What’s the deal with the Ontario bar exam?

We get it. You just finished law school and now you have to write the Ontario bar exam. Not cool.

Lucky for you, the Ontario bar exam isn’t that bad — at least relatively speaking (just ask your friends in New York).

Basically, Ontario’s bar exam consists of two parts: the barrister exam and the solicitor exam. The barrister exam covers topics such as civil litigation, criminal law, family law, and public law. The solicitor exam covers topics like business law, estate planning, and real estate law. Both exams cover professional responsibility. In fact, professional responsibility accounts for roughly 30-40% questions in both exams. In other words, make sure you study it!

At present, both the barrister and solicitor exams consist of 160 multiple choice questions. You get 4 hours to write each exam. Thankfully, rather than having to answer all 160 questions in a single 4 hour sitting, you get 2 hours to answer the first 80 questions. After that, you get a 30 minute break. Then, you’ll have another 2 hours to complete the remaining 80 questions.

Preparing for the Ontario bar exam can seem like a daunting task. The Law Society will send you thousands of pages to read over and then it’s basically up to you to study them all. Luckily, you do not need to memorize all of this material. Instead, you want to read over it all at least once so that you have a general understanding of it and know where to find it in your materials.

In order to assist with your studying, many students recommend purchasing an “index”. In the next blog post, we’ll expand on what exactly an index is and outline some of the pros and cons attached to them.