A huge part of bar exam success is exam day strategy — so be confident in what you know (and don’t know — you can’t know it all, and you don’t have to to pass!), and play up your strengths. You have a bar exam to pass so I am going to keep this post short and sweet, and not add more to your pre-bar exam plate. Read on for five tips to follow WHILE you are actually taking the bar exam to maximize points and keep your sanity (from someone who has taken and passed two bar exams).
1. Take a few minutes to look through all of the essays and do the essays you feel good about first, instead of automatically doing the essays in the order they appear.
This way, you start out confidently, giving you momentum to keep going in a positive mindset. This way also helps you avoid the risk of losing more points than necessary because you are too busy spending time stressing over essay topics you find difficult instead of playing up your strengths and grabbing points for the essay topics you do know well (or at least well enough!). A pitfall many exam takers fall into is getting stuck on earlier questions, only to have less time to work on the questions they actually did know the answers to, but didn’t get to write because they ran out of time. But, you won’t fall into this trap because if you didn’t know better before, now you know! 🙂
The keys to this approach are 1) making sure you don’t spend more than about 5 minutes looking through the essays first (so you don’t use too much time reading instead of answering since you will most likely have to reread the essay topics again even after your initial read), and 2) accounting for the 5 minutes you took on the front end and subtracting that from time you allocate to answer each question on the back end. So, by using this approach, you may have one minute less to write your answer on each question — but the confidence you gain, points you don’t leave on the table, and heads up on what the essay is about, which will ultimately help you write a better answer faster, is probably worth it.
2. Spend a little more time on the essays you know the answers to rather than spending all of the time you plan to allot for each question spinning your wheels on an answer you do not know.
This tip may be too risque for some people and that is OK, use your discernment for what is right for you and how you work. For me, this was helpful because it allowed me to scoop up as many points as possible for the topics I did know the answers to, and kept me from spending time I could’ve used racking up points stressing myself on a question I knew little about. There is only so much you can write when you don’t know the actual answer!
So, practically speaking, say there are 6 essay questions and you are supposed to spend 30 minutes per essay. You are pretty confident about 4 of the essays but 2 essays are on topics you didn’t study much. Following this tip, I would spend 35 minutes or even 40 minutes on each of the 4 essays I felt good about, and 25 or 20 minutes on the essays I didn’t know much about instead of spending the full 30 minutes trying to come up with something because I’m “supposed” to spend 30 minutes on each essay. If you already said what you needed to say in the 4 essays you feel good about in 30 minutes then that’s perfect! But if you still have more to say after your initial 30 minutes and not much else to say on the topics you don’t know well after 20 minutes, then your time is probably better spent going back to the topics you know and spending another 5-10 minutes finishing up your answers there.
But what do you write if you don’t know the answer? Read tip No. 3 to find out.
3. Don’t spend too long panicking if you don’t know all of the relevant law for an essay question — collect yourself, write something basic, and get some points.
Basic is better than nothing on the bar exam. Even if you spend less time on the questions you don’t know, you have to write something. Remember, for most bar exams you can still get points for your analysis even if your rule isn’t 100% correct. You don’t need all the points — just some of them! Other than your command of the law, essays are measuring how you communicate legal principles in writing and apply law to relevant facts. You can do that in the realm of an essay answer even if the law is off if you show you know how to analyze, use legally significant facts, come to a conclusion, etc. Of course you can’t do this for every question, but take solace in this if you run up on 1 or 2 questions where this is the case for you!
A former bar grader said this in a National Jurist article: “The strategy I give students when they don’t know the law is to make up the law the student believes is the right law and come up with an analysis that utilizes the facts relating to that issue. Obviously, if you are incorrect on the law, you won’t get credit for the rule but may get some credit for the analysis, if you hit the right facts. However, most of the time, issues are based on reasonableness, and stating a rule that is reasonable (makes sense) will get you some credit since you’ll likely be correct on at least part of it.” – Patrick Lin.
If you are interested in improving your Bar exam legal writing, learn more about the Blessed & Barred® Bar Exam Success System that includes a Bar Exam Writing Workshop Series on essays and MPTs taught by me, my Bar Exam Legal Writing Checklist so you can score more points on every essay & MPT, and more!
4. Don’t get caught up overanalyzing questions on the MBE — remember patterns from studying, skip a question if you don’t know it and move on.
You probably already know this, but it is a good reminder. Even if you have to skip 20 questions, it’s OK! There are 180 more. Just make sure you don’t spend too much time spinning your wheels on the front end that you don’t have enough time on the back end to go back and make an educated guess on the questions you skipped. Remembering patterns from studying could help you make an educated guess; maybe you don’t remember the law, but you remember the answer for a similar practice question you did while studying. And you already know; if you can’t make an educated guess, just make a guess! You don’t get points subtracted for a wrong answer so there is no penalty for guessing.
5. Preach to yourself.
I’m serious. The bar exam is non-stop mental finesse. It can get tiring. It can be discouraging. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Whenever you start to feel fatigued, stressed out, doubtful of your abilities, etc., preach to yourself what you know to be true about God and his love and His great plans for you. Pray for wisdom and invite the Holy Spirit to help you as you analyze questions and write your essays (I don’t think help from Holy Spirit counts as cheating on the exam ahaha!). Remember that you know more than you think you do, and you don’t need to know everything to pass. Express gratitude that you even have the opportunity to sit for a bar exam, and know that you will be fine no matter what. But go in thinking victory as the only option, and remind yourself of that! #FaithOverFear!
And those are my five tips of things to do (and not do) while you are taking the bar exam. Granted this isn’t as short as I thought it would be (this post is 1,300+ words long, haha), but I think it was easy enough to read, yeah?
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Prayers up for everyone taking the bar exam next week or in the months to come! 🙂
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