Special Edition- My Bar Exam Experience

In this special edition of Ooey Cooey, Leslie Weinstein—a recent graduate of the University of Baltimore School of Law—shares her firsthand experience taking the February 2026 Maryland UBE while it is still fresh. This episode is dedicated to her UBalt Law friends preparing for their own exam and is designed to reduce anxiety through practical insight and perspective 

Bar Exam Episode

Leslie walks through:

• What to expect on exam day (location logistics, timing realities, laptop software surprises, and practical packing tips)
• The structure of the UBE (MPT, essays, and a full day of 200 multiple-choice questions)
• Study reflections, including her experience with Themis and how bar exam questions compared to prep materials
• Tactical multiple-choice strategies—especially spotting standards of review and reading the call of the question carefully
• High-yield doctrinal refreshers across Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, Contracts, Property, and Torts
• Nuanced distinctions that frequently appear on the exam (e.g., larceny by trick vs. false pretenses vs. embezzlement; impleader vs. interpleader vs. intervention; strict vs. intermediate vs. rational basis review)

The episode closes with perspective: the bar exam is significant, but it is not destiny. Regardless of outcome, your professional future remains intact.

A candid, structured, and practical debrief for law students who want clarity, reassurance, and a focused reminder of what actually matters when walking into the Uniform Bar Exam.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to this special episode of Ooe Coooey. I'm Leslie Weinstein, a recent graduate of the University of Baltimore School of Law. Last week I finished taking the Maryland Bar exam. I normally use this space to talk about cybersecurity governance and compliance, but today is different. Today's episode is for my friends who are about to graduate from law school, especially my besties over at the University of Baltimore School of Law. I wanted to record an episode about my bar exam experience while it's still fresh in my mind, in the hopes that this information will alleviate at least an ounce of stress for at least one of my friends. I also want to share a few rules that I learned while studying for the bar exam that I either didn't learn in law school or at least I learned and have no recollection of learning in law school. Just a reminder, this is not legal advice and this is not official bar prep material. Please double check everything that I've said here and do not rely on my advice alone, especially if it conflicts with whatever you know. I know Maryland is transitioning to the next gen bar exam in July of 2026, so the format of the exam will be different for my UB friends who are graduating and taking the exam in Maryland, but I believe much of the experience should remain the same regardless of the testing format. First, I want to talk about my studying habits. I purchased the Themis Bar review and I thought the product was great. In fact, there were several, several questions, including one of the essay questions that closely mirrored Themis's bar prep questions. And I thought the bar exam questions were actually easier than the theme's questions. I also really appreciated that Themis had multiple sets of outlines because they provide a full outline of each testable subject as well as a more condensed version that they call like last-minute outlines or something like that. I use those last-minute outlines to prep in the weeks and days before the bar exam. Day of the bar exam. First of all, the Maryland Judiciary assigns you your testing location, and I'm not sure how they select your testing site or seat number, but all of that will be available to you a week or so before the exam. I was about 15 minutes from my testing site, which was super convenient for my 8.05 arrival time. My designated testing location was Martin's Crosswinds in Greenbelt, Maryland. When I pulled up to the testing site, I could have sworn that the building looked like it had a giant martini glass on the front of it, which seemed weird for a place to take a bar exam. But turns out I was right. Martin's Crosswinds is actually a large event venue. So I took the bar exam in this giant gilded ballroom with massive crystal chandeliers. It was all just incredibly fancy. While the doors opened at 8.05, and I was sure to arrive right at 8.05 because I didn't know what to expect. The doors opened at 8.05, but the exam didn't kick off until after 9 a.m. on both days. There were no refrigerators or microwaves. So I packed a lunch fit for a fourth grader and ate in the lobby during the lunch break. There were a few couches and some chairs, but a lot of folks left for lunch because we were given about an hour and a half for lunch. So you could drive somewhere to eat if you really wanted to. And if you got done more than 15 minutes before the morning session ends, then you're allowed to leave early, which means you can leave earlier for lunch. The morning and afternoon sessions are each three hours long, but that's three hours of testing. The announcements added 15 minutes beforehand, and it took about 15 minutes afterwards for them to pick up all of the books and let us go for the break or for the end of the day. By the end of the day, you've been there for about eight or nine hours. It's exhausting. It's boring. Make sure that you get a really, really good night's sleep before the bar exam. Day one for us was writing day. I don't know if the first day of the next gen bar exam will involve all writing just like this UBE did, but I appreciated burning us out early with the writing on the first day instead of waiting for the second day, because the second day was all multiple choice questions and the first day was all writing. The MPT took the entire morning session on day one, and the essay exams took the entire afternoon session. Day two, like I said, was nothing but multiple choice all day, all six hours. 