Rebecca passed the 2024 February DC Bar Exam (UBE) on her second try, with a 13-point improvement from a score of 256 to 269.
It wasn’t a “crazy” jump… but you don’t need a crazy score!
💬 “Didn’t pass my first time in July 23 (256, needed 266 for DC). Took February 24 and all I wanted was a 267, ended up with a 269! Sure, it’s one shy of the “every jx” score and it’s not a ~crazy~ jump or anything but I am literally over the moon. Also, who cares, a pass is a pass, and I can practice in the jxs that *I* want.”
I share big jumps too to show the possibility for anyone with a large score deficiency.
But Rebecca emphasizes that a pass is a pass.
You just need enough. (Remember that the bar exam doesn’t require 100% perfect accuracy.)
Someone who gets a 300 gets to be an attorney just the same as someone who gets a 270, 266, or whatever you need for your jurisdiction.
💬 “I surpassed my jurisdiction’s score by three points and my personal goal by two. Let’s be real, 269 isn’t the best but it is the funniest score I could get. I don’t need to practice in any 270 jxs any time soon, and also reciprocity/waiving in exists. It’s fine, everything is fine. I’m including this dumb rant because if any of your readers are like me, they might see the people boasting 290s, 300s, or other such impressive leaps in scores on repeats, which is genuinely great for those people, but in this weird, awful rat race we’re in, I legit found myself thinking at one point, damn I “only” got a 269 😪 which is bonkers. Friends, retakers, you just need to pass for your jurisdiction(s). Anyone who asks you about your passing score or who tries to make you feel less than for a p a s s i n g score is a knob.”
Now, that’s not to say that you should aim for the bare minimum.
To help you get past your threshold, I’ll share some specific strategies from Rebecca and what she did differently on her second attempt.
- Resources Rebecca used to pass the DC Bar Exam
- Rebecca’s approaches for passing on her second attempt at the DC Bar Exam
- 1) Time management with the pomodoro technique
- 2) Constant reminder of your goal
- 3) Writing rule statements as exactly as you want to use them
- 4) Improving her writing techniques
- 5) Reviewing MBE practice
- 6) Being the dean of your own studies (and adopting the professional’s attitude)
- Full story
💬 “Respect the exam and be humble and brutally honest with how you need to organize study for YOUR success. Don’t be scared of low AdaptiBar scores or whatever. Review, repeat.”
💬 “It’s fine, everything is fine.”
Resources Rebecca used to pass the DC Bar Exam
💬 “The Magicsheets and Approsheets were a godsend. I used the Magicsheets as the foundation for my study and supplemented with Cornell’s LII in the way that I read other people who use your resources supplemented with their bar prep course.”
▶ Passer’s Playbook (tools and techniques for effective bar prep)
💬 “The Passer’s Playbook turned out to be a much more useful reference than I expected (no offense) and I really like the way you balanced humor and memes with being serious and getting to the point.”
▶ AdaptiBar MBE Simulator & Writing Guide
- Use code MTYLT10 to get 10% off whatever you have in your cart
▶ Pen and paper (you’ll see what I mean)
▶ MTYLT emails
💬 “Dude, I don’t know if you have a team or what, but I would’ve given you the money I gave Helix two times over in a heartbeat. . . . The motivation in the Passer’s Playbook and your emails felt real and I found myself actually taking it to heart.”
Why are you hesitating? Get my free weekly coaching emails here. I craft every email myself.
Down below, I’ll say why I do everything myself and how that idea could be useful for your bar prep.
Rebecca’s approaches for passing on her second attempt at the DC Bar Exam
Her approaches can be categorized into mental management and substantive strategies.
Let’s look at her management methods first.
1) Time management with the pomodoro technique
Pomodoro is a time-management technique that helped both Rebecca and a fifth-timer friend, both of whom passed in February.
💬 “I’d heard of pomodoro, but I don’t have ADHD or anything, so I didn’t think much of it until I was talking strategy with my friend who was on her fifth and final attempt to pass in a 270 jx and she mentioned it really helped her. (She passed as well!)”
Essentially, you set a timer that alternates between an amount of time for working and a break time. The default is to set 25 minutes to work and 5 minutes to break.
