Barry overwhelmedOur BarIssues.com database contains 162 essays from the California Bar Exam going all the way back to July 2001 (with more essays added for each coming exam). That’s a lot of essays! Reviewing as many essays as possible can be the difference between a pass and a fail. Some fact patterns have been known to be repeated and the more you study from these essays and their corresponding answers, the more you get an understanding of what the bar examiners are looking for. Read More →

running with clockOne of the most common problems law students have when writing essays and performance tests on the bar exam is that they run out of time. Even though they know in advance that each California bar exam essay is 1 hour, and each performance test is 3 hours, students still don’t manage their time effectively on the bar exam. Why? And how can they fix this?

The answer is to practice your timing in advance with a timer app right on your computer screen. I will explain how I did this.  Read More →

coffee cupWhen you’re faced with three essay questions on the morning of the bar exam, how will you write them up?

Will you read all the questions first before you write or will you endure the surprise (or anguish!) of not knowing what to expect until you get to the next question. Will you rearrange the order of questions to suit your strengths or weaknesses? Hardest first? Easiest first?

Find out Nadine’s method that she used to help her pass the California Bar Exam by reading her post on the popular bar prep blog, Make This Your Last Time.

Image credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

law canva draftI would like to welcome our guest-blogger, Brian Hahn, the founder of Make This Your Last Time and a second-time passer of the California Bar Exam. He is here to share one of his techniques that flipped his entire approach to essays.

If you’re here reading this on the website BarIssues.com, you must have some inkling of an interest in identifying issues on the CA essays.

Which is good because issues are the most important part of IRAC. Don’t get me wrong, rules and their application are still important, no, critical. You still need to make sure you’re solid in those areas. But without the seeds of issues, IRACs can’t even sprout in the first place.

Consider this another way: Although you can still get partial credit if you make up a reasonable rule or shove in facts until your application looks hefty enough (classic BS techniques), you will get zero credit for an issue that should have been raised but is never raised.

This was actually the biggest game-changing insight I had for my second time. We all have issues that we want to show off, but let’s see if there’s a way to nail down the right issues and fearlessly present them to the grader. Read More →

8 steps fdpThe essays on the California Bar Exam make up 39% of your score. You must do well on the essays in order to pass the bar! Here is my method for the 1 hour “hypos,” which you will have to write 6 of (3 on Tuesday morning and 3 on Thursday morning).

Follow these 8 steps for each essay on the bar exam. If you practice them now, you will know exactly what to do so that you can be on “auto-pilot” the days of the exam. Read More →

open bookYou’ve been through it before, and now you are about to go through it again. Somehow it’s almost comforting…the familiarity with the materials, your outlines, the essays, the multiple choice questions. But hold on! Brian of Make This Your Last Time wants to make sure this is your last time writing the bar exam.

When Brian wrote the California Bar Exam for the first time in July 2013 he did not pass. He immediately got to work studying for his second attempt where he improved his scaled score by over 70 points and passed the bar exam in February 2014. Read More →

bar-examIt’s inevitable. At some point you will reach utter boredom while studying for the bar exam. This boredom will become even more apparent if you are a repeater – that is, you are studying for the exam a second (or maybe even third) time because you have not yet successfully passed.

So, how do you stay motivated and persevere during this crucial time of your life?

I’ve put together some tips to make your study time just a tad bit more appealing. However, I give no guarantees that you’re going to fall in love with Remedies any time soon!  Always keep in mind that what works for one person may not work for you, therefore, take any study tips as mere recommendations that you may or may not want to try. Read More →

Now_what jpegHave you ever had that sinking feeling develop in your stomach as you realize you are running out of time on a multiple choice exam? You check the clock to find that there are 15 minutes to go but you still have 30 questions left! You know that you can’t read and intelligently answer each question in that time span, so… like any test-taker would, you skim through them quickly and take your best guess at each one. That’s about your only option if this happens to you on the bar exam, BUT – there is a better way!

The key to making sure you have enough time on the Multi-State Bar Exam (MBE) is to pace yourself and watch the clock very closely every half hour. One of the best pieces of information I got from a bar prep blog post was from Dustin Saiidi of I Passed My Bar Exam where he wrote about using these 5 time intervals. Read More →

SRS_logo_f_f1_squareEver wonder how on earth you will possibly remember all the rules of law for the bar exam? During my own bar exam studies, one thing I kept hearing over and over again from various bar prep materials went something like this: “Don’t worry about memorizing; it will come naturally as you work with the material.” While to some degree, this may be true, at a certain point students still have to commit the rules and their elements to memory. I often felt if there was just some machine I could place over my head that would allow all of the black letter law to become instantly memorized, boy, could I write a killer exam! You can tell that memorization is not one of my strong points. But maybe there is a scientifically proven technique that could help with memory retention and of course…there is. It’s called spaced repetition which has been shown to produce some very impressive results. And now, there is an app for bar exam students to utilize this proven technique. Read More →