The Activist Guide to Passing the Bar Exam

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. It means paying attention to your timing.

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. That means you should work on memorizing 2-3 subjects per day. 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.

Practice 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.

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.

Remember that you’re still in learning mode. All of the practice you are doing now is designed to help you learn how to take the bar exam.

It is understandable that missing issues/rules on MBE questions, essays, and MPTs is frustrating to you. But remember the purpose of the practice is to learn – not to test you. You are not in exam mode until exam day.

Your goal right now, particularly with essays and MPTs, is to see if you have spotted most of the correct issues, and learn how issues are triggered. If you didn’t know that a certain rule required certain analytical steps before you did an essay, now you know. If you didn’t know that a certain fact was enough to trigger or satisfy a certain rule, now you know.

If you learn a new rule, or a new piece of a rule, write it down. Put it in your outline or on a flashcard.

Stay in learning mode. Every piece of positive information you can take away from practicing questions is a bonus. That’s what you’re doing it for.

A perfect score is mythical. No one gets a perfect score, or even close to it, on any part of the bar exam. You want to get half the points on the essays and MPTs, and about 60% on the MBEs. If you’re close to that, you’re doing fine.

Stay in learning mode so that you can learn as much as possible. Try to turn your frustration and annoyance at the bar exam into something positive – learning as much as you can from the bar examiners so you can pass their test.

You can’t know absolutely everything that is testable on the bar exam. But, you can (and will) know most of it.

Most bar companies will give you big outline books. You don’t need to know everything that is in those outlines. You also have your lecture notes. Focus on those. The bar companies will give you the most important (most heavily tested) material in lectures. It won’t be absolutely everything, but it will be enough. Spending a lot of time outlining from, or trying to know everything in, the big outline books is not a good use of your time.

You will also learn new rules through essay and MBE practice. This can be very anxiety-producing for bar studiers. However, it is all part of the process, and you’ve got to trust the process. Take what you learn from your practice and add it to your lecture notes. That will be what you memorize from.

Strong students find it particularly stressful to not know exactly what you will be tested on. But, this isn’t a law school exam with a closed universe of testable material. The universe for the bar is enormous. There will be something you don’t know. But, that’s ok. You will still pass.

Recently, my son has gotten into watching The Magic School Bus Rides Again on Netflix (a spin-off of the original Magic School Bus updated for today’s tech-savvy kids). The educational program teaches kids about science. Their beloved teacher Ms. Frizzle’s favorite catch phrase is “Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.”

This also seems like a good mantra to keep in mind for bar studiers frustrated with their performance on practice essays, MPTs, and MBEs.

Do the practice before you feel ready.

The best learning happens from making mistakes.

Take the time to fully understand why you got things right, and why you got things wrong.

Make sure you understand both your doctrinal mistakes and your test-taking mishaps. Add new rules into your study materials, and keep track of test-taking tips in a journal so that you can figure out strategies to help you avoid similar mistakes in the future.

Active learning – actually practicing the test over and over – is truly the only way to succeed on the bar exam.

Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!

Concluding the series on doing each component of the UBE online for the October non-UBE bar exam, let’s talk about essay writing. For the October remote exam, there will be 3 essays instead of 6. Of course, you do not know which subjects will be covered, so you still have to know all of them. But, you don’t have to have the stamina to get through 6 essays in 3 hours, so that’s positive. Be sure to practice doing 3 essays in a row on a computer several times before exam day.

Although I don’t know exactly what the software will look like, it is likely that you will be able to highlight on the question itself and type on a notes or scratchpad feature. This is helpful. But, you don’t want to highlight every line in the essay question, as doing so will eliminate the utility of the highlight function. You will end up re-reading everything multiple times because you won’t be able to differentiate what goes where. Notes are much more helpful than highlights. Highlights don’t actually tell you why a sentence matters or what you were thinking when you chose to highlight it.

