The Activist Guide to Passing the Bar Exam

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 July 24-25.

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.

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.

It’s July! The very idea that the bar exam is in the same month that appears on your calendar is enough to create serious anxiety. Plus, those of you who have (incorrectly) been told by attorneys that June is low key and bar study really ramps up in July, are probably trying to figure out what that ramp up looks like.

The truth is, many of you do not have room to ramp up. If you’ve been putting in 10 hour days watching lectures, making study materials, and doing practice, you’re in excellent shape and you should continue to do what you’ve been doing. Once your bar review lectures end, you’ll have the opportunity to memorize and practice, instead of learning new material. But, you don’t need to radically increase the time you have been studying.

If you haven’t put in the time, however, you really have no time to lose. You need to step up your game immediately. Make sure that you are doing some form of practice every single day – MBEs, MEEs, or MPTs. Ideally, you’ll do more than one type of practice every day because you don’t have as solid of a foundation of practice as you would like to have.

You also want to make sure you have a solid plan for what you will use to memorize. If you haven’t been making study materials, make sure that what you have from your bar review company, or the materials that were passed down from a friend, will actually work for you. You won’t have time to make and effectively use study materials now. You’re going to have to figure out how to make the best use out of what you’ve got.

Make no mistake, July is intense. Whether you’ve been on top of your game or not, it is natural to feel more pressure in July. But remember that you are only human and there is only so much that is humanly possible to do. You still need to take breaks. You still need to eat well, exercise, sleep, and have some fun. Rest needs to be part of your study plan.

You’re almost at the finish line! The light at the end of this tunnel should provide you with the motivation you need to get through the final weeks.

Yes.

My general advice is to sit out the movement during bar study. It’s only 2.5 months, and it’s important to keep your eye on the prize – your long-term impact, which will be greater after you have a law license. That is still the general rule, but (as bar studiers know better than anyone) every rule has its exception.

There are a couple of things that always come before bar study – your health and the health of your loved ones. Now, we have to add one more thing to that list – protecting our country from fascism. You need to take a break this weekend anyway, so you might as well make it count. https://act.moveon.org/survey/June_30_Pledge

 

Many of you will have a practice MBE coming up soon (or it may have already been scheduled). You may decide to skip it because you don’t feel ready. Don’t. It’s a good idea to do it.

Take the practice MBE to practice the MBE. Don’t take it to determine how you will do on exam day. You haven’t memorized everything yet. This isn’t the test.

But it is still a valuable experience. It’s important to feel what it’s like to do 100 questions and have to do 100 more. It’s important to take away some lessons about test-taking and stamina. Pay attention to how you feel and how focused you are at various points during the exam. Notice when you are distracted, tired, anxious. Notice your timing as you move through the exam at various parts in the day.

When you review your answers, notice when you answer several incorrectly in a row. Was that because one question was difficult and it blew your concentration for the next several questions? Was it because you were tired or hungry and you need to build in a snack, drink of water, or quick trip to the restroom to reset your focus?

Remember that if you get anxious, you can close your eyes, take 3-5 deep breaths, and reset. It will only take a few seconds and can save you a lot of wasted time and mental energy.

Also pay attention to specific topics and subtopics that you struggle with. That can help you figure out what to prioritize in the last couple of weeks, and what you might need to let go of.

If your bar review company rents out a space for the exam, go to it. It’s important to be around other people and distractions in order to simulate exam day.

Remember, even though it’s a mock exam, you’re still in learning mode. Use this experience to learn as much as you can about taking the MBE.

Many students tell me that their goal is to check off everything on their to do list from their bar company every day. I’ve written before about how you can’t possibly do everything your bar company assigns, and that’s true. But beyond the feasibility, you shouldn’t be blindly doing everything your bar company assigns because you need to do what makes the most sense for you. That will inevitably mean tweaking your to do list.

Your goal should be learning, not just blindly doing. That means that it is more important to be thoughtful and reflective about each task, than it is to complete them. There is no point to doing 50 MBE questions if you don’t have time to review them. Doing that doesn’t help you get similar questions right in the future. It’s the review, and the incorporation of rules and tips into your study materials, that ensures that your practice is useful.

