Whitney Weatherly, Author at Bar Exam Toolbox®

About Whitney Weatherly

Whitney started her post-graduate education at the University of Mary Washington, earning a Master’s in Education. She soon decided to change course, and went to the College of William & Mary School of Law. At William & Mary, she was an Articles Editor for the Journal of Women and the Law and a Teaching Assistant for the Legal Skills program. Through the Legal Skills program, she was able to provide mentorship for first and second year law students, as well as instruction in legal writing and client contact. In 2010, she graduated Order of the Coif and was admitted to the bar in Maryland. She is a tutor for the Start Law School Right program, where she combines her legal and educational background to help others grasp fundamental legal concepts. She is also a tutor for the Law School Toolbox and Bar Exam Toolbox.

Can a Duck Help You Pass the Bar?

March 15, 2023 By Whitney Weatherly Leave a Comment

So, the other day, my husband and I had a conversation that went something like this:

Him: have you ever heard of Duckie Debugging?

Me: um…does it have anything to do with a classic John Hughes character?

Him …no…

Me: then no.

He went on to explain Rubber Duck Debugging to me. It’s basically a technique where, when programmers are faced with particularly difficult problems, they explain their code to a rubber duck (or another inanimate object). It occurred to me that this would be a great technique for some bar studiers. Does this seem ridiculous? Probably. But that’s also part of why it could work.

Timing Your Bar Studies

November 23, 2022 By Whitney Weatherly Leave a Comment

I’ve talked before about developing a study schedule, and how much I love designing custom study schedules for our bar takers. As much as I love the challenge of tailoring bar study for an unconventional bar taker, however, I frequently find myself worrying about whether they will actually have the time they expect. I worry more often that even the time they expect isn’t quite enough. What is “enough”? Well, as with everything else in the legal field, it depends. I can’t give any absolutes, but I can give you things to think about. It’s not an exhaustive list, of course, but we’ll talk about scheduling time in a busy week, using (or taking) holidays and vacation time, and what to do close to the exam. I’ll also touch a little on what to do if you can’t follow these recommendations. [Read more…] about Timing Your Bar Studies

Copying Model Answers Isn’t “Practice”

September 14, 2022 By Whitney Weatherly Leave a Comment

Through our bar tutoring, we’ve seen students try just about every study method under the sun. When they hire us, we offer our advice for improving bar scores, but sometimes they ignore that advice. (Which, by the way, if you’re going to ignore all advice, don’t waste money on a bar tutor!) Over the past few years, we’ve seen more and more people following a particular method they’ve heard about on bar forums: “practicing” bar questions by repeatedly copying the model answers to those questions.

This popped up again with a student recently, and I was talking to one of our bar tutors about the method. She compared it to signing up for a marathon and spending months of “training” by watching videos of people running. To be perfectly honest, I’m not a runner, but I think that analogy is perfect because, like the model answers, running videos can, actually, be very useful! They just can’t replace actual running for purposes of preparing for a marathon. [Read more…] about Copying Model Answers Isn’t “Practice”

How Much Should I Really Tell My Bar Tutor?

March 9, 2022 By Whitney Weatherly Leave a Comment

So, I confess. I’m a murder-mystery junkie. And when I was thinking about writing this, all I could think of was Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot telling one of his clients that she should never lie to her confessor, her hairdresser, or her private detective (expanded version of the short story The Baghdad Chest, if you’re curious – I know you have tons of time to read, right?). Well, I’m going to add to the list: never lie to your bar tutor. In fact, I’ll go further than that. You should be really, really forthcoming.

Some of you might be reading this and wondering: why would I ever lie or withhold information? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but let’s throw them into some rough categories. We’ll go with unawareness, privacy, and embarrassment. [Read more…] about How Much Should I Really Tell My Bar Tutor?

Should I Plan to Fail or Plan to Wait?

September 8, 2021 By Whitney Weatherly Leave a Comment

When the pandemic was causing bar examiners to push off the bar exam (over and over again), it caused a lot of problems for people who were trying to plan their studies. As a bar prep company, we knew there was another problem: a delayed exam meant delayed results, and delayed results meant less time for repeat takers to study.

At the time, we treated it more or less as a one-time problem. We talked about long-term bar studying, knowing that part was a recurring issue for many people. But we didn’t really talk about how often people receive results too late to start studying for the next exam. Sure enough, the day after the most recent bar exam, what did we start getting? Inquiries from people who think they might have failed the bar that they just took. And I realized: this happens every time. After every bar exam, we hear from people who are sure they failed for some reason or another, and want to know what to do. There’s never an easy answer. I certainly can’t decide what they should do! But I can offer some suggestions for considering it. [Read more…] about Should I Plan to Fail or Plan to Wait?

Bar Study: It’s Time to Choose

June 16, 2021 By Whitney Weatherly Leave a Comment

I’ve written before about the study schedules I create for our tutoring and some self-study students (depending on package level) at the Bar Exam Toolbox. I’ve also mentioned how it can be frustrating to spend so much time creating a schedule only to have it ignored by the person who needs it most. This is about how to not be that person who ignores the schedule. Or…at least…why to not be that person.

We always get a fair bit of pushback from students. Some don’t have time to study, and some have never properly learned how to study. (No judgment! It’s not intuitive at all for most people!) But some just plain don’t want to study. Or they think we’re exaggerating about how much work they need to do to be prepared. So, let’s take a look at those four wildly-over-generalized reasons for pushback. [Read more…] about Bar Study: It’s Time to Choose

Whitney Weatherly

About Whitney Weatherly

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