As always with an essay, read the call of the question first. If the call of the question is open-ended like “What result?” read one or two lines prior to the question prompt. This should help situate you in the subject and sub-topic.

Then, read the fact pattern, making notes of the issues that pop into your head as you read the facts. (Side note – remember that just because a rule is not met, does not mean it is not triggered. If you think about it, it is probably triggered, even if your ultimate conclusion is that a rule fails. Too often students don’t include a rule because they analyzed it in their head and decided the rule isn’t met. Don’t be that student. Put the analysis you did in your head onto the computer, or you can’t get any points for it.)

I would normally suggest at this stage that you be writing notes on the essay prompt paper, but it may make more sense now to write the notes directly into your answer document. Most bar essays (though not all) introduce facts in the order in which they are relevant. So, if you begin jotting notes of the rules you think of and the facts that triggered those rules for you, you will likely have a thorough outline you can follow when you draft your essay. You should also practice writing out in words things that you would typically draw out in a diagram or timeline. Develop a practice of words or symbols to indicate what you previously drew in pictures.

Remember that careful reading and planning are key for all components of the bar exam, including the essays. That means that you should spend roughly a third of your time – 10 full minutes – reading and planning before you start writing. That way, you can be sure you’re heading in the right direction and you know what rules you will address in each sub-question. Racing into the writing portion will likely lead you to ultimately spend more time going back and forth between the fact pattern and your answer field.

Breathe. Plan. Practice. Be kind to yourself.

The MPT is the most difficult section of the bar exam to do on a computer. There is a lot of material to sift through, and having handwritten notes on a paper next to your computer is a bit easier than having to scroll through the documents on half a laptop screen. But, it is doable. You just need to practice MPTs in this manner from now until the bar exam.

I suggest that you do at least one per week between now and the bar exam. (Now is where I would usually suggest that you do two back to back MPTs at least twice in the weeks leading up to the exam, but since the online October exam only has 1 MPT, you don’t need to do that. Sliver linings!)

You will likely be able to highlight and make notes on the MPT on your screen. You should practice doing this with every MPT you practice. Develop a system that is comfortable to you, and allows you to easily go back and find what you are looking for without re-reading everything multiple times. Your general plan should be the same:

1. Read the assignment memo closely and make note of your role and your tasks. You can often write out point detailed headings at this stage.
2. Go to the library and identify the relevant rules and rule structures. Write them down.
3. Go to back to the file and read through the facts, connecting facts to the relevant components of the rules.

I generally recommend that you write a fairly detailed outline as you go through the material on the MPT, but with the MPT online it is even more important to draft a detailed outline as you read through the material. This will prevent you from having to scroll back and forth too much. It will likely be a bit more time consuming to find your notes on the computer than it would be if you had a paper packet, so put as much as you can directly into an outline in your answer field. (Highlighting everything just means you will go back and re-read everything, which is time consuming.) Then, when you are done reading through the materials, you can go back and write the complete document directly from your outline.

As always with the MPT, be very mindful of your time. You want to spend 45 minutes reading, processing, and outlining. Then spend 45 minutes writing the document. Don’t skimp on the first 45 minutes to try to rush to writing. That will only cause you to have to go back and forth through the MPT documents more times. It is better to spend time planning in the beginning. It will ultimately make your writing more orderly and complete.

It will be an adjustment to do the MPT online. But you can do it. The key, as with all of bar study, is to plan and practice.

Breathe. Plan. Practice. Be kind to yourself.

Many states have recently announced that they will be going forward with a remote, online, October examination. Others have not announced yet, but may do so in the coming weeks. If you have been practicing MBE questions on paper, you may be nervous about what this means. Remember, that the key to all of bar study is “plan, don’t panic.” All that is required is a change in approach, just like you have done with nearly every aspect of your life over the past several months. (This blog will tackle MPTs and MEEs online in the next couple of posts.)

