July 2018 Texas Bar Exam Forum

[cal2013]

Passed! Goodness gracious that was a relief. 165 MBE. Completed 100% of Themis.

All my hugs to anyone who did not — keep your chin up, we are all rooting for you next time.

[gyungchul1414]

I passed the Texas bar exam on my first try! Passed by 9 points. I was ready to sign up for the February exam because I thought I bombed it, mainly because of the MBE.

My MBE score was completely garbage as I expected. It was a 126.8, which means I did really well on P/E, MPT, and/or the Essay section. I used Themis and Critical Pass flashcards, which I both highly recommend.

Feel free to message me if you have any questions about the Texas Bar Exam, questions about Themis, and what I could have done better in prepping for the bar exam. If you want some tips, I can probably give you good tips on the P/E, MPT, and/or the Essay sections.

[Electricella]

Just wanted to wish you best of luck with California, is it Nov 16?And thank you for all your kind advice and help here, on this forum.

Wanted to weigh in. Took and passed the TBX February 2018 (out of stater, passed first time). I do tend to agree that last February’s test was particularly tricky. However, there is still room for error. I made numerous errors in my essays yet still managed to pass. I sincerely believed I had failed. Yet I made up the point defecit from my bad essays via the MBE and other good essays.

Don’t count yourself out just because you made mistakes, everyone does. The TBX definitely is a beast; I took the CBX this July and it felt nowhere near as bad as TX (In terms of difficulty of the subject matter + three day format). Wish you guys the best of luck and hope all the hard work pays off. My presumption is that the July pass rate will be much healthier than Feb.

[MBernard]

Just wanted to wish you best of luck with California, is it Nov 16?And thank you for all your kind advice and help here, on this forum.

Wanted to weigh in. Took and passed the TBX February 2018 (out of stater, passed first time). I do tend to agree that last February’s test was particularly tricky. However, there is still room for error. I made numerous errors in my essays yet still managed to pass. I sincerely believed I had failed. Yet I made up the point defecit from my bad essays via the MBE and other good essays.

Don’t count yourself out just because you made mistakes, everyone does. The TBX definitely is a beast; I took the CBX this July and it felt nowhere near as bad as TX (In terms of difficulty of the subject matter + three day format). Wish you guys the best of luck and hope all the hard work pays off. My presumption is that the July pass rate will be much healthier than Feb.

Hey thanks, appreciate it! Yep, results will drop for us Ca takers Nov 16th. The waiting process always feels crappy but I think I did what I needed to.

Glad so many of you passed. Texas is a great state, hope you all have a chance to enjoy it now that the test is over. All the best!

[texasattn18]

I thought I'd post my information here in case it is of some use to a future TX bar taker.

I passed the July 2018 bar by 3 points on the first try. I have never felt such relief in all of my life.

I attended law school out of state. I did not take Oil and Gas, family law, or commercial instruments while in law school. I highly suggest at least commercial instruments (I feel family law and O&G were more intuitive).

My scaled MBE was 130. I obviously don't know what my other section scores were. I used Barbri bar prep and AdaptiBar (albeit late in the game). I also utilized the old BLE essays. My last simulated MBE was a 120, so taking into consideration the curving of the MBE scores, my raw score probably actually went down.

I am happy to answer any questions.

Agreed on commercial paper! I went to an out of state law school and never took oil and gas, or commercial paper. I took family law but I don't feel like as an out of stater that helped because Texas family law is so statute heavy. I don't think that family law would help at an out of state school. I would recommend commercial paper too, because I literally could not comprehend it with barbri. I honestly just gave up on that topic all together. Luckily it all ended up okay!

[R808488000416]

Does anyone know when the selected answers usually get uploaded?

[Electricella]

No idea. After July I remember going through the BLE archive of announcements to see when they posted them, I think it was around Nov 12-16. Maybe you can check there, too.

