Manfred passed the 2024 July California Bar Exam on his first try.
💬 “I passed as a first-time taker thanks to you!”
The story he sent in about his study process was a complete story arc, a great reminder of how to pair memorization and practice, and how to navigate the plateau that you’re sure to experience.
He started with a typical approach, starting right after graduation and using Barbri.
💬 “I am a K-JD who graduated from UCLA Law this past May. Due to my circumstances (like having plenty of time to study), I did fairly well in law school. I knew what the Bar would be like structurally due to prior exposure, and I knew that I would expect to be studying around 8 hours a day, every day, for at least two months. I started studying for the California Bar basically the week right after commencement.”
Let’s see how he did it.
💬 “Over time, I realized that the two fundamental skills I needed to pass were recall and issue analysis.”
Resources Manfred used to pass the CA Bar Exam
💬 “Looking back, I am even more thankful that I did trust your outlines. They are clear, accurate, and intuitively structured. In July, our exam covered business associations, California civil procedure(!) and remedies — all essay-only topics for which I had relied solely on Magicsheets to get me through. Plus PR, that means I was relying on Magicsheets for 4/5 of the essays.”
Critical Pass flashcards
Barbri (May to June)
- Use promo code here for 10% off your entire cart
💬 “Anything good I have to say about it has already been said. This is basically all I used to work on MBEs and build consistency.”
BarEssays (CA essay answer repository)
- Use promo code here for $25 off
💬 “Baressays helped me realize I could pass, because I did not need model-answer quality to score 65s and even 70s.”
BarMD Performance Test video
- California PTs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Bsfa21hBQ
- MPTs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc0KkLNCOJg
Both videos are similar, and the CA PTs and MPTs are similar as well. They’re interchangeable for practice purposes.
MTYLT emails (get in here)
💬 “I will always be grateful that you helped me recover my last month of studying from the brink of burnout. You have in me a permanent advocate for your study materials and your emails.”
I’d be grateful if you forwarded your favorite email to one friend.
1) Optimize your study resources
Default “gold standard” resources like Barbri and Themis are popular and are good for getting a foundation.
But they may no longer fit your individual learning style (or may not. You may outgrow what they can do for you.
💬 “My struggle with BarBri, and the reason I stopped using it, was that it provided too much information and too little. It was too much information about bar topics that felt humanly possible to memorize before exam date (each “outline” is like 100 pages! and there’s a CMR that nobody reads); it was too little guidance on how and when I was supposed to be memorizing this information.”
Barbri was part of Manfred’s routine. But it was not working for him because it was too focused on “doing the tasks” than helping him remember the material.
💬 “I don’t think BarBri’s scheduling system worked for me because it felt like there was too much dead time spent on lectures and reviewing outlines, rather than helping me front load enough memorization of law that I could begin to practice questions.”
Specifically, he was most anxious about memorizing the mass of information.
💬 “Memorization was my main anxiety for the bar because I felt that if I didn’t know the law, I could not begin to apply it on essays and multiple choice.”
Then Manfred found out that there was more to life than Barbri.
💬 “I used BarBri for its lectures (through all of its MBE subjects), multiple-choice sets, essay and PT model answers, and graded essays. By July, I was using BarBri primarily just to submit essays for grading. I found that there were alternative resources for everything else that BarBri could provide.”
It’s normal to outgrow what got you here. But what got you here won’t get you there.
Manfred pivoted away from using only Barbri. His approach to studying evolved to using both Barbri and alternative resources.
💬 “From May to June, a normal day would consist of a couple hours of lecture, a couple hours of flash cards, an hour of BarBri multiple choice. By July, a normal day consisted of one hour with Magicsheets to warm up my brain, two to three full essays without notes, maybe outline one more essay, at least 50 adaptibar questions, then cycle through all the Critical Pass cards on an MBE subject.”
💬 “For the PT, I was not too concerned because I knew how to write in IRAC structure, but I practiced enough to get a sense of how fast I would need to be reading and synthesizing information.”
Notice the difference between May and June and July?
Let’s dig into (1) how he memorized and retained the information and (2) how he was able to recall and apply the information.
Remember that memorizing and recall are linked to each other but are different things. The ultimate goal is to be able to get to the correct answer. The prerequisite goal is to be able to recall the information.
2) Master memory techniques
There are different memorization techniques, but one that you still need is rote memorization. In other words, you just have to remember the words, attempting to recall the information and over and over until it’s memorized.
This can be daunting because there’s a lot of information, but Manfred took it line by line, page by page.
