I am going to fail the bar exam Forum

[Anonymous User]

I just needed to put this out there because I feel like shit. I am going to fail the bar exam. I graduated in the bottom 25% of my class and am just totally demoralized and feel like the money pit doesn't end. I paid close to three thousand dollars just for bar prep materials and one thousand dollars just to take this freaking test, including a 75 dollar fee to bring my laptop and a separate 100 fee to use examplify on my freaking laptop. It doesn't end. And this is on top of spending just under 100,000 for tuition over the past three years.

Law school is the most predatory institution in America. All of that above and I'm not even close to guaranteed a job. Thankfully, I do have one after graduation, but I hate it and am literally only accepting it because I have to to pay this shit off. And when I fail the bar, I'll probably be fired.

My plan right now is literally to just save money for a few months at this job before I get fired for not passing the bar because I am going to need every cent to pay off this colossal waste of time, energy, and money. I am so depressed by this I can't even begin to fathom where it all went wrong. I had a great undergraduate career and would legitimately be better off had I never gone to law school. It is mind-boggling to me that I am less employable now after obtaining my law degree than I was three years ago without it. I have been denied so many jobs because I am now overqualified, and will be denied many others when they see I graduated but didn't pass the bar. It's going to be a shit situation and I have no idea what to do with my life anymore.

As for the bar exam - I'm using Themis and its just completely overwhelming. A dozen assignments every day. I've spent the past week inside hunched over my laptop as summer is alive outside. I cannot fathom how to write MEE exams. I am usually able to piece together the issues and a general idea of the law, but Themis absolutely ass rapes me on every graded essay and tells me I haven't done anything right. I am sure part of it is they want to make sure we over-study, but it's frankly demoralizing to constantly hear how poorly I'm doing. The multiple choice questions Themis provides are also outrageously difficult. I am hoping they are not a close approximation of the bar exam. I am scoring around 68% on UWorld tests, but this is a plateau now as I've been at this level since I started. I'm not even trying to study the MPT since I know I'm a shit writer and don't have enough time left now to get a handle on everything. With four weeks to go, I just feel crushed every day waking up to study for a test I am going to fail to have a job I don't want in a career I despise. I have wasted years of my youth and stupid amounts of money. This fucking sucks.

If I don't pass, I'm done. I am not taking this exam again. I am probably going to have to live at home for a couple of years. I don't know. I'm angry, frustrated, demoralized, and depressed. I wish I had never gone to law school and if anyone here is considering it, do yourself a favor and run far away from this horrible, predatory career field.

[Anonymous User]

Try not to catastrophize. You don’t know that you will fail the bar exam and with a bad attitude your prediction could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You owe it to yourself to try to stay positive and give the test your best shot.

Once the bar is out of the way, you should see a therapist. There are a number of cognitive distortions in what you wrote and a professional can help you work through that, and you’ll be much happier.

Your experience is not at all uncommon and people work through similar crises all the time.

[Anonymous User]

As the poster above notes, you owe it to yourself to give this your best shot. Try to reduce your stress levels. When you’re overwhelmed, your frontal cortex shuts down and you become incapable of logical reasoning. Focus on the process and putting in the required hours consistently, and the results will follow. Aim for low hanging fruit to improve your score; there’s plenty of advice in this regard online. The process is inherently stressful, but the exam is graded relatively easy, which is why the majority of candidates pass each time the test is administered. Best of luck!

[crazywafflez]

Breath. I did barbri and felt the same way. On MBE I was hovering around 58-62% correct and was scared shitless. You will plateau, multiple choice is hard. Just know that most folks pass the bar. I was in the same place as you when I was studying, and felt horrible. I studied like 7-10 hours every day for almost two months (including weekends).
Law is a trap, no doubt, but I had a number of peers, all smart, fail the bar. Some of them retook it and passed, others didn't retake, and others failed again.
Funny enough, out of my 2 closest friends who failed, one became a consultant and did not retake the bar (he makes more than most of my peers); the other, failed twice and now works in compliance in a wonderful 9-5 job and makes close to 6 figures.
No matter what happens, it isn't over. Do not let this fucking test determine your worth. Do not let this test rattle you (it did me, so I understand and I spent many a sleepless night freaking out about how my future rided on this one damn test).
Breath. You've got this.

[mwells_56]

Don't you only need like 65% or so on the multiple choice to pass?

[Wild Card]

Yes, cry out your message from the mountains and on the streets.

Make sure no one ever falls for this evil scam ever again.

Also, you're not going to fail the bar exam. 15% of people fail, and they are mostly foreigners for whom English is a second language.

[Anonymous User]

You still have 3 weeks until the bar.

First, you should start seeing a therapist.

Second, Themis is more difficult than the bar. It is designed that way so you find the bar easy when taking it. Most people pass, you likely will too.

Third, when I took the bar, the person I sat next to was sleeping in her car. She didn't have the money to stay in a hotel and didn't have a job lined up. Stop looking at everything that's going wrong and look at everything that's going right. Just from your short post, here are some things I noticed that you've got going for you:

1. You have valuable skills and experiences from a career prior to law school. Those skills and experiences don't go poof the minute you go to law school.
2. You graduated law school.
3. You have a job lined up (what's their policy on failing the bar anyway? most firms allow a second try).
4. You have family support who are willing to let you live at home while you figure things out. (I know this is easy to take for granted, but it's a huge blessing!)

[Kalani111]

Even if you pass on the second or third time…it will suck retaking, but that’s nothing like getting a terminal health diagnosis. You will survive and eventually prosper.