My experience of passing the California bar on my sixth attempt (February 2018 exam)
Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2018 5:44 pm
So, the February 2018 exam was my 6th attempt and I passed. Even now, I still get ridiculously happy whenever I think back to the moment when I found out I passed. But I also know how some of you may be feeling. For the longest time, I only felt like I was digging a deeper hole and convinced I would never be able to climb out. But I'm here to say things will get better and what felt like the impossible was very achievable looking back. So with that said, I wanted to share my experience and hopefully be of help to anyone reading this.
1. GENERAL BACKGROUND
I almost passed the July 2017 exam based on my strength on the MBEs (scored just under 1500). What really hurt me was getting a 50 on the PT after spending too much time on Essays 4 & 5, leaving me with 30 minutes for the PT.
I'd say the two biggest changes I made up front were (1) setting aside a full 10 weeks to study (as opposed to 7-8 weeks) and (2) making a detailed day-by-day study calendar. I think I started studying by the 2nd or 3rd week of December. Planning ahead ensured I would cover a certain number of MBEs by test week but, more importantly, that I would cover almost every essay topic. Based on predictions/common sense, I would prioritize certain topics (e.g. if Torts was long overdue, I'd do 10-12 essays by the end of my study plan). But I also made sure I'd do at least a few essays even for topics less likely to appear (for me, the number was about 4-5 essays per 'unlikely to appear' topic).
I almost always studied at a library. A typical day of studying would run 9 to 6... but obviously there were moments to rest/chill (e.g. break time, lunch). I was in a position to be able to study full-time for all 10 weeks, so YMMV if you're trying to study while working. A commitment I made up front was to make sure I prepared for everything. The temptation to double up on my strength (MBE) was alluring, but given that I was failing over and over again I had to try something different. So I put in the time to become well-rounded for the written portion of the exam.
Based on my study calendar, I did 30 MBE questions and 2-3 essay subjects a day. Every 2 weeks (I picked Wednesday), I would swap out the essays for a full practice PT. As I got closer to the exam date, I did a practice PT almost every week. Around the midway point (Week 6), I did a full practice bar exam -- the written portion on Tuesday and MBEs on Wednesday. Needless to say, it was all under test conditions.
2. MBE (Materials used: Emanuel's Strategies & Tactics + Adaptibar)
As mentioned earlier, I did 30 MBEs a day, and that's how I would begin each study day. In total, I did about 1900-2000 questions in total (including repeat questions).
I first used Emanuel's Strategies & Tactics to develop a foundation (in terms of forming a strategic approach to MBEs), and then I used Adaptibar exclusively. As I go through the set of 30 Qs, I'm marking down questions I'm "uncertain" about. Once I finish, I go through not only the wrong questions, but the ones I marked "uncertain" as well. When you're reviewing questions, don't just look at the correct answer... but try to figure out why your wrong answer choice was wrong. In the short run it felt like a burden, but it really benefited me in the long run to do that.
As I review answer explanations, I compiled them on a google doc. Before each 30 question set, I would review the google doc and trim/delete or edit the answer explanations (in my own words) as necessary. Make sure to clean up the doc often because the doc can get very lengthy (20+ pages). My overall average on MBEs was 83% and closer to 87-88% for the last 1000 questions. I also know, based on the NCBE score report, that I got over 1500 on the MBEs when I passed the Feb 2018 bar exam. Also, FWIW, I finished both sessions of MBE day 17-18 minutes early.
That being said, people have commented dissatisfaction w/ Adaptibar, and I can echo some of those shortcomings. The answer explanations were pretty lacking at times. But if I felt dissatisfied with an Adaptibar explanation, I would use what I learned from S&T plus my own substantive knowledge, and analyze in my own words why the answer choice was what it was. Something something when adaptibar throws you lemons. The repeat questions is, unfortunately, something I just had to deal with... but to the extent that I could, I'd still go through the entire process of going through the MBE question even if I remembered the answer.
I will also agree that on the actual MBE, a lot of questions felt like a 50/50 question whereas such questions felt like it made up 10% of my practice problems at most. I didn't use the MBE question packs from NCBE, but a lot of people have highly recommended them in terms of being closer to the problems on recent exams. So I'd definitely check those out as well.
3. ESSAYS (BarEssays.com)
For me, essays were a huge bugaboo. Since my MBEs were strong enough I thought I could take the path of least resistance with essays. For past bar exams (that I failed), I would look up predictions (e.g. BarSecrets) and do 3-5 practice outlines per predicted topic. I figured that if I did decently on 2-3 essays, I could pass the bar based on my MBE performance. I also found the prospect of preparing for essays absolutely daunting, and often found myself paralyzed w/ fear/doubt/reluctance.
