Make This Your Last Time | Page 26 of 36

February 29, 2020May 22, 2024 - 11 Comments

Passing the California Bar Exam with the “Tripod Approach” (Just Triage These Areas)

Let’s say you have an overwhelming amount of material to learn for the California Bar Exam with limited time. (Who doesn’t?)

Or when one door opens, another door closes. You’re not consistently scoring well on the essays. You’re getting a 55 on some. You know you can get a 65 or more if you had more time. Or you just need a little push to get to a 1390 scaled score on the MBE, but then you feel like you’re sacrificing the written portion.

There are a couple of approaches focusing on a few key areas (rather than spreading yourself thin) that could bring you over the hump to pass the California Bar Exam…

This is the basis for the Tripod Approach (click to scroll directly there), which is a minimally effective approach to get the largest return for your efforts in preparing for the California Bar Exam.

January 11, 2020June 15, 2023 - 7 Comments

Quick and Simple Ways to Improve Your Bar Essays

A big complaint about essays: “Essays are so freaking subjective!”

Sure, the MBE is more “objective.” There’s only one right answer on the MBE.

But it depends on your interpretation of the question, the hypo, and most important, the answer choices. Yes because X? Yes because Y? Where’s the option for “yes because Z”? FML!

That’s a question for another day.

This is to say, let’s not agonize too much over the essays just because the MBE has objective answer choices and you think that’s somehow advantageous.

Let’s instead use the subjectivity of essays to your advantage. We’re going to take advantage of the impatience of a human who has thousands of shitty essays to read.

This is great because if you know how to write better on one, you’ll know how to write better on ALL of them. How many points is that worth to you?

January 5, 2020November 20, 2022 - 2 Comments

3 Illusions You Might Be Trapped In When Preparing for the Bar Exam

I see some strange juxtapositions whenever I make the mistake of leaving the house:

Words: “Don’t drive even after a beer. It’s dangerous.”
Action: Drives with one eye on the phone and another eye on the road

Words: “Do your civic duty and go vote. Here’s a sticker!”
Action: Actively avoids making a direct impact on the community through jury duty

Words: “I’m never drinking again!”
One month later: “I’m never drinking again!”

(My quest to restore a six-pack taught me that bursts of “never” don’t last long and that sustainability and consistency are way more valuable.)

What are some other ones? Let me know in the comments what you’ve noticed.

And then we have bar takers. Souls wandering in limbo. Not yet a licensed attorney but not a regular person either.

We see some interesting behaviors with bar takers as well:

November 15, 2019January 11, 2022 - 3 Comments

Preparing for the 2020 Bar Exam: Learn from Their Biggest Mistakes

It’s that time again. Results for the 2019 July bar exam are in for every state.

You’ve endured the obligatory “aww… you got this” and “I’m sure you passed” comments for weeks and months.

Anxiety squirting into your heart every time you thought of the moment of truth. Heart ricocheting around your ribcage as you check for your name on the pass list. Waiting is the hardest part.

Well, the insanity of the wait is over. But it turns out your nightmare isn’t over…

October 26, 2019January 16, 2023 - 3 Comments

Tom goes from many-time repeater of the California Bar Exam to passing after changing the “how to” principles of bar preparation (while working full time)

Tom* sat for the California Bar Exam several times—many (##) times.

He didn’t have any particular strengths when it came to essays, the MBE, or performance tests. It was an overwhelming ordeal from the start.

💬 “I struggled with all of them because I think the whole process was overwhelming. In law school, they told me that if you wanna pass the exam, you need to lock yourself in a room and don’t think about having a relationship. . . . I kind of believed it and subconsciously realized I’ll never be able to do that, and I think I struggled on all facets. That’s from a psychological level.”

At the same time, like many bar takers, Tom was also working to support himself while preparing. This is a common obstacle among success stories. (But as you’ll see below, it isn’t a handicap as much as you might think.)

💬 “I was working two jobs and doing some consulting work back when I took in July of 2017 and just missed it. I worked one job in February and July this time. But I’m working full-time. I mean I don’t have a lot of time.”

On top of that, he also had dad duties. But he decided to focus on what moved the needle.

💬 “I have an autistic son, but mostly it was the working. I had to put 110% at work, and do that with the practicing. I use the word ‘practice’ because to me ‘studying’ is counterproductive, which you describe in [Passer’s Playbook 2.0] about not wasting too much time.”

More specifically, “practicing” paid dividends for Tom.

💬 “When I use the word ‘practice’ in my mind, it helped me consciously . . . because I feel like every moment I’m spending is valuable and it’s giving me dividends. It’s repaying me. Whereas if I just keep going over the definition, it’s meaningless. But if I’m going over an issue in an essay and I see how it’s tested and I reverse engineer the question, or I go over an MBE question which also helps with the essays as well, that’s beneficial.”

Everyone preaches practice, but what does “practice practice practice” really mean? Tom stacked several principles that finally resulted in his passing the 2018 July California Bar Exam (which had the lowest pass rate on record for July exams in CA: 40%).