200 questions, 100 in the morning and 100 in the afternoon, and it was all done on a Scantron sheet. While the theme is bar prep questions were mostly on a computer, the bar exam was all on paper, which I truly appreciated. One thing I was not expecting was to have to pay$130 or more for a software license so that I could use my laptop for the writing portions. I also had to buy a whole new computer because my fancy yoga that has two screens, it failed the security scan that's performed by the software. So I ended up purchasing a$250 Lenovo with the minimum specifications necessary to take the exam, which means I spent more than$380 so that I could use a laptop to write the essays. I would not change my mind and take the essays by hand, but I saw at least 10 people who did not use laptops on the exam. Also, one more thing after you download and install that software, do the practice test like they tell you to do. That's how I discovered I needed a new computer. The software, despite costing more than$130, is nothing more than a command prompt looking interface, which means there is no spell check. Oof, good luck out there. Back to the day of experience. The giant ballroom was filled with tons of small folding tables with two seats each. The tables are numbered and the exam confirmation letter that you're required to print and bring with you will tell you your seat number. So you have to go look for your seat number in all of these rows of tables. That confirmation letter also tells you that you get to have your personal items with you on the floor beneath your seat. But this is a lie, at least at my testing site. Just like exams in law school, all of our items had to be placed along the walls except for our laptop on essay day, day number one, and we were allowed to keep a drink which had to be lidded, but it had to be kept on the floor beside us. We were also told that we could not have any timepieces at all, not even a mechanical watch in our pocket. Now, before jumping into some of the rules that I learned during bar prep, I want to give my impressions of the multiple choice questions. Again, I'm not sure how much of this may or may not change on the next gen bar exam, but I wanted to share this anyway. If two answers look correct to you, look closely at the call of the question. Several times during bar prep, I got questions wrong because I selected the right answer for the wrong question. I attribute this to doing practice exams on a laptop. But anyway, for example, if the question asks about the defendant's denial of a tort claim, do not select the less relevant but also logically correct answer that says that the defendant waived certain Rule 12 defenses because she did not raise them in the first response. Also, memorize the list of fundamental rights. They are life, liberty, property, voting, travel, and privacy, because the term fundamental right gets tossed around in questions, and the answers usually include key terms from the various standards of review without naming the standard of review. For example, a question involving gender discrimination may have an answer option that states that, quote, this rule is unconstitutional because it is not the least restrictive means necessary and is not tied to a compelling government interest, end quote. To know that this is not the correct answer, you must know two things. One, that this option is a strict scrutiny level of review, and two, gender discrimination gets intermediate scrutiny. The next option on the same question may be something like, quote, this rule is constitutional because it is rationally related to an important government interest. To not select this incorrect answer, you would have to know that rationally related relates to the rational basis standard of review and not the intermediate standard of review. See what I mean? It gets a little tricky. So make sure you memorize those fundamental rights and the following standards of review. Strict scrutiny requires that the government action to be narrowly tailored to advanced a compelling government interest using the least restrictive means necessary. Intermediate review requires that the government action be substantially related to an important government interest. And rational basis of review is the lowest standard and simply requires that the government action be rationally related to a legitimate government interest. Now, time to learn some rules that I do not recall learning in law school or that I learned and then dumped after the semester ended. And these all came up in bar prep and I saw them on the bar exam. Let's start with my least favorite subject, civil procedure, or CIVPro. Choice of law versus conflict of law. Conflict of law is determining which state law to apply. Each state has their own conflict of law provisions. Choice of law is when a federal court, sitting in diversity, must decide which substantive state law to apply. This is the Erie doctrine. I'm not going to cover the Erie doctrine in its entirety, but I want to highlight some nuances that I had not memorized before this bar prep. First, if the original venue where the case was filed was proper, meaning the court had personal jurisdiction over the defendants and subject matter jurisdiction over the case, even if the case is transferred to a district in a different state, the court in that new jurisdiction will apply the conflict of law rules of the state where the case was originally filed as long as the original venue was proper. However, if the original venue was improper and the case is transferred to a district court in a different state, then the court in the receiving jurisdiction will apply the conflict of law rules in that receiving state. Don't forget that federal courts sitting in diversity will always apply the federal rules of civil procedure, but they will use the ERI doctrine and the conflict of law rules of the state in which it sits to determine which substantive state laws to apply. Procedural issues include things like the form of the complaint, sufficiency of pleadings, the effect of splitting a cause, the proper and necessary parties, counterclaims, the discovery process, sufficiency of service, trial procedure, burdens of proof, and jury trials. If it is hard to tell if a rule in question is substantive or procedural, ask yourself, if I applied this rule, would it change the outcome of the case? If the answer is yes, then it is most likely substantive and the state law should be applied. One last thing in civil procedure before moving on are the three different terms that we use when