I was wrong time and time again. Part of it was laziness. Part of it was fear -- fear that there was no way I could possibly tackle that many essays for that many topics. If you are in the same position, let me just assure you -- practicing essays ended up being nowhere near what I feared it was. Will it take some grinding and long hours on occasion? Yes. But let me also say that within a few weeks (pretty early on in the process), you start noticing patterns right away and feeling comfortable because there is, relatively speaking, only a finite set of fact patterns that show up for each topic.
An overview of how I practiced essays: During the first 2-3 weeks of studying, I would only do ONE essay per subject (so two total essays that day since I covered two essay subjects a day). In these initial weeks, I would fully write out these essays WITH an open book + a 2-hour time limit per each essay. In short, I tried writing as good an essay as I could. It helped me get familiar with the essay topics and start slowly building a foundation. I won't lie, this part was pretty grueling (but it does get easier). After that, between weeks 3 through 8 roughly, I outlined essays (and increased from 1 essay to 2-4 essays per subject). During the last two weeks before the exam, I only issue spotted 8-10 essays (covering 2-3 essay subjects) a day.
In all this, BarEssays was a fantastic resource. After I'd be done writing/outlining/issue-spotting an essay, I would compare what I had written with what had been written (or not) on papers scoring 60, 65, and 70+. If there was a rule or strategy I'd frequently forget, I'd make a note of it on a google doc. I'm only speaking for myself here, but I did not have to rote memorize anything. Simply being able to articulate rule statements in my own words was enough, even if it didn't match the "standard" wording on BarEssays. On this point, it was actually encouraging when I saw how many of the high-scoring essays on BarEssays were far from perfect. Some people advocate memorizing the 13 most frequent rule statements per each subject. Do what works for you best. Once I had a few weeks under my belt, I saw how facts trigger certain issues and how most essays repeat only a finite number of fact patterns.
4. PT (http://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt/preparing)
Please don't neglect the PT. It's alarming how often people take it for granted even though it roughly counts twice as much as an essay. As mentioned above, my mindset changed when I realized I could have passed the July 2017 exam if I had time to finish the PT (and score 60+) instead of running out of time and only scoring a 50 like I actually did.
When I passed, I did about 7-8 FULL practice PTs. My focus every practice was getting my timing down. My goal was to finish reading+outlining in 30 minutes so I could have an hour-ish to write. During practices, I would mark down how long it took me to finish outlining and start writing. I think my first PT or two, it took me nearly an hour to read/outline everything. But I got better and better. The key was, during this reading/outlining phase, to focus on finding the exact law and specific exceptions to set up the super basic outline. I found that highlighting and transcribing every highlight was a big time killer.
I did all of this with the strategy of doing the PT first and then the two essays in the afternoon session in mind. I practiced doing the PT first (btwn 1h30m to 1h45m) and being prepared to spend 50-52 minutes on Essays 4 + 5. On the actual bar exam, I spent just under 1 hr 40 minutes on the PT before moving on to the two essays in the afternoon session. Obviously I could have been a bit quicker, but this was far better than when I had only 25 minutes (in total) to start and finish the PT in July 2017.
5. FINAL THOUGHTS
Let me just reiterate some key points that changed my thinking/approach when I finally passed the exam..
- Be kind to yourself. When building my calendar, I tried to squeeze in a 'free day' once every 7-10 days. Most of the time, I used it as a review day, but sometimes I used those days to hang out with friends or other fun things. Nothing is worse than being burnt out, but trying to force yourself to study.
- There were so many times when studying for the bar exams that I failed that I found myself staring at 3 different commercial outlines and being paralyzed by the amount I thought I was supposed to memorize. But the bar exam is not about rote memorization. On essays, it's testing if you can establish minimum competency in actually engaging w/ the facts in the question. On MBEs, memorizing rule statements is a waste of time if you can't see how they operate in the context of the fact pattern.
- I'm not saying there is no place for review, but all things being equal, I almost always chose practice problems over reviewing/memorizing. Related to my above point, I found that by doing tons of purposeful practice problems, you end up memorizing and learning a ton naturally. And, unlike rote memorization, you're often learning the law in the context of fact patterns.
