Lars was a Canadian attorney taking the California Bar Exam. He took it once in 2018 February. Then he passed the following July.
“I took it twice. The first time was in February and I got 1393, and then I wrote again in July and passed the second time.”
Lars was decent enough on the MBE and the PT thanks to his existing lawyering skills, but he needed help with the essays.
“I came really close on the MBE the first time. I think I missed one question but I struggled with the essays. I did well on the PT, the first time, which I think I can attribute to being a lawyer.”
Unlike the MBE and the PT, essays force you to work your “origination muscle”—to come up with words to write (instead of filling in letters) based on what you’ve memorized. We can break it down to a three-step process: Memorize the law, be able to recall it, and able to apply it.
“I kind of thought going in the first time, I would be able to just sort of manage the essays better than I could. . . . As a whole, the issue with the grading of the papers, there is a real issue where I don’t feel like a lot of the graders are grading equally.”
Continue reading “This foreign attorney who struggled with essays passed the California Bar Exam with the lowest July pass rate (40%)”