Make This Your Last Time | Bar Exam Preparation

February 21, 2026February 21, 2026 - 2 Comments

5 Reframes to Power Up Your Mind and Emotions for the Bar Exam Right Now

Preparing for the bar exam forces you to cycle through various emotions over weeks and months.

One moment calm, feeling like you’ve done all you could. Panic and anxiety the next moment. Frustration. Utter confusion. Overwhelm. Back to relief. Rinse and repeat.

Your heart is beating uncontrollably, your thoughts are becoming irrational, and your palms are sweaty! 🥵 You’re feeling HOT!

Go from hot ⤵

To cool

When you’re in trouble, breathe and go back to the fundamentals.

Reality can betray the most reasonable of your expectations and daydreams at whim, coloring the past with regrets and the future with despair.

It can also present us with gifts if you look carefully. Some days you have to look much harder than other days.

But if life only gives you lemons, you weren’t looking out for the oranges.

Here are five philosophies you can apply right now to mentally reframe how you feel about the bar exam:

February 17, 2026February 17, 2026 - 4 Comments

Tired of Bar Prep? Guarantee Motivation to Beat the Bar Exam with These 5 Reminders

How often do you see motivationals like this?

You’re doing totally fine!!!
You’re going to pass!!! BELIEVE IT!
My all-time favorite: YOU GOT THIS!!!!! (“I needed to hear this today!”)

But what do you do to pick yourself back up in your most defeated moments when you don’t believe you got this?

I wanted to pass the bar exam.

So instead of actually preparing for it, I made an image of a bar license card with my name on it using Microsoft Paint. You know, for visualization and manifestation like random people suggested online.

I’m not even kidding. Look and cringe:

February 14, 2026February 15, 2026 - 1 Comment

40 Bar Prep Lessons for My 40th Birthday

Today’s my birthday! Yep, on Valentine’s Day.

Turning 40 feels much different from turning 30.

People would joke about how back pain starts in your 30s. The “joke” would get real tiring after the first time. For a whole decade, I thought they were being dramatic. Then my back started hurting a few months ago.

My metabolism too has tanked, and my skin is stretching and sagging in ways never seen before. And worst of all, I’m NOT as funny as I was a decade ago (in case that explains things) 😩

Seeing the “4” in my age reminds me that I’ve lived a long time. That I’ve been making this your last time for a long time, since I was 28.

And I’m not slowing down. In fact, I have plans to do even more.

It also means I’ve seen some things (in bar prep at least).

What matters? What’s noise? What are patterns, mistakes, traps, and breakthroughs that inevitably happen?

Some ideas have evolved as I spoke with thousands of bar takers, but most of what I believe about bar prep is what I believed when I first started writing about it. “How to bar prep” hasn’t changed.

To celebrate turning 40, my gift to you is 40 quick lessons about bar prep before the exam.

February 13, 2026February 14, 2026 - No Comments

Scoring a 307 on the New York Bar Exam After 1 Week of Prep (Another Double Passer Alert with Doreen Benyamin)

About two weeks from the bar exam, most students:

Get overwhelmed, freeze, and suddenly not know what to do
Panic, overthink everything, and see scores dip
Feel like they’re behind and completely cooked on the exam

I want to share a story about Doreen Benyamin.

Maybe you recognize her. She hosted a live workshop before, where she interviewed me so she could take all my tips for the California Bar Exam for herself.

She passed California.

And then she passed the New York Bar Exam with a score of 307 after studying for just one week (on her first attempt).

She was yet another double passer (like James).

So I had to interview her back. This was a long time coming. There was an incredible amount of insight from our conversation that took me days to process.

But maybe you won’t panic or get overwhelmed after hearing the strategies that allowed her to get it done in one week.

February 7, 2026February 10, 2026 - 8 Comments

6 Ways to Reclaim Your Time & Energy While Studying for the Bar Exam (Even If You’re Working Full Time)

Your hair feels gross, the fridge is empty, and you’ve been scraping together whatever free time you can.

Words in front of you are jumbling together into a blurry mess, passing by like a dream and also slipping away like one.

I’ve been where you are. In a way, I’m still there.

Bar prep steeps you in this undercurrent of anxiety because there’s so much to study with so little time and you’re feeling the pressure from the exam getting closer and closer. The worst combination.

But it’s not just time. Time isn’t your scapegoat. “Life is short” is propaganda by people who wasted their time.

“Yeah maybe when I have more time. I’m going to feel motivated someday. Everything happens for a reason.”

Oh, okay.

We like to tell people we “don’t have time” or that “time is the most valuable resource” or that “life is short” (even though we love to procrastinate).

That’s because time is not actually your most valuable resource.

You ALSO need ENERGY and ATTENTION. You need CLARITY so you can be productive.

You ever see those everyone-has-24-hours “motivational” “quotes”? Even if you had the time, it doesn’t mean jack unless you have the mental energy to do something with it.

If you’re “running out of time,” it just means you’re almost finally done. But you have to use your energy well without tripping and falling before the finish line.

Here are 6 rules to take back your time and energy while studying for the bar exam (even if you’re working full time):