Strategies Archives | Make This Your Last Time

September 27, 2026September 27, 2026 - No Comments

Secrets Your Bar Review Course Won’t Spill

A bar review course can make you wonder whether trying to finish it has somehow become a second bar exam.

You’re stuck in an overwhelming hellscape of cookie-cutter schedules, droning lectures, singing professors, outlines, workbooks, assignments…

Completing every assignment may give you a sense of accomplishment, but it doesn’t mean that you’re developing the skills needed to earn points on the bar exam (and pass).

You do NOT get extra points on your exam for completing 100% of the course.

You have more flexibility than your course’s schedule might suggest. You’re allowed to skip lectures when your time would be better spent practicing, adjust your daily assignments, and spend additional time on subjects that need attention.

Does it even make sense that you and everyone else taking it have the exact same program? Or that the course assumes the same learning style? Watching yet another three-hour lecture at 1.5x speed and hoping your brain was listening may not be the most productive use of your afternoon.

Your course provides the raw materials, but their curriculum is simply a suggestion. In fact, you are the dean of your own studies.

Here are five things to consider before letting Barbri or Themis dictate every hour of your life.

June 27, 2026June 29, 2026 - 5 Comments

Bar Prep Wisdom from Succulents

I went to a succulents gardening workshop the other day 🌱

I figured succulents wouldn’t wither like the flowers I tried arranging before. There’s a limit to how much talent one person can have, I guess.

But there’s no limit to how much I think about bar prep because that’s what I started thinking about when I was listening to the instructor 🤦🏻‍♂️

4 relevant lessons and also photos of my bald-looking succulent bowl:

(First lesson: “You have to kill a lot of plants to be an expert.” 🤯)

June 20, 2026June 22, 2026 - 2 Comments

I spoke with Mary Basick & Tina Schindler at a UC Irvine bar prep panel. Here’s what they said.

I sat in on a panel at UC Irvine with Professors Mary Basick and Tina Schindler the other month.

If you’ve spent any time looking into CBX resources, these legends have probably crossed your radar. You might already be using one of their co-authored books Essay Exam Writing for the California Bar Exam or California Performance Test Workbook.

After an hour in that room, I got to confirm what moves the needle in bar prep.

My favorite moment:

Me: “Well, you learn to swim by getting in the water, not studying water.”
Tina: “I love that.”

🥺

My notes and insights from the talk:

June 13, 2026June 13, 2026 - No Comments

MBE Tips and Tools (+ Best Supplements)

Ah yes, the MBE, everyone’s favorite multiple-guess section…

1.8 minutes per question for 6 hours
Paranoia from seeing seven C’s in a row on your answer sheet
50/50 choices that make you go, “Damn, what’s with this ultimate decision?”

Up to 50% of your bar exam score hangs on a series of letters. I don’t mean essays and performance tests, which are also a series of letters.

Wow! Sounds important. (So are these 3 high-priority areas that take up 21% of the MBE.)

For some people, the MBE comes easily, while it seems impossible for others.

While the MBE is a formidable portion of the bar, improving on it is figure-out-able.

So how do you improve your MBE score? Here are:

3 quick tactics you can try RIGHT NOW
3 study strategies for long-term success on the MBE
How to implement these tactics and strategies

May 10, 2026June 10, 2026 - 47 Comments

Should You “Trust the Process”? You’re the Dean of Your Own Bar Exam Studies

Here’s something that people who pass the bar exam never say:

“All I had to do was listen to all the bar course lectures and take a lot of notes. Just complete the course and you’ll pass!”

Sometimes we think “doing whatever it takes” to pass the bar exam means exhausting yourself and throwing 1000 hours and even more dollars into a black hole. (But it doesn’t have to be expensive.)

Or following some unsustainable cookie-cutter schedule that doesn’t care if you have a job or a family. Good luck if you fall behind by one day.

Or letting a perfectly fine morning slip through by religiously sitting through 4 hours of droning lectures. Worse, pausing lectures to fill in all the notes.

Then not even remembering 99% of it.

Rewinding the video for the 5th time because you can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire

I remember those days. All of those things above are things I stopped doing on my second attempt at preparing for the bar exam.