- Things that appear scary or daunting at first is often anything but. I refused for a long time to fully lean into essay preparation because I didn't want to deal w/ all those topics, all those rule statements, etc. When I finally leaned into it for the Feb '18 exam, I realized within 2 weeks that this was not at all what I feared it would be and that it was a much more manageable (though tough) task.
This is already a long enough post as it is, but feel free to message me if you have any specific questions.
1. GENERAL BACKGROUND
I almost passed the July 2017 exam based on my strength on the MBEs (scored just under 1500). What really hurt me was getting a 50 on the PT after spending too much time on Essays 4 & 5, leaving me with 30 minutes for the PT.
I'd say the two biggest changes I made up front were (1) setting aside a full 10 weeks to study (as opposed to 7-8 weeks) and (2) making a detailed day-by-day study calendar. I think I started studying by the 2nd or 3rd week of December. Planning ahead ensured I would cover a certain number of MBEs by test week but, more importantly, that I would cover almost every essay topic. Based on predictions/common sense, I would prioritize certain topics (e.g. if Torts was long overdue, I'd do 10-12 essays by the end of my study plan). But I also made sure I'd do at least a few essays even for topics less likely to appear (for me, the number was about 4-5 essays per 'unlikely to appear' topic).
I almost always studied at a library. A typical day of studying would run 9 to 6... but obviously there were moments to rest/chill (e.g. break time, lunch). I was in a position to be able to study full-time for all 10 weeks, so YMMV if you're trying to study while working. A commitment I made up front was to make sure I prepared for everything. The temptation to double up on my strength (MBE) was alluring, but given that I was failing over and over again I had to try something different. So I put in the time to become well-rounded for the written portion of the exam.
Based on my study calendar, I did 30 MBE questions and 2-3 essay subjects a day. Every 2 weeks (I picked Wednesday), I would swap out the essays for a full practice PT. As I got closer to the exam date, I did a practice PT almost every week. Around the midway point (Week 6), I did a full practice bar exam -- the written portion on Tuesday and MBEs on Wednesday. Needless to say, it was all under test conditions.
2. MBE (Materials used: Emanuel's Strategies & Tactics + Adaptibar)
As mentioned earlier, I did 30 MBEs a day, and that's how I would begin each study day. In total, I did about 1900-2000 questions in total (including repeat questions).
I first used Emanuel's Strategies & Tactics to develop a foundation (in terms of forming a strategic approach to MBEs), and then I used Adaptibar exclusively. As I go through the set of 30 Qs, I'm marking down questions I'm "uncertain" about. Once I finish, I go through not only the wrong questions, but the ones I marked "uncertain" as well. When you're reviewing questions, don't just look at the correct answer... but try to figure out why your wrong answer choice was wrong. In the short run it felt like a burden, but it really benefited me in the long run to do that.
As I review answer explanations, I compiled them on a google doc. Before each 30 question set, I would review the google doc and trim/delete or edit the answer explanations (in my own words) as necessary. Make sure to clean up the doc often because the doc can get very lengthy (20+ pages). My overall average on MBEs was 83% and closer to 87-88% for the last 1000 questions. I also know, based on the NCBE score report, that I got over 1500 on the MBEs when I passed the Feb 2018 bar exam. Also, FWIW, I finished both sessions of MBE day 17-18 minutes early.
That being said, people have commented dissatisfaction w/ Adaptibar, and I can echo some of those shortcomings. The answer explanations were pretty lacking at times. But if I felt dissatisfied with an Adaptibar explanation, I would use what I learned from S&T plus my own substantive knowledge, and analyze in my own words why the answer choice was what it was. Something something when adaptibar throws you lemons. The repeat questions is, unfortunately, something I just had to deal with... but to the extent that I could, I'd still go through the entire process of going through the MBE question even if I remembered the answer.
I will also agree that on the actual MBE, a lot of questions felt like a 50/50 question whereas such questions felt like it made up 10% of my practice problems at most. I didn't use the MBE question packs from NCBE, but a lot of people have highly recommended them in terms of being closer to the problems on recent exams. So I'd definitely check those out as well.
3. ESSAYS (BarEssays.com)
For me, essays were a huge bugaboo. Since my MBEs were strong enough I thought I could take the path of least resistance with essays. For past bar exams (that I failed), I would look up predictions (e.g. BarSecrets) and do 3-5 practice outlines per predicted topic. I figured that if I did decently on 2-3 essays, I could pass the bar based on my MBE performance. I also found the prospect of preparing for essays absolutely daunting, and often found myself paralyzed w/ fear/doubt/reluctance.
