What to Do If You Are Retaking the Bar

It’s not your fault.

You waited months. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, you slowly lost your ability to focus on anything. Blood knocking against all corners of your body. You suffered those few seconds of pure agony as you searched for your name on the pass list of truth.

You didn’t even care about celebrating. You would have spent your lifetime of luck to get this hurdle over with.

But then…nothing to show for all your damn effort

It could’ve been anything. Maybe your proctor kept walking by with a weird cough. Maybe you were distracted by your table mate who kept snorting his nose. Maybe you were running around trying to secure lunch and got lost.

The bar shows NO mercy, NO sense. It seems like there is at least a quasi-objective determination of your aptitude, but how did they get your final score? It’s like graders sit on their toilet and give your essays whatever score they feel like (this isn’t too far from the truth actually).

But this is the game we’re playing.

It’s not your fault, but you can always make preparations to prevent it. They say prevention is the cure.

The very fact that you’re reading this shows me you are determined to change things around. If so, read on to see how you can reposition your inner mindset today for success next time.

If you’re going to pretend that reading this and going “yeah, that’s what I should do” before forgetting everything I said will miraculously change anything, then please get off my site and go back to Upworthy to continue slacktivism there.

Read on if you are retaking the bar and want to learn how to tweak your attitude before getting back into the game.

Continue reading “What to Do If You Are Retaking the Bar”

How to Apply Rules with IRAC

Essays: Get the “I” and “R” right, and the rest should flow relatively naturally. So these “I” and “R” would be good place to focus on throughout your essay preparation.

Even if you had just a few weeks to prepare for the bar, there’s still time to learn the “A” part of IRAC—applying the rules. Once you learn how to work facts into your answer, you may not need to practice the “A” part as repetitively as you would for issue checking and rule recitation or memorization.

I’ll demonstrate a simple and clean rule application, based on this question I got:

Continue reading “How to Apply Rules with IRAC”

How Well Should You Be Doing to Feel Secure with Your Progress?

Preparation lowers your risk of non-passage. 

Thank you, Fleet Admiral Obvious! You’re welcome, but have you really thought about how much preparation is needed for an acceptable level of risk?

When there are only a couple more weeks to go, the state of the union inevitably seems to turn to “this is awful i wanna die HELP!”

Continue reading “How Well Should You Be Doing to Feel Secure with Your Progress?”

Imagine Not Practicing Performance Tests

I was browsing the July 2014 CBX topic at top-law-schools dot com slash forums. It’s what I do as I look around my room deciding where to put the portrait of myself holding my own portrait. Of course, I never end up hanging it anywhere because it’s the journey, not the destination.

james

But then I came across these little . . . nuggets.

Continue reading “Imagine Not Practicing Performance Tests”

5 Things I Did Differently the Second Time to Pass the Bar as a Repeater

The thing about reality is that your brain doesn’t notice it until it’s wrapped tightly around your brain like a sheet of aluminum foil, crinkling and making a polygonal mess.

0 minutes remaining. I slapped in my applicant ID, my entry ticket to three seconds of pristine agony. Then two, three more times. I made sure I was reading correctly. For once, I wasn’t delusional.

I could feel the heavy air of TRUTH closing in around me. Light fading quickly. But I wanted to believe. No, the silvery foil pushed its way around the noodles of my brain, turning into TV static. It was wrapped around the potato, and my brain realized it then.

In some other universe, I passed. But in this one, I failed. I failed. I failed.

2013 was the worst year of my life. My brain convinced me to break up with my friend of ten years and girlfriend of three. My dad screamed at our family on Christmas morning and night. I failed the July bar and haven’t since posted a status on Facebook out of supreme shame. 16 months and counting since becoming Facebook celibate. Facelibate.

I lied down on my bed. Then I got up.

The experiment was a failure. It was time to change the variables. This was how I would prove I was not insane. Then 2014 became the best year of my life.

Having experienced both outcomes of the California Bar Exam, I’ve distilled the following insights that were instrumental to passing the bar. These are things I did the second time but not the first time. Do you like clickbait? You won’t believe #4!

Any fool can learn from experience. I prefer to learn from other people’s experiences.

Make this the last time you have to walk the line between heaven and hell with these 5 things I did differently the second time to pass the bar exam.

Continue reading “5 Things I Did Differently the Second Time to Pass the Bar as a Repeater”