Note that if your jurisdiction is opting for NCBE’s October remote administration, you will have 100 MBEs total. There will be two 90-minute sessions of 50 MBEs each. This greatly cuts down on the level of stamina you need to have to get through a set of MBEs. That’s good. Make sure you practice doing 50 MBEs in a row on the computer several times before exam day.

Your overall test-taking strategy should remain constant.

1. Read the call of the question first.
2. As you read the fact pattern, make note of legal issues that the facts trigger in your brain, and key facts such as dates, ages, occupations.
3. Read all of the answer choices and use the process of elimination to cross out distractors. (Ask yourself if the answer choice is correct on the law, correct on the facts, and responsive to the question asked.)

Strategy number 2 is where you are going to need to alter your approach since you can’t easily circle, underline, or make notes on the page in the way you are used to. Get used to highlighting directly on the question itself. Don’t highlight everything. Be judicious about what you choose to highlight because the goal of highlighting is for you to easily be able to see a key fact, and not have to reread the whole fact pattern.

You may also be able to make notes on a “scratch pad” feature on the computer itself, though the technical mechanics are not clear at this point.. Most bar review companies and supplemental MBE programs have online MBE programs that allow you to highlight the question and strike through answer choices as you eliminate them. As you practice, you should try different strategies to see what works for you. In particular, practice using the note/scratchpad feature to write out in words or symbols the diagrams/timelines that you are used to writing in the margins. You will still need a way to keep track of multiple conveyances/occurrences.

Just as you would on paper, make a note of difficult questions that you want to come back to, if there is a mechanism for doing so. But, always select an answer choice. You don’t want to leave any questions blank, in case you run out of time to go back to them.

Finally, slow down. We tend to read more quickly on a screen than we do on paper, and consequently we can miss important details. That is because our brains are accustomed to skimming social media content and news articles on screens, and are less used to deep, critical reading online. Ultimately, you will need to be moving through each MBE question in 1 minute and 48 seconds. However, as you begin practicing online, it is ok to go a little bit slower as you get used to the format. Pay attention to your timing so that you have a sense of how quickly you are moving through questions, but don’t freak out about timing just yet.

While we don’t know exactly what the exam technology will do, take a look at this tutorial for the MPRE (https://home.pearsonvue.com/mpre) to get an indication of what it will likely look like. Note that you will likely be able to highlight and strike through text. You can also change the font size and color. Have a plan for what settings you plan to use, so that you don’t spend time on the day of the exam trying to decide on a color scheme. Once your jurisdiction announces more details, or opens up a mock exam, practice with it multiple times.

For more tips on multiple choice exams, and a chance to take some questions in an online platform, check out these CALI lessons:

A Methodical Approach for Improving Multiple Choice Performance by Professor Steven Foster

Multiple Choice Questions: Wrong Answer Pathology by Professor Nicole Lefton

If you have taken the MPRE or New York Law Exam, or other multiple choice exams online and want to provide tips to your colleagues, you can leave a comment on this post.

Breathe. Plan. Practice. Be kind to yourself.

This is your Monday morning reminder to take care of yourself. Whether you are signed up for an exam next week, in September, in October, or don’t yet know what your jurisdiction is doing, there are no easy paths forward.

You will spend a lifetime putting the needs of your clients first. That is what we do. The law is a service profession. But right now, put yourself first. Figure out what you need to do for yourself and your loved ones. Put your health first. There is no right answer, just a difficult path among many hard options. Don’t pick a path just because your friend is (just like you shouldn’t use flashcards just because your friend does). Think about your basic necessities and what you need to do in order to make sure those are taken care of.

When they write the book of your life — and your exceptional legal career — this will be a short chapter. It may end up being the catalyst that changes everything in legal licensing, or it may end up being a blip. (I bet the former because the class of 2020 is fierce) But one thing is for sure – this will be a short period of time in your lifetime of advocacy.

Breathe. Plan. Be kind to yourself.