[gh0stleader]

In my humble yet less than sober opinion, anyone who doesn’t focus on the BLE past answers all around is a fool. As someone who self studied; having access to those made me feel 100% certain I was preparing well for the essays. I thought I bombed them on game day but something clicked and stuck with me going through each and every past answer. Those are model answers in my opinion. People knock them saying the essays often reach different conclusions from one another and that the answers are partly wrong. I will tell you this: if you can replicate those errors you see; you’re golden. Just focus on BLE’s resources. Use extra resources such as past answers for the PE that BLE does not adequately provide if possible also. PM me for those; I was lucky enough to get more detailed PE past answers to memorize and it might’ve helped me

I absolutely agree with your opinion!

I failed the February exam by 33 points. I was having panic attacks while I was studying for the July exam b/c I started diving in deeper into more previous exams and guess what I found there? Exact same hypos of the essays I bombed on the February exam...

I learned from my mistakes and THANKFULLY I passed the July exam this go around (congrats to all the fellow passers!).

To all the people that failed, please don't give up. It sucks, I know. I've been there.
Please learn from your mistakes. You know what you did wrong and do your absolute best to not repeat those mistakes.
To pass this bar exam for me, the key was to go over every single past exam Essays, MPT, and Civ/Crim pro items.

I made a 140 on the MBE this time and passed. On the February exam I made a 160 on the MBE and still failed by 33 points.
Please Please Please, focus majority of your time on the past essays people. It is the key to passing IMHO.
There isn't much you can do to increase your MBE scores, but there is a lot of room to increase your Tuesday and Thursday scores if you're familiar with past Tuesday and Thursday questions.

Again, Congratulations to all my fellow test takers who passed with me.

To all the people who failed, use what you're feeling now to fuel the synthesis of a new methodology when studying for the February exam.
Start studying NOW!
Don't tell yourself that you'll wait for this crappy feeling to go away until you start studying again b/c the next thing you know Thanksgiving will be here, then Christmas, then New Years, etc etc etc (I know b/c I got off to a late start b/c of the holidays and you know what happened to with my February result)...



PS...If you're taking the February and are in the Woodlands area. PM me if you want my study notes.

[MBernard]

I absolutely agree with your opinion!

I failed the February exam by 33 points. I was having panic attacks while I was studying for the July exam b/c I started diving in deeper into more previous exams and guess what I found there? Exact same hypos of the essays I bombed on the February exam...

I learned from my mistakes and THANKFULLY I passed the July exam this go around (congrats to all the fellow passers!).

To all the people that failed, please don't give up. It sucks, I know. I've been there.
Please learn from your mistakes. You know what you did wrong and do your absolute best to not repeat those mistakes.
To pass this bar exam for me, the key was to go over every single past exam Essays, MPT, and Civ/Crim pro items.

I made a 140 on the MBE this time and passed. On the February exam I made a 160 on the MBE and still failed by 33 points.
Please Please Please, focus majority of your time on the past essays people. It is the key to passing IMHO.
There isn't much you can do to increase your MBE scores, but there is a lot of room to increase your Tuesday and Thursday scores if you're familiar with past Tuesday and Thursday questions.

Again, Congratulations to all my fellow test takers who passed with me.

To all the people who failed, use what you're feeling now to fuel the synthesis of a new methodology when studying for the February exam.
Start studying NOW!
Don't tell yourself that you'll wait for this crappy feeling to go away until you start studying again b/c the next thing you know Thanksgiving will be here, then Christmas, then New Years, etc etc etc (I know b/c I got off to a late start b/c of the holidays and you know what happened to with my February result)...



PS...If you're taking the February and are in the Woodlands area. PM me if you want my study notes.

Congrats, Ghost! I remember you from the Feb 2018 exam forum. Glad things worked out for you this time!

Agree with you and the others concerning reviewing old exams on the BLE site. TX recycles a lot of hypos from past exams and I’d highly reccomend looking at everything (as daunting of a task that is). I remember from Feb 2018 the Trusts essay, the Corp essay, a hybrid family-CP question and an estate admin question were verbatim repeats from prior years. Even the exam for Ca I took this July repeated verbatim a Contracts question and a Con Law question.

You definitely don’t have to write out every exam year but I would suggest reading each one. I have Microsoft one note on my laptop and what I did was create a notebook where I categorized everything by topic (so like one section of the notebook would have every commercial papers question tested). You can do this by downloading each exam year PDF and then cutting and pasting the questions into individual sections. It takes some time but it helps.