Bar prep in Vegas? Some law grads study in vacation spots, with aid of online video and iPads
The advent of online bar courses has been a boon to law grads who want to reduce stress by studying in a beach house or an exotic vacation spot.
The New York Times spoke with several grads who avoided the library and the classroom during their bar prep. According to the story, many would-be lawyers are “holing up at beach houses, having bar review courses live-streamed to vacation spots like Paris or Thailand, or even, in one extreme example, absorbing lessons by headphones from a table at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.”
The professional-poker-playing grad is Sabyl Landrum, who attended the University of California at Irvine. She loaded lectures and outlines onto her iPad, reviewing the materials when others played their hands in Texas Hold ’Em. Seton Hall law grad Brittany Primavera, on the other hand, rented a house on the Jersey Shore for her studies. New York University law grads Casey Pearlman and her boyfriend, Evan Sypek, studied for their exam last year in Jamaica. For a noon break, they biked into town for lunch and a Red Stripe.
One grad studying overseas is coping with additional stress, however. Robert Hansen, who attended Loyola’s law school in Chicago, is studying for the bar in Afghanistan while holding down a day job as as a contractor investigating government corruption for the Department of Defense. “I generally put in kind of long days,” he told the Times, “and when a major explosion takes place, it just makes it harder to stay focused on the test.”