💬 “Memorization was monastic. With Magicsheets, I would sit on the couch, memorize the first line, memorize the first and second line, memorize the first, second, and third line, and so on until the outline was memorized word for word, starting from the beginning. I found that this worked because the Magicsheets are easily translatable to rule statements in essays, and I could take it one page at a time.”
I don’t recommend solely rote memorizing everything, of course! And not just rules either.
For example, understanding an abstract rule by applying it to a fact pattern can help you not only remember the rule but learn how to use it. But ultimately, some rules require knowing specific elements, which is where rote memorization can come into play.
Manfred also used flashcards to facilitate this process.
💬 “With flashcards, I would do the same – memorize each card and start from the beginning every time (and at some point, I started shuffling the cards).”
I’m not a huge fan of flashcards myself, but they can be effective for isolating one idea at a time.
In any case, memorization and review of the material should be paired with active engagement.
3) Develop a practice routine
The sooner you start what you need to do, the sooner you can suck less at it.
Don’t let me catch you waiting for perfect memorization because no one gets a perfect score on the bar exam. And memorization alone is shaky grounds for a perfect score, let alone a good score.
💬 “I was really intent on doing all my memorizing before any practice, but at some point I knew that I had to give up perfection so that I could start practicing.”
Manfred knew he had to move onto solving practice questions. It’s also more fun to answer questions than stare at an outline or a video all day!
💬 “Over time, I realized that the two fundamental skills I needed to pass were recall and issue analysis.”
Barbri and the gang seem to have gotten a bit better about emphasizing practice, but the generic schedule may not give you much breathing room. You take an early lunch, and you’re suddenly behind and permanently playing catch-up.
💬 “I wanted at least a full week where I was not learning anything new, but given the BarBri schedule, I felt like I was deceptively falling behind.”
You know what you need to do because everyone and their uncle tells you to practice and do more practice.
💬 “I would estimate that my actual study time every day was around 4-6 hours, depending on my focus, from around 10 a.m. till 8-9 p.m.”
💬 “Writing out full essays really did help me remember the most common subtopics for each subject. I also layered memorization with practice as I progressed through the summer.”
There’s the pairing of memorization and practice. Don’t forget to evaluate work per the Practice + Feedback Loop.
In the end, do what resonates with your learning preferences so that you can absorb and actually recall information. Practice and comparing your work to a reference is a good start.
4) When you’re feeling stuck, mentally refresh yourself
I could give you all the strategies and tactics in the world and work overtime to prepare success stories for you, but you still have to be the one to foster an optimistic outlook. Only you can prevent forest fires! 🐻
Manfred was feeling imposter syndrome despite having a great prep plan. If you feel like you’re getting by because of luck and not your actual knowledge, then you’re not alone!
💬 “I had to learn how to manage my imposter syndrome. I was worried that my ‘luck’ would run out. I didn’t want my friends, family, peers, and future coworkers to think or ‘realize’ that I was a fake lawyer.”
Plateauing is also very normal. Fluctuations and dips are normal. Don’t freak out if this happens. You can’t expect a constant upward movement.
💬 “There were also days where I felt like my performance was getting worse rather than better; I was missing more questions; I wasn’t spotting issues I knew that I knew.”
Plateauing means whatever you’re doing is WORKING. You could even say it’s a canon event—a required part of your story!
This happened every time I prepared for piano recitals. At some point, the notes would sound off. My fingers couldn’t make quiet notes quiet. All my work turned into a frustrating cacophony. But I’d come back to it later after focusing on another piece. That way, I moved past the plateau and eventually produced sounds I wanted to hear.
A plateau means your mind is saturated. Your brain has caught up and demands more from you. It means it’s time to step away to let it process.
The times when you feel like you can’t take a break could be when you do need a break.
💬 “I took full 24-hour breaks when I felt like I really could not. That was usually when I knew that I needed a full reset. I don’t regret doing that.”
This is also why I suggest including buffer days in your schedule, as noted in Passer’s Playbook.
You never know if you’re going to need an extra day to catch up or just rest. In fact, you can take as many strategic breaks (or even trips) as you want as long as you’re planning your studies around them!
Of course, you may need to give up some things. This isn’t a vacation. Candidates who don’t make bar prep a priority usually end up returning to it. But it doesn’t mean you can’t take breaks.
💬 “I stopped playing video games after June because I realized I could not stop myself from staying up past 12 a.m. to keep playing games, and this would slowly destroy my study habits. I was able to dive back in after the exam; it was something to look forward to.”
So be able to recognize when a break is warranted. It could be what you need to stay refreshed and motivated.
