I have seen everything out there (all the standard bar prep courses), have used more than 1 tutor, and by far I believe your blog and resources exceed anything else for this state’s bar.—Amy D.

Reading your blog was like seeing the matrix code … and it made perfect sense when I read it. One of those things like “oh yeah, that makes perfect sense! why didn’t I think about it before!?”—Valerio C., LLM

Honestly, I loved how witty and honest you were. It was often a (needed) reality check.—Anonymous survey response

I am so glad I found you because truly, you are a voice of reason in the midst of the madness that is bar prep.—Katy R.

The thoroughness of your blog articles … Everything you do seems incredibly thoughtful. And, based on what you conveyed, I realized that I needed to learn (and practice!) the right plays to win the game.—AS

i think this could be the next barbri honestly.—my T14 law school grad ex-girlfriend (after we separated)

Welcome!

Make This Your Last Time (MTYLT) is the best-kept secret for you, the bar taker, to achieve your ultimate goals:

✅ Stop getting stuck in bar prep
✅ Prepare for the bar exam more effectively
✅ Conquer the bar (exam) that blocks your path
✅ Stop delaying your professional career
✅ Move on with your life

I’m Brian Hahn, founder of MTYLT and your chief bar exam strategist (and patent attorney by day (and night)).

I’m also a contributing author to the #1 book in the Bar Prep and Law categories: The Big Book of California Bar Exam Essay Writing.

The MTYLT name was intentional: You can make things happen with your own hands. It’s about taking control of your preparation.

You can make this your last time taking the bar exam and move on with your life—whether you’re a repeater or a first-timer who wants to get it one and done.

(In fact, if you are a repeater, I believe you have a better chance of passing because you’re not starting from scratch; you are starting from experience. I’ve seen way too many successful repeaters to think that there’s some inherent disadvantage of being a repeater or taking the exam in February.)

My goal is for my free material to be better than other people’s paid material. Feel free to verify that yourself and make me eat my words if you find better strategies and insights out there.

"Best bar prep tools. Thanks for doing the good work!"

I’m not a first-time passer. That’s good because I made the mistakes for you already.

You don’t listen to dating advice from Brad Pitt.

You get it from someone like me. Someone who was in pain and had to learn.

“Thank you for suffering through a first failed attempt so I didn’t have to.”—Robert S.

I found what worked for me. I found what didn’t work for me. I found what worked and didn’t work for others over the years of talking with thousands of bar takers.

My goal is to make this your last time taking the bar exam by helping you maneuver the minefield and boost your morale.

But filter the noise and be selective about whose advice you take, including mine. If you want to make the wrong decision, listen to everyone. It’s dangerous to blindly fall into someone else’s pace if it doesn’t match yours.

That said, I will always tell you the truth. I’ll try to be as detailed and sensible as I can. Take what you like, and leave the rest. Not everything I say will be applicable to you. But the best students don’t wait for the perfect advice or the “best” tools. They take what they find and apply it to their own situation.

Ultimately, it’s up to you. Don’t just sit there. Give it a try.

What are you hoping to do by passing the bar exam?

“I need to pay off these damn student loans hanging over me”
“I need to get this behind me and move on with my life (so I can enjoy the weekends with my family and friends again)”
“All my friends have their own careers and are posting vacation pics in Bora Bora… I don’t want to delay my career and livelihood any longer” (passing the bar is the fastest way to get hired as an attorney)

But… it’s easier said than done. It’s overwhelming, and yet you feel like you’re outgrowing your bar review course.

“I’m emotionally and mentally drained”
“I have no idea what I’m doing. How do I study effectively?”
“I’m falling behind. I’ve underestimated the work that goes into this”
“I don’t know why I can’t produce good answers, even though that person managed to pass. WTF”
“Do I ‘trust the process’ or go my own way? I wish I didn’t have to use Barbri/Themis/Kaplan, but I’m scared to stray. I don’t know how to approach this exam anymore. Who are you supposed to trust?” (The answer is to trust your own legs—after you’ve trained them)

"How is it that I feel like I haven't done anything???"