I was wrong time and time again. Part of it was laziness. Part of it was fear -- fear that there was no way I could possibly tackle that many essays for that many topics. If you are in the same position, let me just assure you -- practicing essays ended up being nowhere near what I feared it was. Will it take some grinding and long hours on occasion? Yes. But let me also say that within a few weeks (pretty early on in the process), you start noticing patterns right away and feeling comfortable because there is, relatively speaking, only a finite set of fact patterns that show up for each topic.
An overview of how I practiced essays: During the first 2-3 weeks of studying, I would only do ONE essay per subject (so two total essays that day since I covered two essay subjects a day). In these initial weeks, I would fully write out these essays WITH an open book + a 2-hour time limit per each essay. In short, I tried writing as good an essay as I could. It helped me get familiar with the essay topics and start slowly building a foundation. I won't lie, this part was pretty grueling (but it does get easier). After that, between weeks 3 through 8 roughly, I outlined essays (and increased from 1 essay to 2-4 essays per subject). During the last two weeks before the exam, I only issue spotted 8-10 essays (covering 2-3 essay subjects) a day.
In all this, BarEssays was a fantastic resource. After I'd be done writing/outlining/issue-spotting an essay, I would compare what I had written with what had been written (or not) on papers scoring 60, 65, and 70+. If there was a rule or strategy I'd frequently forget, I'd make a note of it on a google doc. I'm only speaking for myself here, but I did not have to rote memorize anything. Simply being able to articulate rule statements in my own words was enough, even if it didn't match the "standard" wording on BarEssays. On this point, it was actually encouraging when I saw how many of the high-scoring essays on BarEssays were far from perfect. Some people advocate memorizing the 13 most frequent rule statements per each subject. Do what works for you best. Once I had a few weeks under my belt, I saw how facts trigger certain issues and how most essays repeat only a finite number of fact patterns.
4. PT (http://www.ncbex.org/exams/mpt/preparing)
Please don't neglect the PT. It's alarming how often people take it for granted even though it roughly counts twice as much as an essay. As mentioned above, my mindset changed when I realized I could have passed the July 2017 exam if I had time to finish the PT (and score 60+) instead of running out of time and only scoring a 50 like I actually did.
When I passed, I did about 7-8 FULL practice PTs. My focus every practice was getting my timing down. My goal was to finish reading+outlining in 30 minutes so I could have an hour-ish to write. During practices, I would mark down how long it took me to finish outlining and start writing. I think my first PT or two, it took me nearly an hour to read/outline everything. But I got better and better. The key was, during this reading/outlining phase, to focus on finding the exact law and specific exceptions to set up the super basic outline. I found that highlighting and transcribing every highlight was a big time killer.
I did all of this with the strategy of doing the PT first and then the two essays in the afternoon session in mind. I practiced doing the PT first (btwn 1h30m to 1h45m) and being prepared to spend 50-52 minutes on Essays 4 + 5. On the actual bar exam, I spent just under 1 hr 40 minutes on the PT before moving on to the two essays in the afternoon session. Obviously I could have been a bit quicker, but this was far better than when I had only 25 minutes (in total) to start and finish the PT in July 2017.
5. FINAL THOUGHTS
Let me just reiterate some key points that changed my thinking/approach when I finally passed the exam..
- Be kind to yourself. When building my calendar, I tried to squeeze in a 'free day' once every 7-10 days. Most of the time, I used it as a review day, but sometimes I used those days to hang out with friends or other fun things. Nothing is worse than being burnt out, but trying to force yourself to study.
- There were so many times when studying for the bar exams that I failed that I found myself staring at 3 different commercial outlines and being paralyzed by the amount I thought I was supposed to memorize. But the bar exam is not about rote memorization. On essays, it's testing if you can establish minimum competency in actually engaging w/ the facts in the question. On MBEs, memorizing rule statements is a waste of time if you can't see how they operate in the context of the fact pattern.
- I'm not saying there is no place for review, but all things being equal, I almost always chose practice problems over reviewing/memorizing. Related to my above point, I found that by doing tons of purposeful practice problems, you end up memorizing and learning a ton naturally. And, unlike rote memorization, you're often learning the law in the context of fact patterns.
- Things that appear scary or daunting at first is often anything but. I refused for a long time to fully lean into essay preparation because I didn't want to deal w/ all those topics, all those rule statements, etc. When I finally leaned into it for the Feb '18 exam, I realized within 2 weeks that this was not at all what I feared it would be and that it was a much more manageable (though tough) task.
This is already a long enough post as it is, but feel free to message me if you have any specific questions.