💬 “Pomodoro ended up being so critical for organizing my study schedule as well as tracking the real, what I started calling ‘pen to paper’ study time. We hear a lot of people say oh I spent 10-12 hours studying or even 5-6 hours, but I’m always so dubious of what the quality of that study could be. So, I started timing and found that of my own 10-12 hour days in the library, 4-5 hours would be bona fide pen to paper (Apple pen to iPad, whatever), no phones, no distractions, no wandering thoughts, high quality study time. I used the very basic app called Flow (App Store/Google Play, no sponsorship or affiliation, it was cheapest but the free version works perfectly well, the UI just happened to be in my favorite color with the simple features I wanted).”
I’ve also found that a 20/10 cycle worked for me.
I’d dedicate 10 minutes of break for something enjoyable and passive. I found 5 minutes to be too short and not enough to get me back to a work mindset. Also, I can’t concentrate, so I make up for it by spending more time overall.
It turns out deliberate restorative breaks can not only help you recover but actually improve your performance, according to a study (see link above for the study).
I don’t talk about this method often because I think the real trick is to START first. This simple action of doing first builds momentum.
You can start from the default 25/5 cycle and decide the time split that works for you or whatever you’re working on. A practice MPT would take at least 90 minutes, for example.
Use the app that Rebecca mentioned or one of the many pomodoro timers online.
2) Constant reminder of your goal
Rebecca externalized her determination with sticky notes with her goal.
💬 “I was a swimmer in college and leading up to meets a lot of us have this ritual of writing the time we want on almost every surface available. So, this time, I did the same. Plastered sticky notes all over my bedroom, my bathroom, kitchen, home library, the Airbnb where I stayed for the exam, and all they had was the number 267 and I didn’t take them down until I got results.”
This is one that did not work for me (probably a skill issue).
What works for some may not work for others and vice versa. What works some times may not work other times. What works when you’re ready may not work when you’re not ready.
But I’m all for anything that would motivate you.
Now what about the real work that she did?
3) Writing rule statements as exactly as you want to use them
On Rebecca’s first time around, her notes were not written as specifically as on her second time around.
She was writing her notes with essay-ready rule statements.
💬 “For J23, many of my notes were written in shorthand or I was trying to be clever/ELI5 myself. For F24, functionally all of my notes were written exactly how I would want them to appear in an essay. This usually meant either (1) copying a rule statement exactly from Adaptibar’s answer explanation — but, also, be careful out there, lots of typos/clunky writing in those as well — or (2) rewriting Magicsheets into essay-ready rule statements. For an example of #1, see the evidence screenshot in salmon and for # 2 con screenshot in purple. The evidence example is from a question I got wrong, which I know because of the specific exception/nuances that I noted. Parenthetically, writing this all out, I sound like a crazy person.”
Writing it out like this was also critical for her memorization and success. Combine modern tools with analog tools like actual pen and paper.
💬 “‘Writing lines’ was also critical for my success. In one old timey composition book, I would write down the subject, rule header, and rule statement for every AdaptiBar question I got right or wrong. In another comp book, I would extract rule statements from Magicsheets, organized by my weakest subjects. I’m terrible at rote memorization, so this was super helpful and personally I found it way better for organization + review later than making/using flash cards.”
4) Improving her writing techniques
She also had specific ways of writing and practicing to improve her essay and MPT writing.
For example, she was using transition words like “analogous” and “distinguishable” in her MPT answers…
💬 “My biggest weakness in J23 was issue spotting on essays and not being persuasive enough in my MPTs. Strengths in F24: issue spotting and (mainly MPT) using buzzwords like ‘analogous’ and ‘distinguishable.’”
Studying issues in past essay questions and—at least equally important—answers, including pulling out “juicy rule statements”…
💬 “Essay cooking: got my hands on JD Advising’s big fat pdf of old essay questions + answers, picked subjects mostly at random, and then marked them up for issues and then cross-checked those issues with the issue in the discussion page provided + wrote any juicy rule statements that may have appeared there. They ended up looking basically the same as the samples you provided, I just used the subject’s color to mark them up, i.e., I wrote in purple for con, salmon for evidence. (Based on this pdf and knowing a couple friends who used it, I beg, don’t pay for JD Advising…)”
And studying her past essays.
💬 “The ‘real’ essay practice began by reading over the writing sections of the Passer’s Playbook and then reading them again when I was in need of a lil security blanket. I know not every jx allows repeaters to review/download their essays, but fortunately mine does, so I took a cold, hard look at those from the perspective you suggested in the playbook.”
It can be difficult to face your past failures. For first timers, your practice questions. For repeaters, this can include your previous essays.
But once you know the truth, you can do something about it. Embarrassment is the best way to learn a lesson.