adding non-parties to a case. The first one is intervention. This is an interested non-party that is seeking to voluntarily join the suit to ensure that their interests are adequately protected. Interpleater is a third party that needs to resolve a property dispute and brings together two opposing parties to resolve the dispute. Impleter is when the defendant brings in a third party that they believe should be liable for some or all of the accusations against them. Now I keep impleter and interpleater straight in my head by thinking about the T as a big T in the word interpleater as a person with two arms who's reaching out to grab two separate people and bringing them in for a big giant hug to figure out who was gonna win. And I thought about impleeter as the defendant pleading to the court, please, I'm not the one responsible for this. They are, go get them. So I'm impleting the court to go blame someone else. Moving on to crime law. Look, there are a ton of crimes to memorize, and you should absolutely memorize the elements of each of those crimes, but I want to highlight theft crimes because of the nuanced difference between some of them. These came up in more than one question and in different ways. The three theft crimes I'm talking about are larceny by trick, false pretenses, and embezzlement. Larceny by trick. This requires the defendant to fraudulently induce the victim to deliver possession of the property, but there is no transfer of title. This is unlawful possession of someone else's property through deceit or misrepresentation. For example, if you're pretending to want to buy a used car from somebody, so you get them to show up to a parking lot so you can test drive it, but instead you drive off with it, you didn't get the title to the car, but you pretended to be somebody that you weren't or doing something that you weren't going to do. You were not going to buy the car. You just wanted them to show up with the car, to give you the keys so that you could drive off with it. They still own the title, but you have the vehicle. That is larceny by trick. False pretenses. This requires that the defendant unlawfully acquires title of the property, regardless if the defendant actually receives possession of the property. Keeping on the car example, false pretenses would be when a defendant convinces a car owner to sign over the title of their car to the defendant for a purpose other than for what the defendant tells the victim, with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of their car. For example, let's say somebody convinces a nice old lady to sign over a title to her car, but they go and take that title and get a title loan and then stop making payments and her car gets reposed. That would be false pretenses. And third, embezzlement. This is when the defendant already has lawful possession of the property, but either misuses it for their own gain or they permanently deprive the owner of its possession. Embezzlement does not require that title pass to the defendant. Distinguish this from false pretenses where title passes to the defendant. An embezzlement is distinguished from larceny by trick because in embezzlement, the defendant already has lawful possession, whereas in larceny by trick, the defendant does not have physical possession, but they trick somebody into bringing the property to them so that they can obtain the physical possessions. The last thing I want to hit in Krim is really con Krim Pro, which I did not take in law school. So that's probably why it's new to me. But I do want to bring up Miranda rights because Miranda rights appeared in several questions. And so I have no doubt that they will continue to appear in the next gen bar exam. And just a reminder on the Miranda rights, I'm sure there's lots of other things to know. But what has come up uh very often in my experience is that Miranda rights cover custodial interrogations only, which means you have to consider if the suspect is in custody and consider if the suspect is being interrogated. Now, each one of those have lots of different rules and guidance, and I'm not going into that here, but just remember Miranda rights requires custody and interrogation. Miranda rights do not cover spontaneous or volunteer statements, even after a suspect invokes their right to remain silent and asks for a lawyer. If they say something spontaneous or volunteer something, that is not in violation of their Miranda rights. It would only be a violation if the cops continued to interrogate them after they have invoked their right to remain silent and/or invoked their right to an attorney. Just remember, invoking the right to remain silent must be made explicitly. It is not implied by remaining silent. And invoking the right to an attorney must also be made explicitly. Neither one of these rights can be invoked by remaining silent. They must be explicitly made. On to contracts. Just remember, no contract is formed. If there is no consideration, you would be shocked at how many questions involved consideration. And I even saw an illusory promise on the bar exam. So look out for these illusory promises where there is an apparent promise, but it really doesn't contain any obligation on the part of the person making this illusory promise. So for example, if an acceptance says that someone promises to buy as many widgets as they need through the contract period without actually promising to buy any widgets, that is an illusory promise because there aren't any actual promises being made to buy anything. They just said if they buy some, they'll buy some from you at the price that you've quoted them. So that would be an illusory promise, which means that there is no contract that has been formed. Next, we have the parole evidence rule. I'm not going to remind everybody what it is or talk about those rules, but I do want to point out the following scenarios in which the parole evidence rule does not apply. It does not apply when raising defenses to contract formation. It does not apply when raising defenses to contract enforcement. It does not apply to separate deals. It does not apply to prove a condition precedent. It does not apply to interpret or clarify an ambiguous term of the contract unless the outside information conflicts with the terms of the contract. And the