You know you enrolled in a prep course because it’s the default option. Ever since Day 1 of law school, they told you that everyone does this. It was all too natural and reasonable.

After all, we have a psychological tic where we think that the more extreme an action is, the more we think it’ll change our lives. You thought that paying $$$$ was magically going to protect you from the valley of death between pass and fail.

Maybe, maybe not. They have to cater to the average student. But what do you do if you’re working, get sick, or have a family to take care of?

There’s no reason to drink the Kool-Aid and become an average statistic… assuming you’re not an average student, of course!

Bar review courses can very well work for you if you use them properly. Just keep in mind that all these tools and courses merely support your self-study efforts. It’s always been up to you in the end to build that bridge across the valley of death. Only you can prevent forest fires.

If you’ll let me, I’ll encourage you to get up and prevent those fires. I can’t predict your future, but I can try to help you get the outcome you want.

I know firsthand how sickening it is to fail and have raw reality shove itself in your face.

I took the California Bar Exam in 2013. I failed:

This was a pivotal moment for me—the biggest one of my life.

I needed to figure out this bar thing so I didn’t have to feel like a failure as a human.

I had enough of doing what “they” told me to do—in bar prep, in law school, in job searching. I focused more on doing my own research, seeking specific guidance, and making my own decisions.

Advice is never one-size-fits-all. In the end, you attain the result you want by your own hand.

After passing the following exam, I wanted to fill the gaps left open by all the “safe” blogs and vague platitudes. Make This Your Last Time was born.

Make This Your Last Time has been featured by:

– AdaptiBar Blog
– Bar Exam Toolbox
– BarEssays: 1st article, 2nd article
– UWorld Blog
– Detailed guide from a passer of the 2018 July CA Bar Exam (40.7% pass rate)
– Live stream with Jennifer Duclair (what you need to know to start your bar prep)
– Bar Study Motivation Podcast
– BarIssues
– Reddit and Top Law Schools Bar Prep forums as user “a male human”
– “Before You Take the LSAT” podcast:

– Denise Fernandez on YouTube:

– Lia Baligod on YouTube:

Everyone has a unique story. I also want to celebrate and feature those who made this their last time taking the bar exam:

– Detailed case studies of success stories
– Unconventional stories

Here are some other interviews and presentations I’ve done:

More on my YouTube channel. Hoping to make more videos.

What I believe at MTYLT:

There’s no need to follow “The Plan.” A course can give you structure. But does it make sense that someone with a job or a family gets the same cookie-cutter schedule from your bar prep course as a 20-something fresh grad with nothing to do but study? Not to me.

Bar prep is personal. What may work for some people may not work for you and vice versa. I want to empower you to make your own independent choices for your bar prep.

You’re the dean of your own studies. Courses are only there to support your self-study endeavor. Do what makes sense to you. I encourage you to listen to yourself, do what you need to do to learn, and trust your legs on game day.

Focus on what moves the needle. Knowing the law is different from knowing how to use the law. Let’s not waste time. Learn how to learn. Do what you’ll be doing on the exam, effectively and efficiently—not spend an ungodly number of hours exhausting yourself with lectures, flashcard arts and crafts, or endless memorization that goes nowhere. Doing is less exhausting than thinking about doing.

You can have fun with bar prep! Enjoying the process is key to sustainable motivation and momentum. Sign up for my emails, and I’ll give you different perspectives that can make the game more playable and beatable.

(My emails have a whopping 70%+ total open rate, and that includes people who passed the bar and continue to stay on the list. I guarantee that you’ll find my emails more valuable and interesting than any other bar exam newsletter out there.)

Here are the four laws of MTYLT:

1. MAKE THE TIME

You don’t find the time. You make time.

If you audit the time you spend, you’ll find that you have more time than you thought. Stop watching so much Netflix and reading Reddit. You won’t miss them after a while.