💬 “Respect the exam and be humble and brutally honest with how you need to organize study for YOUR success. Don’t be scared of low AdaptiBar scores or whatever. Review, repeat.”
5) Reviewing MBE practice
Before, she would only learn from MBE questions she got wrong. This time around, she dedicated a page to each question!
💬 “For July, I’d only really read the answer explanations when I got a question wrong. For February, unless I was honestly confident on a rule, already had the rule written down, or it was a total softball, each question, right or wrong, got a page in my notebook. (light on insights here because I only got a 128 on the actual MBE… up a whole 4 points from July! Womp 😖)”
She also did FEWER questions than before.
💬 “MBE practice questions:
– Adaptibar: 950 (rough number, logged in but can’t check numbers)
– Helix paper practice exam leftover from J23: 100
–Total: ~1050
(J23 MBE estimate: ~1500, combo between Adaptibar + Helix qbanks)”
Quantity is important, but keep quality in mind more.
6) Being the dean of your own studies (and adopting the professional’s attitude)
At this point, what’s going through your mind? How do these approaches look to you so far?
Would you be willing to do some or all of these in your own prep? Is it deviating too much from what They told you to do?
💬 “Right up front, my approach will probably turn off or freak out plenty of people, because schedules stress me out and in July I was definitely focusing more on ticking items off the commercial prep schedule than the substance of those items.
It’s good to be the king dean ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
You could follow the program given to you. You paid a lot for it after all. Or you could modify it to spend your time on other things that don’t take hours out of your day.
You can do whatever you want actually.
You are the dean of your own studies. You can develop your own curriculum. As long as you’re doing what’s helping you learn and make improvements.
This worked for Rebecca (and many others) at least.
💬 “So, rather than mapping out when I was going to get to property or what have you, I focused on making corny ~s.m.a.r.t.~ goals, which made everything less intimidating. December me was like, ‘okay, it’s not so bad, you’re just going to hang out in the crim magicsheets today and then do some crim questions, you’re doing great, sweetie’ February me was like, ‘lets fucking gooooo!! u can do 6 P2P hours and 30 high quality MCQs, babyyyy.’ And I did. Little steps, large improvements”
💬 “Don’t trust commercial prep and honestly be the dean of my own studies, I’m not even joking.”
💬 “I didn’t bother with the shit bar prep company that my law school recommended (hey, Helix) and I was too jaded to try and give Barbri/Themis/Kaplan a try, especially because with all of their technical/customer service issues.
The Passer’s Playbook turned out to be a much more useful reference than I expected (no offense).”
Her words, not mine 😏
Rebecca really embodied her dean mindset (and her savageness) and wasn’t a big fan of bar review courses. Just as well because bar prep doesn’t have to be expensive.
💬 “Dude, I don’t know if you have a team or what, but I would’ve given you the money I gave Helix two times over in a heartbeat.”
I personally respond to 99% of messages. Sometimes immediately, sometimes at ungodly hours, sometimes in days (after I say it will take time). That surprises and delights people, especially those aware that I also have a full-time job.
But that also means silence from me carries weight. It means “think about what you just wrote me” or “how about you try responding to me for once instead of treating me like an info ATM.”
I write, edit, and continuously update all content for MTYLT myself (AI AIn’t got shit on me). I handle the entire tech stack used to run MTYLT.
That’s because I like doing things exactly the way I want. I care deeply about what I’m doing.
This is the “professional’s attitude.” You can have it for your bar prep too.
Don’t forget that you have agency and the unlimited human drive to pursue your goal. I simply facilitated that for Rebecca (and now you).
💬 “Regardless of results, I can confidently say that your materials were the difference between me just hoping to ride the curve last July (while having a sinking suspicion I didn’t pass) and me feeling like I had a good command of the knowledge and the skills needed to succeed this time.
If it sounds like I’m just being adulatory, I promise I’m not. I have nothing to gain and I still might not pass, but I spent like three months combing over my Magicsheets, reading your emails, and doing the Wednesday MCQs even if I didn’t want to or I’d already reached my target number of questions for the day. Your resources were my security blanket and days I would feel unmotivated because I got a bad score on my practice set or whatever, I would just settle in with my Magicsheets, pull myself back, and do more practice.”
At the same time, remember Rebecca’s reassuring words: “who cares, a pass is a pass” and “it’s fine, everything is fine.”
You just need to become enough.
Excellent work, Rebecca! I loved her feedback and story.
What are you going to do now?