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ajax adonis wrote:What are the usual characteristics of someone who failed?

Summer job.

Slackers, not stupid people (and unlucky people who have comp problems). Kids from TJ and Cooley and JMLS and those CA correspondence schools pass the bar. Kids from Yale and Stanford fail the bar. Stanford Law Dean and Quinn Emmanuel named partner Kathleen Sullivan failed the bar. I have a bunch of LLM friends who can't speak English. I am serious. They can't speak English and they passed the bar. I have a friend who can't speak English and studied 7 real days for the NYC bar and passed it.

I know people who failed. In my law school class, it was generally people who didn't take prep seriously and didn't do the work. I also know a couple of people who attended TTTs in a different jurisdiction from where they took the bar and they failed the first time (they may also have not put in the work, I don't know). And I do think there's a small (very small) subset of people who put in a lot of work but whose brains just don't click with Barbri/the exam itself, and who failed. Also, one brilliant person from the year before me failed, but I think she took the exam while deathly ill.

All these people passed the second time (except the "very small subset" group, who either passed on the 3rd try or still haven't. I should add that they attend TT/TTT/TTTTs - in my state, everyone from a "national" law school passes pretty much without issue.)

Not NY, CA, or Passaachusetts. Overall pass rate for the state in the 70s (at my school about 95% pass the first time).

I know a couple of people who failed over the past two years. Both of them didn't really study much, went out partying all summer and tried to save everything for the end. I think that if you're at a good school and are diligent you should be able to pass easily.

TaipeiMort wrote:Slackers, not stupid people (and unlucky people who have comp problems). Kids from TJ and Cooley and JMLS and those CA correspondence schools pass the bar. Kids from Yale and Stanford fail the bar. Stanford Law Dean and Quinn Emmanuel named partner Kathleen Sullivan failed the bar. I have a bunch of LLM friends who can't speak English. I am serious. They can't speak English and they passed the bar. I have a friend who can't speak English and studied 7 real days for the NYC bar and passed it.

They can read pretty well though apparently

I worked for a DA once who took the bar at least three times. Very good prosecutor, too, but I knew him late in his career. People DO fail and, outside of the handful of Truly Nationals and larger handful of Truly Awfuls, which law school hasn't that much to do with it. California correspondence grads pass routinely if not always on their first attempts. For a while, the Washington State Bar-sponsored law clerk program boasted a 100% pass rate.

I was shocked to find out that Hillary Clinton failed DC, but passed Arkansas (same summer).

I know 5 people who failed well enough to put a finger on why they failed the first time.

One dude who failed was totally unexpected because I studied with him the whole time and he knew everything in and out. Turns out he is horrible at essays. He didn't do well in law school, so there's probably correlation there. He only failed by a few points, though.

One dude has 2 toddlers and didn't study enough. He thought he did, but on reflection, he realized he did not try hard enough at all.

One girl is just not smart. She failed again and I would not be surprised if she failed a third time. Very sweet girl, but a total airhead.

One girl panicked and completely bombed two essays. By bombed I mean she wrote like a paragraph for each.

One dude was lazy and studied for like two weeks.

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ajax adonis wrote:

I.P. Daly wrote:I was shocked to find out that Hillary Clinton failed DC, but passed Arkansas (same summer).

You can take two bars at the same time>???

You're not on the east coast, are you? Because it seems to me lots of people do NY/NJ or NY/MA at the same time (possibly other close-together-state combos including PA or MA/NH or the like) - you take the same MBE for both, and then state stuff on different days (e.g. MA on Tuesday, MBE on Wed., and NY on Thurs. Not saying those are the right days, just an example). I'm not as aware of people doing this as much in other parts of the country where getting from one testing place to the next in time would be harder. DC and Arkansas would be kind of a bitch.

I think the common characteristic is probably not adjusting well to circumstances, whether that is particular circumstances that occur during studying or during the bar itself. If you understand that there are going to be things outside your control, you can develop strategies to deal with them when they arise.

One person I know has kids, and focused too much on them while studying. The second time around, the person focused on studying more than the kids, and passed.

Another person encountered either 1 or 2 questions that the person just did not know the law on. That person kind of freaked out, and ended up not passing. Second time around, knew it better, didn't freak out, and passed.

My advice is 1) know your strengths and 2) to develop a methodology and stick to it, no matter what happens. This will minimize the impact of your nerves if something goes wrong (e.g. computer failure, encountering an essay which you don't understand, etc).

NJ purposely schedules its essay day so that you can take NY/NJ or PA/NJ.

My friend failed the NV bar (didn't take a prep course), was able to keep his job until the Feb test, took a prep course, and failed again by 1.5 points. I don't know how substantial 1.5 points is, but I'm guessing it was a close shave.

hiima3L wrote:One dude who failed was totally unexpected because I studied with him the whole time and he knew everything in and out. Turns out he is horrible at essays.

This is the most common reason I've seen people fail the bar and perform poorly in law school. Some people know the law very well and can verbally explain any topic, but when they have to put an answer down on paper the explanation becomes extremely disorganized and difficult to follow.


In my opinion, being able to write well is more important than knowing the law. I never had a very strong grasp of any legal topic during law school or prior to taking the bar exam, but I always did well on exams and I passed the CA bar without difficulty. Being able to write an answer with clarity, even with glaring mistakes and omissions, will still get you a surprising number of points.

TheGreatFish wrote:Being able to write an answer with clarity, even with glaring mistakes and omissions, will still get you a surprising number of points.

