Pass the Bar Exam Using the Right Tools and Approach for You

We had emailed in July (see below) just before the bar exam when I abandoned the traditional bar prep program and bought your Magicsheets, knowing that was what I needed to pass.

Just wanted to let you know, that I passed! I am very confident that your product was key in getting me there.

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This was my first time taking the California bar exam. Earlier in the summer, I had originally been using a traditional mainstream bar-prep company, which was not bad and had some helpful aspects, but it was becoming very clear to me during the prep process that other resources might be more effective for me, personally. I just was not finding the video lectures very helpful. Even watching them at a faster speed wasn’t helping.

I knew that it was key to know the black-letter law and to be familiar with what issues should be brought up for each essay subject. But those huge, thick books from the mainstream companies just weren’t cutting it for me for memorizing. I knew there had to be another solution. And I came across Brian’s Magicsheets. I realized they broke down the black-letter law in a very clear, concise way and made memorizing pretty simple. Furthermore, Brian’s Aproposheets made it clear how to be familiar with which specific issues we needed to be prepared to address for each possible topic that could come up on the bar.

Brian’s products made the process of studying for the essays seem almost too “easy” compared to the horror stories I had heard from other people in the past. I began questioning myself as to whether I was now missing something. After the bar exam, I was questioning whether I had actually passed. But after I passed I realized that for the bar exam, you don’t need extra complexity. You need to just use whatever tools help you know the rules and issues for each topic and the practice applying them in the manner and format that the bar graders are looking for. (I highly recommend Mary Basick’s book as another resource for CA bar essay writing, specifically for formatting and practicing identifying all the issues that get you the points you’re looking for to just pass this exam.)

I also found Brian’s “tripod” approach to be spot-on. Brian advises focusing bulk of your efforts on the MBE topics, PR essay, and performance test, rather than get overwhelmed about stressing which exact topics will be on the essays. (Obviously, he’s not saying to ignore the other topics. But focus on the MBE topics, PR and PT.)

For the MBE, as many other people have said, I also found Adapitbar to be huge for the MBE. With Adaptibar, I really liked the strategy of just going over as many questions as I could, but at my own pace. I learned it was very important to go over the reasoning for WHY each right answer was right and why EACH wrong answer choice was wrong. (Even if you got the question right. A huge part of the learning it not just doing the question, but also studying it after you check the answer and making sure you understand the rule and any nuance of the rule that’s being tested.) Jonathan Grossman’s Adaptibar videos are also highly entertaining but VERY straightforward and practical.

For the PR essay, Brian’s Magicsheets and Aproposheets broke down exactly what you need to know and practice for issue spotting (just like with all the other essay topics.) For the PT, I had heard good things about Bar MD’s videos and those ended up being pretty solid. You don’t need to go crazy with practicing 50 PTs, but you should probably practice writing out at least a few so you’re prepared to write the PT in the format that the bar graders are looking for and in the time constraint you’ll have on the actual exam.

As for general advice, I would say that you know how you, personally, best study, and if a certain method isn’t working and another method seems like it might be better, don’t be afraid to try it.

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January 1, 2024

Happy New Year. Just wanted to give you a pretty cool update. The other day out of curiosity I was skimming over the answers that the State Bar recently released for the essays. I didn’t actually really notice any big issues that I missed in any of the essays. I was almost shocked. I really don’t think that would have happened without the Magicsheets and Apoposheets. (Right before the exam, I basically just used the Magicsheets and Aproprosheets to guide me as to what I would write for any possible topic and it apparently ended up matching the sample answers pretty well in terms of issue identification!!)

July 18, 2023

Just wanted to let you know how good your Magicsheets and Apropsheets are. I have the CA bar exam next week and am very annoyed with myself that I didn’t get them sooner. (I just got them the other week.) I realized I wasted time with one of the mainstream bar prep companies and trusting their process too much. Earlier this summer, I began focusing more on other resources such as Adaptibar, the Mary Basick CA essay book, and the Emanuel Strategies and Tactics and realized the extent to which other resources were better than the mainstream companies. Then I finally got your Magicsheets despite the narrative from other people that I didn’t need them and that I should just focus on what the bar prep company gave me so I wouldn’t overcomplicate things.

In hindsight, I should have gotten them during 3L and spent my free time just “cooking” essays and memorizing issues during my last year of law school. I’m a little concerned about what’s going to happen with the July exam (since essays are much tougher for me, personally, than MBE and I didn’t get your products until recently), but if I need to take it again in February, I know I’ll have a much better approach.

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July 18, 2023

Thank you, Brian. The narrative was basically a combination of “do whatever the big bar prep companies tell you” and “don’t try to combine too many different rule statements from different sources.” (i.e., Why would you need Magicsheets if you already are looking at rule statements from the Mary Basick book and the bar prep outlines.)

I’m not really great at memorizing but am better at coming up with SOME kind of BS to connect laws to a fact pattern. On the exam, we know that there will be a Professional responsibility question, so I’m preparing to be taking your “clients love fierce counsel, courts feel differently” mnemonic and go through each duty and try to find SOMETHING in the fact pattern to write about.

I also saw on your blog where you had some samples of score sheets from actual students who did not pass in the past. That was actually very helpful to give me a better understanding, so that you for that as well. 

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July 19, 2023

Thank you, Brian. I totally agree with you that it’s about the training itself more than the tool. That being said, if you don’t have the right tools, that can impact your training. In your Serena Williams analogy, it seems like, for me, the mainstream companies were more comparable to playing tennis on a video game while the combination of Magicsheets/Adaptibar/Mary Basick/Emanuel is more like actually practicing playing tennis. (But of course, I agree that someone using those tools ineffectively and lazily probably wouldn’t do as well as if they had worked hard using the mainstream approach.)

By the way, do you have any idea if those numbers for the MBE in the reports on the screenshots are specifically percentage of questions correct or if they are actually percentiles? The screenshots say percent, but your blog references percentiles and that would make sense. If it’s percentiles, it actually seems like if you can just score in the 65-ish percentile (i.e. better than 65 percent of other people), then that COULD give a lot of breathing room to have some mediocre essays (i.e., the majority of the essays in the 55-ish range)—if I’m looking at these numbers correctly.

That all being said, I realize that my time is better spent just cooking some essays and seeing what happens rather than worrying about the exact numbers. (I’m just trying to get some slight peace of mind.)

Thanks so much for answering these questions and hopefully I’ll be finished with this process next week. If not, I know I’ll be using your product for next February.

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July 27, 2023

After taking the bar exam on Tuesday and Wednesday, I can now confirm that if I’m able to scrape by and pass it was because I started using your products (as well as things such as the Mary Basick book, Adpatibar and Emanuel) rather than mainstream bar prep. If I don’t pass, then I know I’ll need to spend more time on the stuff that I figured out works. (There’s nothing I could have done more with the mainstream bar prep materials that would have helped on those essays that the Magicsheets and the Mary Basik book wouldn’t have been more effective.) But I still really don’t want to have to do this process again.

It’s annoying because when I was sitting there doing the essays, I was realizing that if I had the Magicsheets/Approsheets in front of me, the essays might actually be easy. For me, the biggest thing is just memorization, so it would have been much better if I had been working with those tools the whole time.

On the other hand, when I was going into the convention center on Day #2, the guy behind me in line was telling me he didn’t know he was supposed to use the cases from the library from the previous day’s performance test. So at least I wasn’t in his position!