The same is true for essays. Don’t just blindly do essays closed book and move on. Issue spot closed book, certainly, but if you don’t know the rule, look it up. It’s more important for you to review, apply, and then remember the correct rule, than it is to do an essay closed book because your bar company tells you to.

Trust the process, yes, but trust yourself too.

I’ve heard countless students say things like, “I started reading it and thought it was a real property question, but it turned out to be torts.” Or, “I thought it was a criminal law question, but it turned out to be an evidence question.” One of the things that makes the bar exam difficult, is that you can be tested on a wide range of subjects, and you don’t know exactly what’s coming. That’s why it is important to read the call of the question first.This is true for MBEs and MEEs. You want to situate yourself as best as you can before you get lost in the facts. Otherwise, you may have a hard time figuring out how the facts fit together. It may take practice getting used to doing this if your habit is to read from top to bottom, but it’s worth it to try to break that habit now.

You will save time if you start with the call of the question, because you won’t have to go back and re-read the facts. You will already have an understanding of what you will be reading for. (This is also the same reason you want to read the library before the file when you do an MPT. You need to know the law you’re applying before you can figure out which facts are important to which pieces of the law.)

Steps to Approaching a Bar Exam Problem:

1. Read the call of the question.
2. Read and mark up the fact pattern, making notes, drawing charts, underlining/circling important information.
3. Read the call of the question again.
4. For essays, jot down a brief outline. For MBEs, read through every answer choice and eliminate the incorrect options.

Bar applicants often second guess themselves on MBE questions, and choose the wrong answer over the right answer they picked originally. It’s important to recognize this pattern and interrupt it.

Make note of how often you pick the right answer and then second-guess yourself and choose the wrong answer, and figure out whether this is a big problem for you.

If it is, make a pact with yourself that you will only change an answer if you can articulate a reason (in IRAC format) why you are changing it. This means that you can’t change an answer just because you think another answer choice looks prettier, or the question must not be as simple as it seems. You can only change an answer if you missed something, or forgot something, the first time.

Remember to trust yourself and trust the process.

Don’t get lost in the daily grind of just going through the motions to check things off of your bar company’s to do list. Make sure you take the time to reflect on each task after you have done it. It’s not enough to say “oh, I got that wrong, I don’t understand mortgages at all.”

You want to dive a bit deeper. Ask yourself why you got a question wrong. Was it because you didn’t know the doctrine? Ok, what are you going to do to make sure you learn the doctrine? Did you put that rule into your outline, or on a flashcard?

But chances are, you’re also getting questions wrong for test-taking reasons, not doctrinal reasons. Pay attention to those reasons too. Look for patterns, such as reading the question too quickly and missing something key, or reading too slowly and over-analyzing or adding something in that isn’t there.

Every day you should think of 2-3 takeaways – general lessons that you learned and will take forward to the rest of bar prep. Think globally, beyond each individual question. Use those takeaways to change how you approach future questions. Reflection is how we grow.

You applied to law school with a dream. You wanted to be an attorney. Something pulled you towards a law career. Something was important enough for you to spend countless hours studying for the LSAT and writing and re-writing your personal statement. Remember WHY you embarked upon this journey in the first place. Hold on to that.

Bar study can be tedious, monotonous, and demoralizing. There is always more to do than can be done in a day, and every practice session can feel like negative feedback. The world is going on without you. There are concerts and protests, marches and picnics in the park.

Unfortunately, this is all part of the process of bar prep. But when you get down and feel like it’s not worth it, when you feel like you would be making more of a difference if you were out there organizing now, instead of inside studying, remember why you came to law school. Remember why you are doing all of this, sacrificing so much and working so hard. Remember all of the people who would love to be in your position – given the opportunity to be in a safe place studying, on the cusp of obtaining a law license.

This is a short period of time in a long life of service. It is all worth it in the end.  Always keep your end goal in mind. Keep your dream alive.