Emma is a newly-minted attorney who successfully passed the July 2024 California Bar Exam on her first attempt. Originally from France, she earned her J.D. at USC and was determined to pass the bar on her first try. Want to crush the bar, break into Big Law, and thrive in your legal career? Join her newsletter for insider tips, candid advice & the tools you need to fast-track your success.
Introduction
Oh, let me tell you, I’ve been holding off from sharing all this good stuff with you. I wasn’t going to tell you how I studied before I knew I passed, you know?
But after anxiously waiting for almost three months, results came out on Friday, November 8th, at 6pm (well, more like 6:05). And spoiler alert: I passed.
I did not know what to expect AT ALL. I left Day 1 of the exam thinking I failed. Left Day 2 thinking it could have been worse. And I was left for months speculating about whether it was going to be enough.
In hindsight, I am happy about how I studied for it. I worked hard. But I also protected my mental health. I did not want to repeat the same mistakes I made as a 1L. So, I used my 1L experience as a blueprint to study for the bar exam. To help you start somewhere, below are:
- An EmPowering Bar Exam Report on how I prepared
- Answers to The Questions that Kept me Up at Night.
Note: Please don’t feel like you need to follow this to a T to pass. There is no one way to do it. I probably had to study harder than some who passed, but also less than others who didn’t. At this time, your goal should be to gather information from different people and see what might suit you best.
1. The EmPowering Bar Exam Report
Pick Your BAR PREP
My pick: BARBRI
- Pros:
- You can just sit back & do what you’re told
- It over prepares you
- Has short videos like Themis (recent update)
- Tests you on subjects on a rolling basis (good for long-term memory)
- Alternates between MBEs, essays, lectures (makes it digestible)
- Some of the professors make it memorable (shout-out Prof. Franzese insert link to her bio page here])
- You can create your own schedule & edit it along the way
- Cons:
- The lecture book (CMR) is very dense (still used it though, see below)
- Sometimes I wanted longer videos to fill up more of the progress bar
- Constitutional Law was taught differently than all the other courses (I didn’t like that)
A note on Themis: it seemed like my friends who used Themis had entire days dedicated to taking essays and MBEs & less/no flexibility with their calendars. Other than that, you’d have to ask someone who used Themis but it seems like either Themis or BARBRI did a solid job at preparing us.
Figure Out Your Timeline:
- Recommended: start studying after graduation (10-11 weeks)
- What I did:
- After Spring Break: completed the Early Start prep BARBRI offers to get a refresher on 1L classes (~20h)
- Before finals: did 2 performance tests over the course of a few weeks
- Finals: made sure to be done with finals as early as possible
- Rest: took 5 days off
- Before graduation: started bar prep (lightly) a week before graduation (12 weeks)
- Why start earlier? Gave me some cushion to take breaks when needed and have shorter study days (at least until July).
Develop a Sustainable Schedule:
June: Studied for 6-7 Hours Every Day
- Some days were longer, some (fewer) days were shorter
- Twice a week, I took a 4-hour break in the middle of the day to go outside, tan, do yoga, check out the farmers market, read, play pickleball
- The rest of the week, I’d plan a small thing to look forward to at the end of the day (e.g. cook yummy food, nail salon, roomie time)
- Took every other Sunday completely off
End of June: Switched Gears (Too Much)
- Took my first mock MBE (2 x 200 questions, 6 hours)
- Got a 54% and it took me DAYS to review my answers
- Pro tip: really use the day scheduled by BARBRI to review the explanatory videos or it’ll be like carrying dead weight with you for the rest of the prep
- I had to come up with a plan to get better asap
- What didn’t work: added studying hours at night to learn black letter law
- What did work: incorporated 5-9 MBE question sets throughout the day, everyday
July: Studied Closer to 10 Hours Every Day
- Daytime: spent my days taking practice exams and learning about the last essay-only subjects
- Nighttime: would meet with my study buddy, pick one subject, quiz each other (& go bananas out of exhaustion)
- Time off: I only took 3 afternoons off during that whole month (pro tip: do not wait to feel burnt out to take time off; I waited too long each time in July)
Pick Your Study Tools
Essays:
- I followed BARBRI religiously
- Did all their essays, except for two
- Fully wrote out more essays than recommended
- Submitted a lot of my essays to the graders for feedback
- Passed most of my essays, but would still review them religiously and grade myself to understand my mistakes
- But I…
- Only used BARBRI's CMR (outline) when actively listening to the lectures
- Used Magicsheets as my main outline
- Made my own flashcards on concepts I struggled remembering (in July)
- Used Mary Basick’s book to learn the last essay-only subjects more quickly & to do extra essays (realistically, I only outlined 3-5)
MBE:
- I followed BARBRI religiously
- Did the MBE sets and reviewed ALL of the explanations (even to the answers I got right, unless I was pressed with time)
- Kept track of my wrong answers on an Excel sheet (that I read a couple times over the last couple days before the exam)
- Until…
- I took a 2nd MBE practice exam (~July 9) from Adaptibar and realized that the questions were different
- After that, I continued to do everything BARBRI told me to do, but I’d replace its daily 25-question sets by Adaptibar’s 15-question sets
- BUT I still did the final 25 capstone set in each subject and the last 100 BARBRI questions, known to be past bar questions
- I got a 67% — just above what is necessary to pass -- I knew some of my friends had gotten that score on their first time taking a practice test, but I focused on recognizing how far I had come
- I continued my daily additional 5-9 MBEs to reach a comfortable position by D-day
- After a few more days, I got above 70% on nearly all my daily Adaptibar 15-question sets (finally!)
Performance Test (PT):
- Started earlier to be exposed to the different formats and come up with a game plan
- Did all of the tests BARBRI recommended
- Watched this video and copied their technique
- Met ~1x/week with my accountability buddy to take an extra PT and refine my technique
Set Your Mind Right
- Focus on your own progress tracker, solely your own
- BARBRI tracks your progress and shows you if you’re behind in relation to the schedule YOU set up at the beginning of the prep. People will brag about how ahead they are. Don’t listen to them. Chances are, they’ll be behind before you know it.
- Take every mistake, low score, negative feedback, as a learning opportunity
- You saw my scores. Maybe I was being delusional, but I never took them as a reflection of my worth. Every time I got a bad result, I’d tell myself: this is one less mistake I’ll make on the day of the exam.
- Pick your studying materials early on & stick to those
- There’s so much out there. One day, Reddit will tell you to use one book, the next day, your law school friend will recommend a ‘life-changing’ video. Don’t succumb. Trust the process. You’ll get there.
2. The Questions that Kept Me Up at Night
Q: Do I have to listen to lectures at 2x speed to finish the prep?
A: No. 2x was too fast for me to take in the information & annotate the CMR. I picked the pace at which I could actively listen. Going faster than that will make you lose time later when you’ll realize you don’t remember anything.
Q: When should I time myself; when should I do exams closed book?
A: probably what I kept wondering about all summer, so here’s my takeaway — MBE: timed & closed-book asap to learn to identify patterns. Essays: timed and closed book to test your memory & focus on the main issues only. Semi closed book (outline closed book, open your books, then write your answer) is a great alternative too.
Q: Will BARBRI give me time to study the subjects it lectured me on?
A: Yes. You will get independent study time. I used those to create mental sheets of what I remembered & do extra essays. Some of my friends created outlines and/or quizzed themselves with flashcards.
Q: Should I focus on memorization or practice past exams?
A: Practice is memorization. I only used flashcards in the last few weeks to remember definitions or legal concepts I needed to regurgitate on paper.
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