2. MAKE THE EFFORT

The real bottleneck isn’t time — but energy and attention.

You could sit there all day and do nothing. Or you could focus and strain your brain so you can learn something and improve over time.

I’m not saying to study 12 hours straight every day. Just put your efforts in the right place.

3. MAKE BAR PREPARATION A PRIORITY

You can do anything you want, but you can’t do everything you want.

You might have other obligations. A job, a family, parents, sick kids, pets, Sunday brunch mimosas… That’s fine if you want to juggle everything. Passing the bar might be harder for you.

If you want to pass the bar, decide that passing the bar is your priority. The word “priority” was originally used as a singular.

If you don’t really want to pass the bar this time around, or if the law is not for you, that’s fine. Acknowledge it and move on instead of doing things half-assed year after year. It’s up to you to…

4. MAKE THIS YOUR LAST TIME

If you let yourself keep repeating, you’ll slip into a cozy state of being a repeater. Your status quo identity becomes that of a repeater.

“It’s just how it is… I love learning… Everyone fails at some point…” Yes, but many people also pass! It’s not all doom and gloom out there.

Don’t be afraid of success. Don’t become a martyr. You deserve your Free Life beyond the bar. You didn’t come this far just to come this far.

Can you really help me?

Successful students don’t wait for perfectly tailored advice. They consciously apply the advice they get to their own situation. They’re more concerned about being the best student rather than debating what the best materials are.

This isn’t just for California bar takers or repeaters. Everyone can extract insights from discussions inspired by the hardest bar exam in the country (debate me, New Yorkers). If you’re lonely and frustrated about the bar, I’m here to open up my chamber of secrets.

Given a choice, you want someone who knows what to do as well as what not to do, over a generic hotchpot of advice from people who somehow ended up passing their first time.

It’s like your annoying classmate who passed the MPRE: “Oh, it’s really easy! Just study like the week before, lol.” It was “really easy” because you happened to pass, jackass. God, law students are the worst.

There’s a lot of BS out there that doesn’t really help and vague listicles telling you what you want to hear and already know. “Top 10 tips on how to memorize which you won’t remember! Eat these fruits! Just issue spot! You have to do at least 3,000 MBE questions! Just be positive! You will pass! You got this!!!!!1”

I’m invested in your success and getting you to pass. I’ll give you a candid look at bar exam preparation after everyone else has bounced. My work is done if I’ve made myself obsolete.

I’ll be the first to tell you that this exam is gritty and difficult. It’s not going to be easy. And it’s certainly not going to fill you with confidence.

But I will help you be less anxious and less frazzled than you need to be. It’s better to wish you were better than to wish things were easier. Progress is motivating. Competence brings confidence, not the other way around.

I created this website because I couldn’t find reliable and useful information on preparing for the bar exam when I needed it the most. My role is to make things more transparent and actionable using what I learned (amusing myself in the process) because the bar exam shouldn’t be this traumatizing.

You’ll get the most thorough and insightful solutions for your problems about preparing for the bar exam here. Compare with other websites to see for yourself and see these success stories of some of my readers.

"Your emails and website was the only realistic take on bar prep that I found. A lot of sites that are available sugar coat the process and try and give a false sense of security to takers but I like the tough love approach that you give."

"I feel like Brian's approach to the essays are terrific! I had never heard anyone else share his view on issue spotting before, and to me, it made perfect sense. I liked his Approsheets. There were several that didn't flow well to me, so I made my own off of his base. I had never thought of doing this until I stumbled across his site. I truly feel like his approach and methods are a game changer when it comes to the essays. I found the MagicSheets to be really good, too. A ton of content that is useful and without the fluff. Like OP, each being five or less pages was mentally comforting when starting to read them. Additionally, the weekly email he sends is encouraging and was always refreshing to read. My only regret with MTYLT is I did not find it earlier! I highly recommend checking out the site." — From this Reddit thread

No canned and droning lecturing or “advice” about working hard (that kind of “motivation” decays fast…you can’t force your brain to work harder). Just what I did, what others did, and what I would do if I had to take the bar again. Ultimately, it’s your bar. You’re the dean of your own studies. Do what works for you, and create your own curriculum.

