Make This Your Last Time | Page 34 of 38

June 24, 2017April 11, 2023 - 3 Comments

How Do You Become Confident in Your Bar Prep?

Are you panicking? Feeling crazy like a possessed head of lettuce (which doesn’t even make sense because it’s just that crazy)? Feeling stuck and overwhelmed?

If so, these are perfectly valid reactions to the daunting task before you. You’re not alone in feeling this way!

It’s OK if you don’t feel confident about your bar prep. As a guy, I can understand being pressured to “be confident” and “be yourself.” That kind of advice is so vague and misleading I don’t even know where to begin.

But if you want to rant to me or ask me for “any advice?” so you can somehow receive a magical response with the one weird trick that will solve all your problems and make you feel a little happy for more than three minutes… If you’re hoping for that feeling of confidence to be infused in the form of a green-juice smoothie…

Cease.

That’s not happening today. This is a letter to the you who is willing to develop confidence in your bar prep.

If you’re not ready or willing to generate that feeling from within yourself, you can come back to this later. Or never—who says you need to feel confident with your bar prep anyway?

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June 17, 2017June 15, 2023 - 1 Comment

Bar Exam Success Commandment 3: How to Exploit Scarcity (and Improve Your Bar Essays)

We like to tell people we “don’t have time” or that “time is the most valuable resource” or that “life is short” (even though we love to procrastinate). But I think we do have a lot of time at our disposal. We just choose to squander a lot of it, too.

Then what’s the true scarcity of this world? What is the one thing that’s radically limited and expires very quickly?

Money? Time? Milk?

I think there’s something even more scarce: human attention.

Read on to see how you can use this scarcity principle to give yourself an edge on the written portions of the bar exam.

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May 13, 2017October 23, 2022 - 4 Comments

Bar Exam Success Commandment 1: How to Gain a Superpower for the Bar Exam

Batman kicks ass! He’s also a classic embodiment of the idea that someone who can provide a unique benefit has a duty to offer it. A suffering pariah we can both relate to sometimes.

What? Are you one of those people who don’t care about animated characters because “they’re not real people”? Fortunately, superhero movies are all the rage nowadays, and I’m gonna use my favorite superhero as an exemplar regardless of what you think.

In conclusion, I think Batman is a pretty cool guy, especially with the current trend started by grimdark Nolan reboots. Is this post over? Everyone go home! Yeah right, like I’d ever fill your brain with nonsense (on purpose).

We’re pretty sure Batman hates the Joker, who always taunts Batman by causing chaos and even putting himself in harm’s way to see if he’d be rescued. So why doesn’t Batman just succumb to his temptations and commit the irreversible moral act? One life to save many. Here are some answers I like:

It always starts with one. That’s how justification works. But once you justify something once—you can do it again and again. It becomes easier. Right and wrong blur.
—Bruce Wayne

He refuses to become a murderer, because he knows that murdering the Joker leads to murdering all of them, making each killing easier than the last. And that casts him as the very thing that created him, as the thing he fights against, because at that point the only difference between Batman and the Joker would be that Batman thinks he’s able to justify his own murders.
—Mark Hughes, Quora

That is, Batman understands the dangers of a slippery slope and post hoc justification. Some even call his self-control a superpower.

Don’t you wish you could borrow this self-control superpower for bar success? Hold onto your tighties because I’ll show you a simple way to use it.

Wait, learn a superpower? Although we’d love to dress up in hockey masks and beat up the examiners who taunt us with their riddles, isn’t that a bit of a stretch?

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April 1, 2017March 28, 2023 - 4 Comments

Changes to the California Bar Exam in 2017 July (Format, Grading, and How to Prep)

If this coming July is the first time you’re taking the California bar, I’m sorry to inform you that you can no longer get legacy bragging rights for enduring three days of this shit.

At least you can be informed of what’s happening in July and what you can do in response. Let’s take a look…

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January 28, 2017February 19, 2024 - 34 Comments

Double Your Bar Essay Practice with Essay Cooking (Outlining)

No one starts out being perfect at a skill. For example, cooking involves a bunch of micro-skills you build up over time. Essay writing on the bar exam is a skill also.

It used to be that cooking wasn’t one of my strengths. If you asked me to cook for you, you were risking becoming a permanent resident of the toilet.

There are all these unfamiliar steps involved. Get the right amount of ingredients from outside my cave, handle each tool without creating a zone of danger, and follow an alchemical procedure to put together something that looks edible. I’m not sure if it’s the onions that made me want to cry. And then the worst part—clean it all up after.

Sounds kind of like preparing for essays on the bar exam!

In front of you, a blank canvas ready to be filled but only reflecting a harsh stillness. The cursor blinking at you, urging you for your next order.

It’s confusing, overwhelming, and frustrating in the beginning.

But like anything else, it just takes some buckling down and practice to get better.

And like anything else, there are ways to focus on the biggest levers to make this process more efficient and manageable (especially when you’re in a time crunch with the exam looming).