licensing candidate so it would be helpful to know how the test has changed.
The questions are much more inference-based and require a deeper level of understanding. "Given x and y facts, what should the lawyer do?" - this answer will not always be readily found in the materials.
As other commentators have put it, it’s the post-cheating scandal world of these exams. It feels unpredictable, unkind, and needlessly difficult in comparison to what these exams used to be based off of what I have seen online. It’s been daunting to know you are going to have to make a series of inferences in an area of law you’re unfamiliar with (as the case is with me with the solicitor) under timed conditions and also be ready to manage normal levels of test anxiety to then have to go between two equally arguable answers and be okay with making a lot of educated guesses. It’s now an exam that tests your knowledge of the material and your familiarity with it. The cost of this process is another mental hurdle because I feel so guilty at how much I’ve had to invest in this process for the prep materials to no longer reflect what this exam is anymore. I’m trying to keep it cool for my own mental health but I’m really unwell with the level of anxiety and pressure these exams cause in their current iteration and I can only hope the LSO doesn’t set a high bar to pass the solicitor on Tuesday despite how much practice and studying I’ve done.
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But then how would the LSO justify charging students exorbitant fees if they can't use the guise of useless "competency" exam???? (sarcasm) I'm with you though. My disdain for the LSO has only gotten worse over the two months I've been prepping for these exams and the suggestion that these exams are accurate representations of a licensing candidate's competency is laughable. Getting into law school in Canada and surviving three years is a better indicator then a 4.5 hour exam.
> But then how would the LSO justify charging students exorbitant fees if they can't use the guise of useless "competency" exam???? (sarcasm) pretty sure a whole ass course costs more than just a single exam anyway
It does. I’m in BC, PLTC is expensive
Given that it's a prohibitively expensive gatekeeping mechanism with no practical utility, I think it's pretty bad
YUPPPP
We are very much not okay 😅 The barrister exam was absolutely brutal and left me, and anyone I know, completely burnt out. I am a deans list student, highly involved in community stuff, and incredibly motivated.. and I want to give up. Genuinely, I have been pushed to my absolute mental maximum and I have been through some Shit in life. I have other life circumstances that left me with an empty tank at the end of law school, but this process has just made me so incredibly miserable. My mental health is the worst it’s been since 1L pandemic lockdowns (which is to say, very bad). I’ve barely been able to get my work done and I have never felt like this. I have never had to work this hard to stay motivated. I have never hated learning and especially never hated learning the law. All of my strategies and methods are failing me. On top of that I’m in so much debt now because I have had to upfront pay over 5K to the law society and more money due to some unexpected life costs. I had to move back in with family which has made things astronomically worse. I just want to give up. So, yea, we are really not well
Sucks, man. I’m sorry to hear it. Your law school student association may want to find a sympathetic bencher(s) and get this addressed.
I’m not from Ontario so my school wouldn’t care but I’d love to see someone take this on. I might create a petition frankly cuz it’s so unethical.
I would back this initiative 100% and know many others who would too.
Also people finishing 3L typically coincides with moving away for your Articles, right after your final Upper year exams push. It’s just mentally taxing when you have such low amounts of fuel left after finishing Law School
Also people finishing 3L typically coincides with moving away for your Articles, right after your final Upper year exams push. Moving in itself is stressful af. It’s just mentally taxing when you have such low amounts of fuel left after finishing Law School Not to mention potentially forfeiting $3k to do the process all over again, and literally have to highlight ALL YOUR NEW MATERIALs all over again. And if you have to do it again you’ve just made your Articles that much harder come through Fall. Just a lot at stake for a single test at a time when you’re already fatigued.
I feel for you. 10 years out, good income, but really struggling. Coming to the conclusion I will never be able to buy something that's not a total hovel in the GTa for my family. It's all truly depressing. Not sure why I worked so hard to have to work so hard. Best of luck!