You could go out there and peck out the good advice from resources scattered all over the place. How do we even know if a piece of advice is good in the first place? With so much at stake, you can’t afford to try out random tactic after tactic.

BTW, that applies to my blog too. All our lives, we’ve depended on “experts,” but ultimately, it’s about results for you. Am I helping you take action and become more effective? Am I empowering you to do your best?

Try on different advice like hats. If my material isn’t working for you, try different ones. But keep in mind it’s not just about the material but how you apply it to your situation. Only you can prevent forest fires.

All that said, do you want to know how I did it (and how it worked for others)?

My philosophy is to empower you with the best chance of passing and moving on from this hazy world of bar prep. To that end, I offer these resources to help you Make This Your Last Time:

First, getting on my email list is the best way to keep up. Sign up here. Not everything I send via email gets posted on the blog.

“Your emails and website [were] the only realistic take on bar prep that I found.”—Shannon

"I looked forward to your emails every week, and they helped keep me motivated and focused over the past five months of studying (while working full time!)."

If it resonates with you, you’ll love everything I have to offer:

Weekly emails: During bar seasons (May-July and Nov-Feb), I’ll send you material handcrafted by yours truly (sign up here). You’ll also get MBE Q&A and success stories, along with other goodies when you sign up, like coupon codes, my free guide, and material I don’t cover on the blog.

The blog is where I publicly discuss strategies and tactics needed to give yourself an edge over the other half of bar takers whom you’ll leave in the dust.

Magicsheets are condensed outlines with 95% of the issues and rules you need to know for essays and the MBE in 5% of the length of a traditional bar outline. Out of frustration, I created and used the predecessor of Magicsheets to pass the CA bar exam on my second try. MBE subjects available separately. Combo with Approsheets also available (this is the most popular option).

Approsheets are condensed essay attack sheets (templates in checklist and flowchart formats) that help you identify the relevant issues in an essay via systematic issue checking. Go from a blank page to a finished essay or outline.

Magicsheets + Approsheets bundle is also available (this is the most popular option).

Passer’s Playbook 2.0 is a comprehensive collection of self-study guides, study schedules, blueprints, and tools that I wish I had when I first took the bar. Comes with an “Accelerator Kit” so you can take action right away while the “aha” moment is in full effect. And if you have more time, it goes into incredible detail on strategies and techniques for effective bar prep.

Mental Engines is a mini course on organizing your mind and emotions. It includes lessons and strategies to take you from overwhelmed to focused, from unproductive to motivated, from anxious to calm… and even make studying enjoyable rather than stressful.

The private Facebook community is a supportive and lively 24/7 virtual study group where we’re quick to inform, help, support, encourage, inform, advise after passing, and congratulate each other, where I may share timely things or things that I don’t mention on the blog. Please note that a real name and account will be required for approval to keep it a safe and trusted community of MTYLT readers and friends. It helps to have law-related info associated with your profile and answer the short questions, or be invited by an existing member.

And the only Buzzfeed article I will ever write.

If you have any burning pains, send me your questions, comments, confessions, etc. to brian [replace this with an @] makethisyourlasttime.com. I read all emails.

If there’s one thing you do, I highly recommend that you sign up here to get timely weekly coaching emails, MBE Q&A, and success stories (along with other goodies). Click here. See you inside.

Disclaimer: MakeThisYourLastTime.com makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the content of this publication and specifically disclaims all warranties, including without limitation, warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. Using this website entails the understanding that MakeThisYourLastTime.com is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional services or advice. Furthermore, MakeThisYourLastTime.com shall not be liable for any damages arising from use thereof.