parole of evidence rule does not apply to subsequent agreements. Moving on to property, don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with all kinds of things about life estates and future interests and those things. The first thing I want to remind everyone is that landlord and tenants have privity of contract with the lease agreement and privity of estate through the tenant's right of possession. When tenants assign their lease to a third party, the assignee obtains privity of estate with the landlord and privity of K with the tenant. But the tenant always retains the privity of contract with the landlord. The assignee and the tenant are joint inseverably liable to the landlord should the new assignee stop paying rent to the landlord because that is the duty of the tenant and the assignee, which is to pay rent to the landlord. Moving on to adverse possession. The only thing I want to highlight here is that adverse possessors prevail over BFPs. BFPs should have inquiry notice as to the adverse possession, but adverse possessors are not covered by notice statutes because they don't have paperwork to file. And speaking of paperwork, deeds. Deeds must be in writing and signed by the grantor. Doesn't matter if it's signed by the grantee, but it has to be signed by the grantor. It also must be delivered with the intent to convey the property. A deed remains valid even if it is not recorded after it's delivered. But if a deed is recorded, it creates the presumption that the deed was delivered. And just remember the shelter rule while recording the deed does protect the subsequent BFP who does not have notice. It does not protect that BFP from adverse possession because those adverse possessors do not have paperwork to file. But let's not forget that the BFP should have inquiry notice of the land to go see what's happening. And an adverse possessor is on the land continuously and notoriously. So should that BFP go look at the property, they should have inquiry notice that there is an adverse possessor, regardless of the quote, clean title or any other race notice statutes that may be in play. Moving on to the last subject I want to cover on this episode, which is torts. I just want to cover two things in torts, even though negligence, duty breach, causation, damages is everywhere. It's not everything in torts. So I want to cover a couple things. One of them is negligence, but the other one is uh warranties and product liability. So the first thing I want to cover is pure contributory negligence. While it is the minority rule, I did see a question on the bar exam about it. Contributory negligence is a complete bar for the plaintiff to recover damages, even if they were just 1% contributorily negligent, except if the defendant had the last clear chance to avoid injuring the plaintiff and failed to do so. Next, I want to cover strict liability, which is liability without fault of the defendant. And there are three areas where strict liability applies. The first one is abnormally dangerous activities like handling explosive materials. The next is wild animals, even if those animals have been tamed or defanged. And the third one is defective or dangerous products. The plaintiff's assumption of risk bars their recovery for routine harms under these strict liability theories. However, it is not a bar for recovery when the defendant was negligent. The prima facie case for negligence here is one, the defendant had an absolute duty to make safe. Two, the defendant's actions were the actual and proximate cause of the plaintiff's harm. And three, damages. I had several questions about product liability, and I want to highlight a few things here. There are three ways that products can be defective. They can be defective in design, in manufacturing, or there was a failure to warn. Like person who made it or sold it knew that it was dangerous, and there was a failure to warn consumers about the dangers of this product. And not only can the retailer be named as a defendant, but the distributor and the manufacturer could also be named as potential defendants in a strict liability products case. And it's the defect in the product that must be the cause of the plaintiff's injury. And the plaintiff must have been using the product as intended or as reasonably foreseeable by the defendant. Negligence is available for product liability. Res Ipsolocutor is available, but only for personal injuries and property damages. You cannot claim purely economic harm for negligence. Moving on to the last subject I want to cover, which is warranties. There are generally two types, express and implied. There are two types of implied warranties, which are merchantability and fit for purpose. Merchantability is the warranty that the product is generally acceptable and reasonably fit for ordinary use. The fit for purpose warranty is that the product is fit for a particular purpose. Purpose. Express warranties are affirmations or promises that were made by the merchant as part of the bargain agreement. Now, both types of warranties can be disclaimed, but disclaimers of implied warranties must be very conspicuous for the consumer for them to be effective. While this is the last rule I want to cover for you here, I am sure there are so many more rules that are out there that I had to learn as I studied for the bar exam. But these ones that I covered are just the ones that jumped out at me because I remember them in practice, and then I absolutely saw all of these on the bar exam. Look, I don't know how I did on the bar exam yet. The results are still a few weeks away. Of course, I am very anxious about passing, but I have to keep telling myself that my world is not over if I failed. And your world won't be over if you fail the first time too. Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Kim Kardashian. They all failed the bar exam. But look at them now. They're all doing quite well. And so will you if you fail the bar exam on the first try. Just keep your head down and don't psych yourself out now. You're almost done. Good luck out there, stay safe. And don't forget, Congress's authority for passing laws is usually tied to its Article I powers to tax and spend or to regulate interstate commerce, and that the general welfare clause is probably not the right answer.