The Activist Guide to Passing the Bar Exam

The bar exam is tomorrow. Stop reading this blog. Stop searching the internet for last minute advice and essay predictions. You have put in a lot of work, and you need to have confidence that it will pay off.

Make sure you have what you need to get into the exam, including your seat ticket and photo ID. Make your lunch. Then go do something to get your mind off of the bar. Your brain really needs the break.

You’ve got this!

I’ve heard from a lot of people in the past day or so who are very concerned because their practice MBE scores are going down. Unfortunately, this is very common. It does not mean that you are forgetting everything, or that you are going to fail the bar. It happens to plenty of people, and they go on to pass.

There are a number of potential reasons for this decline, but the important things to remember are 1) you’re in good company, and 2) you’re still going to pass the bar.

Keep pushing forward. Try switching the source of your MBE questions. Try focusing on essays. You want to see as many fact patterns as possible, so read through several essays every day, issue spot, and read the model answer. You can even copy down the model answer if that helps you learn.

Be active. Don’t just read and re-read your outlines. Talk, write, test yourself.

Keep going. You’re so close to the finish line!

By now, your bar company’s lectures are  over or coming to an end very soon. That often leaves bar studiers uncertain about next steps.

Your bar review company will give you a schedule that you can follow, if you feel like it works for you. Most people tweak the schedule, and do not strictly follow it. This period of time, like all of bar study (and life in general, it seems), is all about balance. You need to balance memorization and practice. Some days that might mean 50/50 memorization/practice, while other days it might mean spending 70% of your time on memorization and 30% on practice. It depends on what you think you need.

Memorization takes time. Sometimes bar review companies underestimate how much time needs to be spent on this task. Make sure that you keep two things in mind as you memorize: 1) in order to be effective, you must be active with your memorization, and 2) it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Many people make the mistake of passively reading through outlines and thinking that means they’re memorizing. Studies show that reading is actually a pretty terrible way to memorize. You want to be more active – write things out, say things out loud, test yourself, walk around while going through flashcards, teach the law to your cat. There are many ways to be active with memorization. Figure out which ways help the material stick in your brain and do them.

Unlike your law school professors who expected to see rules on your exam in the manner you discussed them in class, the bar grader doesn’t know what you have in your outline or on your flashcard. People are learning the rules with variations in language. That should be comforting to you. If you have those rules that just won’t stick perfectly, but you understand the concepts, and can write generally about them, that will be enough. Don’t get hung up because the way you remember the rule isn’t exactly what you wrote on your flashcard. If you’ve got the concept, move on.

In terms of practice, you want to simulate exam-like conditions as much as you can. That means having practice MBEs, essays, and MPTs printed out in front of you. It means paying attention to your timing. It means doing two MPTs back to back at least twice. It means doing six essays back to back at least once. It means doing 200 MBEs in one day, at least once.

That said, if you are doing your regular daily practice and come across an issue in an essay that you can spot, but for which the full rule hasn’t stuck yet, it’s still ok to look up the rule. You want to practice with the correct rule so that you don’t end up memorizing the incomplete or incorrect rule you put down in the haste of a practice essay. You are still in learning mode. Every piece of practice you do will help you learn something that you can use on exam day. You are not in exam mode until exam day.

Make a schedule for yourself for this final period so that you know what you need to do every day. You want to give yourself time to go through every subject at least twice, and preferably more than twice. Even if you don’t feel like you have fully mastered a subject, you need to keep moving. Don’t wait to move on until you have mastered a subject. You will never feel that you have mastered everything. That is ok. Spaced repetition is a theory of memorization that posits that revisiting material often, with intervals of time in between, is the best way to improve recall. P

ractice will help you memorize as well, so schedule practice essays on subjects that you haven’t looked at in a day or two. Do mixed MBE sets to train your brain to switch subjects rapidly.

Don’t forget to build in time to take care of yourself. Eating, sleeping, exercise, and fun, are just as integral to a study plan as memorization and practice questions. You need to be in good shape for exam day.

First of all, don’t panic! Many people, if not most people, bomb the practice tests. It’s just practice. It’s not the real thing. It can be very valuable, if you stay in learning mode.

The key now is to learn as much as possible from the experience. Pay attention to which sub topics you struggled with. Notice when you answered several questions in a row incorrectly and see whether it was a lapse in focus, or if you let a difficult question break your confidence and infect the next several questions.

Make note of how you felt at different parts during the day. What distracted you? When did you get hungry or tired?

This score is not dispositive. Keep studying and stay focused on learning. Your score will improve significantly from now until exam day as you learn more, memorize more, and practice more. You’re not in exam mode until the day of the exam.

To get the most out of your post-exam review, you may want to review your score and study strategy with the bar support folks at your school.