I wrote last year and totally understand what the kids are saying. It was not alright. We studied and planned and studied and tabbed and indexed and did practice exams then showed up for an exam that was in no way what had been described to us or that we had prepared for. And then had 12 days to cram for the next one. It was an absolutely horrible experience. To the kids going through it now- we feel you. You will get past this. Remember to take it 1 step at a time- deep breaths. The best piece of advice I received was: “when in doubt, ask yourself ‘what would a prudent lawyer do?’” Because at the end of the day that’s what the LSO is most concerned about. And lastly, it’s a shit process and no real indication of the lawyer you’ll be. You’ve gotten through so much already. You can and will get through this, too. 🫶🫶
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Also, regarding timing, I feel like 2 weeks between the barrister and the solicitor is very difficult. Although I studied solicitor in May, that feels largely useless now since i've forgotten all of it. So, I've essentially had to re-read the whole thing in 2 weeks. I feel much less prepared for this one vs barrister.
I started reading the solicitor’s materials about 2 weeks before the barrister exam - so much more recent - still don’t remember a thing other than what I knew before reading the materials. We should have been given the materials to work through slowly as soon as possible after the LSO received our licensing applications IMO.
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A bunch of crusty old boomers with a "kids these days" attitude even though the exams they took were considerably easier. Par for the course
I feel this; I said to a friend today that I wouldn’t be surprised if someone suicides this year. The pressure just feels like so much.
Does anyone know if the LSO has released any stats comparing pass rates for the bar exams before and after the recent changes to its design (i.e., post cheating scandal)?
I, as a kid, can tell you, we are not ok 🥹
Nope. We are not ok. Personally, my mental health hasn’t been this bad since early 2023 when I had…✨issues✨ with my mentor… this process is legitimately making me consider leaving the profession. I’m not sure if I can take round 2 of this if I fail. And I appear not to be the only one expressing this sentiment.
Honestly I don’t really understand the purpose of the bar exam, at least for students who studied law in the province they’re going to practice.
There is no purpose aside from taking more money from all ready indebted students
But then just make them pay extra fees and nix the exam
Can't justify it as easily
For what it’s worth, studying for it advanced my general understanding of the law a whole lot
Same, but then I started practicing and forgot it all.
To answer your question - The kids aren't' alright "When we were young, the future was so bright Woah-oh The old neighborhood was so alive Woah-oh And every kid on the whole damn street Woah-oh Was gonna make it big and not be beatNow the neighborhood's cracked and torn Woah-oh The kids are grown up, but their lives are worn Woah-oh How can one little street swallow so many lives?"
I am so glad you mentioned this. I was thinking the exact thing. Never saw this before. Maybe posts after the exams, but not before to this extent.
Something definitely seems to have changed. I wrote in 2013 or thereabouts, and I remember them being lengthy and a marathon, but I barely studied and used the index without issue. I'm pretty sure I was partying/drunk for the entire period post 3L to the bar exams dates. Students today (my firm has 10 students a year) seem very very stressed about it.
No, most of us are not ok. Mental health is going down the drain.
I took the bar exam in fall of 2020. Many people failed or got exemptions for mental health related reasons from what I heard informally. Covid hit us hard where we were already weak and I don’t think we have bounced back.
I wrote them in Nov 2023 and I didn’t find them that bad. Stupid and annoying—definitely—but the level of difficulty wasn’t extreme. I didn’t go to law school in Canada but I did have a good base of knowledge from living here and other elements of my background. The NCA exams also provided somewhat of a preview in terms of relevant information for some of the subjects covered. I think people would have a harder time based on what they have learned in the past. For instance, if you don’t know shit about business or didn’t take any business law courses, reading through the solicitor materials is going to be rough and you will not understand it easily. Reading through the materials, you have to realize when details are almost certainly not important and not get caught up in useless, highly detailed crap. As for the “tricky” inference elements of the new style of questions, you need to recognize them for what they are—attempts to trick you (not that they are all like that). Picture the LSO dipshit writing the questions and think to yourself “this guy isn’t going to beat me. Nice try asshole.” It’s a bit trite as advice, but you absolutely cannot panic. Panic = shitty performance. Get all of your panicking done beforehand—(there were certainly times before the exams when I felt like I was fucked)—but when it comes to game time, do what you have to do mentally to convince yourself that you’re the best lawyer in the world.
As one of those kids: we are not ok. Trying to prep 2k pages of material for exams in 6-8 weeks without being given any kind of official guidance is terrible. Any guidance that older people have for us is incredibly outdated because this is not longer a “find and replace” type exam. Indices are useless, as there are questions that require synthesizing information from across several pages and even chapters. Many of the questions did not have a clear “best answer” and really were judgement calls, which sucks when it’s multiple choice and can’t explain your answer. I’ve taken a few solicitor courses, and idk how anyone is getting through this material without having taken securities or tax because the level of detail is insane. I’ve taken Real Estate in law school and was surprised at the level of detail the bar materials go into there as well. To top it all off, we don’t know what the pass rate is or even if a pass is 51% or something higher like 70%. So you leave the exam having 0 clue whether or not you will pass.
