Bar Exam Preparation
No, this approach has a few potential inaccuracies and dangers.
Below are four of the dangers and a better approach to take instead if you want to prioritize a few areas.
Continue reading “Should you forget about essays and just focus on the MBE (“auto-pass” with the MBE)?”When preparing for the bar exam, set up clear goals you can follow.
Say someone asks you what you want. You say that you want to pass the bar. Great, a north star that you can reach toward!
But the end goal itself doesn’t tell you what to do at any given moment. It often makes you feel good about the future end result, but it doesn’t mean you will do the needed things in between now and the desired result.
For example, a new year’s resolution like “I want to lose weight” gives you a nice self-affirmation and a burst of motivation.
However, 80% of such resolutions fail by February. There are many actions required, such as watching your calories and macros, exercising, and doing so consistently. Simply jumping in with a new gym membership is a recipe for your goal getting ghosted.
There are three main components to good goals…
Continue reading “Setting Up Clear Goals You Can Follow for the Bar Exam”You know me. I’m a proponent of DIY studying without a bar prep course.
Not just me. Many retakers who pass come back to tell me that they wish they’d abandoned the bloated courses in the first place. I hear this every year. Many repeaters and even first-timers tell me their bar review course wasn’t working for them, so they turned to alternative approaches.
But that’s not the point of this article.
The point is, how do we use our course effectively and properly?
While going solo can be effective not just in terms of cost but by virtue of its emphasis on learning, it’s not for everyone. Sometimes we want everything laid out and be told what to do.
You understandably feel lost with seemingly no other option other than a bar review course when you first start out. Even repeaters wonder, “What’s the best bar review course?” It’s such an important exam that you want to do it right.
Most people start with a traditional commercial bar prep course like Barbri, Themis, Kaplan (if you’re a masochist like me), or BarMax — or even a smaller independent course like that offered by JD Advising, Studicata, SmartBarPrep, or many others.
In other words, there are many ways to study for the bar exam. They can all work. Instead of debating for days which program is the “best” and ending up undecided, worry about being a good student.
Bar prep, at its core, is self-study. Courses and materials are merely there to support YOUR studies.
That said, let’s talk about how to pick a bar prep course and how to use it to move the needles that will help you learn.
Continue reading “What’s the Best Way to Study for the Bar Exam WITH a Bar Prep Course?”I recently had a back-and-forth with Stan, yet another reader who passed the (online/remote) 2020 October California Bar Exam on his 5th try.
When I asked to showcase his incredible personal journey, Stan offered to rewrite his emails into a more comprehensive story with approaches he discovered, his realizations, and specific study tips to help others join him beyond the bar.
Some of my favorite impressions among many:
✅ Respecting the exam is important but so is enjoying the process
✅ Practice as if it were the real thing. Do the real thing as if it were practice—with confidence
✅ Bar prep doesn’t have to be expensive
✅ Use the right approach to focus on what’s important
✅ The mental aspect (discipline, grit, fear, and doubt) can be what hinders you more than anything
Enough about my impressions. It’s time for yours. Here’s Stan’s story on what he did to finally pass the bar exam.
No substantive edits made except adding relevant links and [comments in brackets] and writing out some abbreviations.
After I told Brian about my journey to passing the Oct 2020 California bar exam, he was gracious enough to offer me a chance to share my story on his blog. I discovered Brian’s website by searching stories on how people passed the exam. I’d bet that’s pretty common.
Before we get into my story, please know my only intent is to show you if I can pass, you absolutely can too. I’m not special, nor am I looking for credit or praise of any kind. I’m just an ordinary guy from LA who took the bar exam five times, dealing with life along the way.
Everyone’s journey to passing the bar is unique. What worked for me might not necessarily work for you. But I would bet a quality everyone needs is discipline. My story is a cautionary tale of why discipline should always be where bar prep starts and ends.
The October 2020 California bar exam was my fifth attempt, but I was finally ready to pass. Let me tell you why you should never think you’re not smart enough or good enough to pass, or that it must not be meant for you.
Continue reading “How Stan Finally Passed the Bar Exam Using Proven Bar Preparation Strategies (Anyone Can Do This!)”“How can I pass this bar exam? omg”
There are a million approaches for the bar exam. Indeed, you should find a way that works for YOU. As I always say, you’re the dean of your own studies.
All you have to do is understand the material and know how to use it, right?
If it were only that easy.
The bar exam covers a ton of concepts, including exceptions, jurisdictional differences, over a dozen subjects. There’s a LOT to know at once. Questions are difficult to answer unless you understand the key concepts.
The bar exam is not EASY.
But preparing for it is SIMPLE. Bar prep doesn’t have to be complicated.
There are really only three things you need for successful bar preparation:
Let’s go through each one.
Continue reading “The Bar Exam Is Difficult, but the Approach Is Simple”