Which test is harder? The barrister or solicitor exam?
If you’re preparing for the Ontario bar exam, then you probably know that the exam is broken down into two components: (1) the barrister exam and (2) the solicitor exam. You’ll write these exams on two separate days, which are approximately two weeks apart.
One of the most common questions we get from candidates is: Which test is harder? The barrister or solicitor exam? In this post, we’ll try our best to address this question.
In our view, the answer to this question is going to vary among candidates. This makes sense. For instance, if you’re someone who took a lot of criminal law-related classes, along with family law, civil procedure, and some other public law classes, then you’re probably going to feel more confident about the barrister exam. Your law school background has made you an expert in these fields. By contrast, if you took securities, wills & estates, tax, and real estate during law school, then you’re probably going to feel more confident about the solicitor exam. Again, your law school background has allowed you to develop a comprehensive understanding of these areas of law.
Of course, this is just a general rule. Every year, a large number of candidates who feel much more confident about one exam, end up finding that exam to be the harder of the two. The reason for this likely has to do with the fact that, even if you’ve taken several courses on a specific area of law (e.g., family law), when it comes to the actual bar exam, the Law Society of Ontario may expect you to know about specific issues that were not addressed in you law school course. And so your prior law school experience with a specific area of law may not turn out to be all that advantageous.
Ultimately, our biggest piece of advice for candidates is to view each exam equally. In other words, don’t stress about a specific exam because you have no experience with — or interest in — the topics covered therein. The fact of the matter is that, regardless of your experience and interests, preparing for the Ontario bar exam is going to require you to learn about a lot of legal topics with which you are unfamiliar. While this can no doubt be stressful, try to view it as an opportunity to develop a broader knowledge base. This will end up making you a better lawyer and allow you to better serve your future clients.
As well, as we have repeatedly noted in other blog posts (see here and here), the best way to ensure that you are properly understanding legal topics with which you are unfamiliar is to get your hands on challenging and updated practice tests. We cannot stress the importance of this enough! You do not want to come into either portion of the bar exam *thinking* that you understand most of the materials, only to find out during the exam itself that your understanding is inadequate. This is a recipe for disaster. Instead, take the time to do challenging practice tests under timed conditions in advance, so that the actual bar exam ends up being “just another test” for you.
In fact, we think that practice tests are so important that we’re willing to offer candidates a discount code that applies to all of our practice tests — even if they’re already on sale! Simply enter the code PT2022 at checkout to save an extra 10% on our (already affordable!) practice tests. Because we want to make sure that our exams are accessible to ALL candidates who are attempting to fulfill their dream of becoming a lawyer.