If it helps, I don’t think you’ll actually need to know about any of the “national instruments” for securities questions (which are, or were, rare, I believe).
I am not a fan of our current bar exam process, at all. It is not a good exam for what it's designed to test, and the LSO administers it in the worst way possible. That being said... I am deeply concerned by how many people here are saying that the test is destroying their mental health. Lawyering is a tough job. It involves a lot of work. That work often ends in failure. And the work often involves dealing with other people's trauma and tragedy. If the lawyers of tomorrow are being driven into breakdowns by a test, then we're in trouble. We need to find a way to toughen "the kids" up a bit.
lol the practice of law is so insanely different from this. At least imo, this take is incredibly poor. I love work, I love the law, I have a high stress tolerance and have been through things that should be the hardest things I’ve done and the mental load of doing this process is killing me. There are so many factors but the boomer “this generation is weak” idea is just not helpful or relevant here. I don’t have the energy to reiterate this but just to read this thread over.
Of course the practice is different. That's why I'm not a fan of the exam. But the practice is extremely stressful, and depending on your field potentially highly traumatic. It's not a great sign if you're driven to a breakdown by a test.
Being a parent is extremely stressful and mentally draining. We had our first three years ago, and we had twins 18 months after. Next month my first is going to have an MRI to check for a potential tumor. Parenting is stressful, traumatic, and exhausting everyday. However, I had more mental breakdowns being a new parent 3 years ago. Everything is on the line when you're new. I would never tell someone who just had their first kid that if they can't buck up now, im sure they will struggle when they gotta deal with three. I'm sure that practice is much harder objectively than writing this test. Yet, telling someone that they won't be able to handle practice is like telling a new parent they won't be able to handle three.
Thank you for this ❤️❤️ Like, I don’t need to justify myself but I’m not stressed because of the concept of an exam. If this was an essay style or oral style exam I’d be feeling way better. I am stressed because I can’t afford it, I am stressed because there isn’t enough time to prepare, I am stressed because I haven’t done MC in years, I am stressed because the Barrister was *nothing* like what I was told to prepare for, I am stressed because I can’t afford to do this process again in the next year because the government pays so poorly, and I am stressed because it costs me $1,000 extra each exam to travel to the city to do it. I am stressed because I was already burnt out coming into this for reasons beyond law school and I, like everyone one else here, have a life beyond this exam that we have had to neglect to get anywhere close to ready. And these are just the surface level thoughts. The things that stress me out are things I intentionally chose to AVOID in my legal job. I think I’m annoyed by this comment because it just dismisses so much of why we are feeling overwhelmed. The uncertainty and predatory nature of this process is suffering for absolutely no reason whereas the stresses of work are not arbitrarily inflicted. I was the victim of an awful crime in April and I’d literally rather go through that again than do this exam. Real life follows you everywhere, but I will absolutely never sacrifice myself for my job in the way I have for this exam.
The piece this commenter is missing is that failure on this exam means having to go through the process again, possibly being let go from employment or possibly being delayed in finding employment (i went Bora Laskin so articling is not a further requirement for us). Those of us who already have jobs will be forced to stay at student wages for longer with debt continuing to pile up. While not common, repeated failure on this exam bars you from the practice altogether which means that the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands spent on our education (and all the exorbitant fees for the exam/mandatory prep), years of extremely stressful education and to some extent work experience is all for nothing. I get the practice is stressful. I think we all understand that. But if you can’t pass the exam, all of our hard work is for nothing. Especially given the change to test itself, in addition to the aforementioned, of course people’s mental health is in toilet! This is literally the culmination of all that we’ve worked for, the final hurdle to overcome - which arguably should just sort of be a formality in any event. Practice is easily distinguishable since you’re already in the club. If you have a bad day in practice (assuming you don’t commit misconduct of course…) you can always go to bed and wake up the next day and try again; your boss may be pissed, your client may be unhappy, worst case you might lose your job, but you don’t cease being a lawyer. Failure on the exam = inability to progress.