Recent research suggests that overloading your schedule with bar courses gets you absolutely nothing (except maybe a one-way ticket to Boredomtown). You should be developing your analytical and writing skills, instead; you really can’t complain about bar passage rates if you remain semi-literate after 3 years of law school.

That said, if you want to take a bar course because it interests you - go for it. But the conclusions of a recent study are apparently unequivocal: “[N]o relationship existed between law school courseloads and the passage rate of students ranked in the first, second or fourth quarters of their law school class, while only a weak relationship existed for students who ranked in the third quarter.”

What does all this mean? Follow your interests and take courses that capture your imagination. It’s not what you take in law school that gets you over the bar, but how you develop your ability to learn the law and apply legal reasoning (something you should be refining in any course). Procedure triumphs over substance? Follow commentary here and here for more and decide for yourself.