Check out these tips used by Nadine and Angela when they wrote the California Bar Exam and learn how they used BarIssues.com to help them pass the bar. Nadine was interviewed by Dustin Saiidi of I Passed My Bar Exam and talks about what worked for her and Angela.
Listen to the podcast – IPMBE Episode 020, 5 Ways To Improve Bar Exam Essay Scores with BarIssues.com
1. Planning
Get out your calendar well in advance and plot out exactly what and when you are going to study. This becomes your visualization method because by taking the time up front to plan each day of your bar prep time, you can visualize how long things will take and how much you need to study for each subject.
2. Endurance
You must give yourself total commitment, even if you might be tempted to do other things. Have your strategy mapped out in advance on how to deal with well-meaning family or friends who just don’t understand why you have to put in so much study time.
3. Timing
The essays on the California Bar Exam make up 39% of your score which means you must pass the essays in order to pass the bar! Get used to the timing now by practicing with Examsoft if you will be using your laptop on the bar or by setting your own timer.
4. A Systematic Approach
Find the tools that are going to make your bar studying as easy as possible. Utilize technology to the fullest and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. We found BarIssues.com invaluable to helping us practice writing essays by making it so easy to find the topics we wanted to focus on. Issue-spotting essays is a snap when you can just click on a given essay and get a pop-up of all the issues tested to see if you found them all.
5. Spot Crossovers
This is key to scoring maximum points on essays. The average number of crossover essay questions (where more than one subject is tested in one essay) on the California Bar Exam from July 2001 to February 2014 was 1.7. This means that you will have one or more of them on the next bar exam.
Listen to the podcast Nadine recorded with Dustin for a full review of these tips and a special offer for subscribing to BarIssues.com.
(The link will take you to Dustin’s iTunes podcast page, just click on the one marked IPMBE 020)
Good luck on the bar exam!