This. I don't know if you took BarBri for CA, but the lecturer during the essay intro said something like "The graders are all California lawyers who are deciding if they're going to let you into their club. If you sound like you're not a complete idiot, even if you don't know the law, they're more likely to let you in." And I always suspected that something similar was true of law school exam grading.

I know a few who failed the CA bar, both of them spent what little time they did study (slacked off a lot) only working on memorization, and failed to do many practice essays and performance tests. The other person I know is just not very smart, sadly.

With that said, a person who I thought was one of the most off-track in left field people in first year, who I know did pretty bad in his grades, just passed the Feb CA Bar. He said that the barbri system of practice, practice, practice, practice was what got him through it.

Give me a few more months and I'll let you know if the guy in the mirror needs me to kick him in the nuts of not...................

I.P. Daly wrote:I was shocked to find out that Hillary Clinton failed DC, but passed Arkansas (same summer).

When you take two at the same time, you are bound to focus more on one than the other.

Many states offer it twice per year, take a winter and a summer one apart if you can. If you can get real lucky some states will only make you take part of it if you already passed the whole thing in another state. (or so the bar prep people tell me)

uwb09 wrote:I know a few who failed the CA bar, both of them spent what little time they did study (slacked off a lot) only working on memorization, and failed to do many practice essays and performance tests. The other person I know is just not very smart, sadly.

With that said, a person who I thought was one of the most off-track in left field people in first year, who I know did pretty bad in his grades, just passed the Feb CA Bar. He said that the barbri system of practice, practice, practice, practice was what got him through it.

Isn't CA one of the hardest due to the desire to weed out the overflow of online students and those without any JD at all who sit it?

DC bar is never actually taken by anyone. You pay a fee and waive in. I have never met anyone in DC that has taken it.

CA bar has an extra day than most bar exams. CA has a lot of crappy schools, so this also lowers the pass rate.

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ajax adonis wrote:Just wondering. What happened? What are the usual characteristics of someone who failed? Tell us your story so we can learn. Thank you so much.

i failed the bar exam. it's something i don't like to talk about in public but i suppose since i'm on an anonymous forum i guess it's no big deal.

i graduated from a top school, with good grades, and a great biglaw job. there was not one single reason why i failed but it was a combination of (1) underestimating the exam (2) personal life circumstances that distracted me from the test and (3) bad luck. of the three i would say the first factor weighed the most heavily, and the third the least. i didn't take the exam seriously and i paid for it.

fortunately biglaw was forgiving, i took it again in feb, passed, and everything's fine now. i know a few people from law school who failed as welll and we had lots of conversations about the bar exam, perhaps because we were the only ones who could talk to each other about it without feeling shame. by and large, the failures were related to not being fully prepared, although that might be because i attended a t14.

zombie associate wrote:

ajax adonis wrote:Just wondering. What happened? What are the usual characteristics of someone who failed? Tell us your story so we can learn. Thank you so much.

i failed the bar exam. it's something i don't like to talk about in public but i suppose since i'm on an anonymous forum i guess it's no big deal.

i graduated from a top school, with good grades, and a great biglaw job. there was not one single reason why i failed but it was a combination of (1) underestimating the exam (2) personal life circumstances that distracted me from the test and (3) bad luck. of the three i would say the first factor weighed the most heavily, and the third the least. i didn't take the exam seriously and i paid for it.

fortunately biglaw was forgiving, i took it again in feb, passed, and everything's fine now. i know a few people from law school who failed as welll and we had lots of conversations about the bar exam, perhaps because we were the only ones who could talk to each other about it without feeling shame. by and large, the failures were related to not being fully prepared, although that might be because i attended a t14.

Sometimes I feel a little behind compared to my in-state peers

When you say you underestimated, how did you end up studying?

rad lulz wrote:

zombie associate wrote:

ajax adonis wrote:Just wondering. What happened? What are the usual characteristics of someone who failed? Tell us your story so we can learn. Thank you so much.

i failed the bar exam. it's something i don't like to talk about in public but i suppose since i'm on an anonymous forum i guess it's no big deal.

i graduated from a top school, with good grades, and a great biglaw job. there was not one single reason why i failed but it was a combination of (1) underestimating the exam (2) personal life circumstances that distracted me from the test and (3) bad luck. of the three i would say the first factor weighed the most heavily, and the third the least. i didn't take the exam seriously and i paid for it.

fortunately biglaw was forgiving, i took it again in feb, passed, and everything's fine now. i know a few people from law school who failed as welll and we had lots of conversations about the bar exam, perhaps because we were the only ones who could talk to each other about it without feeling shame. by and large, the failures were related to not being fully prepared, although that might be because i attended a t14.

Sometimes I feel a little behind compared to my in-state peers

When you say you underestimated, how did you end up studying?

there are tons of ways to be unprepared. for me, i took barbri and went to the lectures. during hte lectures i would spend half the time paying attention and taking notes, and half the time messing around online. i studied for severeal hours each day after classes and on weekends but i was typically not 100% focused. looking back, it would have been better to skip the lecture and the messing around and do just a few hours of focused study each day. (this is what i did the second time around, because i had to study while working)

the lesson i learned was that it's important not to just go through the motions. if you're not actively learning, you're not going to remember the things you need to know. i reassured myself by saying that i studied 8 hours a day, but when the last few weeks rolled around i realized that i didn't know wtf i was doing. by then it was too late (i'm not so good at last minute cramming) for me and left me with very litlte margin to mess up on test day.