You don’t need to be a legal rockstar to pass the bar exam. Like me, Christian wasn’t the best student in law school.
💬 “I graduated from law school with a 3.08 GPA. My 1L year was extremely challenging for me, turning me from a student accustomed to receiving A’s in high school and undergrad to suddenly receiving my first D+ in Property Law. So needless to say, I was terrified at the idea of taking the California Bar Exam, notoriously known as the most difficult in the country.”
But we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t know the ending already.
Christian passed the July 2025 California Bar Exam on her first try. I’m not even surprised anymore. This is normal around here.
💬 “I’m so excited to share what helped me pass the CA Bar Exam on my first try. Reading these stories was so motivating for me, and I was so excited for the day I could write my own!”
💬 “After a month of studying, I was drowning in a backlog of Themis assignments and felt like I was learning nothing. My Themis progress tracker was far behind where it needed to be, and I had Themis representatives reaching out about my slow progress. It was at that point that I realized in order to pass, I needed to go back to the basics — what helped me learn in law school?”
Resources Christian used to pass the California Bar Exam
JD Advising One Sheets
AdaptiBar MBE Simulator
• Use promo code here for 10% off your entire cart
Themis Bar Review (51% complete)
💬 “I decided that I was going to use Themis for my bar prep, but prior to beginning studying for the bar exam, I asked my friends who had passed what helped them. I received a plethora of suggestions, but amongst the most helpful were 1) to not rely solely on Themis for learning and to take inventory of your own progress (rather than relying on Themis’s progress checkers), 2) MagicSheets and ApproSheets, and 3) JD Advising One Sheets for both Essays and the MBE. . . . We also used AdaptiBar for multiple choice questions, which was another huge resource for me. Collectively, getting all of this knowledge so early was foundational to my success.”
As you read about Christian’s one-and-done success, think about whether these ideas could apply to you:
1) You don’t need to “finish” your bar review course.
A mistake bar takers (especially first timers) tend to make: trying to complete the course.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. The problem is what you’re fixated on.
If your goal becomes finishing the course rather than learning and retaining the material, you’ll be distracted by needing to check off boxes and get that course completion percentage up.
This also leads to “falling behind” if you miss one thing. You go out for lunch once, and you’re stuck half a day behind forever.
Christian talks about falling behind. But there’s no such thing. You should learn at your own pace.
💬 “I graduated May 23rd, a whole week later than Themis’s recommended start date. I started off behind, and over the first couple of weeks of studying continued to fall more and more behind. Themis’s course pace moved far too quickly for me, and I did not feel like I was retaining any of the information I was learning. I was spending hours on videos but didn’t feel like it was helping me understand the material more. The videos would take me so long to get through, leaving me with limited time to get to the assigned multiple choice questions and essay responses.”
This is exactly what happened to me on my first attempt.
As a famous man once said, “It’s time to stop.” Christian knew when to stop.
💬 “For me, what helped me learn was reviewing my outlines, whiteboarding the information, and actually applying the information I learned. . . . Armed with this knowledge, I decided to stop worrying about my progress in my Themis course and instead use only the resources they offered that I found helpful. (To all of future Themis users, I only finished 51% of the course, and it was no way indicative of my exam performance).”
It’s hard to decide to give up on a book in the middle of it. I get it. Especially if you paid thousands of dollars for it.
That’s why I’m here to constantly remind you to ask yourself whether what you’re doing is working. That way you don’t have to be like me, having done everything the course asked and yet still failing the exam. The only thing that matters is being able to answer questions correctly in time.
Reframe: If you’re going to be concerned about something, be concerned about passing, not about completing the course. Better to cut your losses than catch a falling knife.
What would you tell this person?
2) Actively engage with the materials.
Christian didn’t passively consume information. Eating too much just makes you bloated and sick.
💬 “For me, what helped me learn was reviewing my outlines, whiteboarding the information, and actually applying the information I learned. I also knew I was always stronger at multiple choice than essays.”
💬 “In my new schedule, I would start every morning with 50 AdaptiBar questions (I highly recommend this as they are licensed NCBE questions). I would take time to thoroughly review each question and I would write down key legal rules in a notebook I had for each subject. I would aim to do these questions without my notes as frequently as possible.”
Optimize for learning before optimizing for performance.
💬 “In the beginning stages, my focus was less on accuracy, and more on learning. Then, I would break for lunch. After lunch, I’d use MagicSheets outlines and JD Advising One Sheets and review these — typically one or two subjects a day. To help me memorize, I would whiteboard out the rules and also pretend that I was teaching the subject to a class of students.”
💬 “After an hour a half dinner break, I would ‘cook‘ 4 or 5 essays — I would issue spot using ApproSheets and provide a cursory analysis for each issue.”
💬 “I ‘cooked’ every single PR essay in Themis’s bank, then looked at older PR essays as well.”
(What do you notice about how you can use the course?)
💬 “Then, I would review the Themis model answer to see the structure/determine if I spotted all the issues. I would usually end the night by watching these JD Advising YouTube videos before I went to bed and reviewing my notebooks of rule statements.”
3) Decide on your focus.
Christian decided to focus on the MBE. It was her strength. The MBE is tested on the essays as well, so it’s not a bad hand to bet on.
💬 “I also spent more time on multiple choice than essays, because I realized I was stronger in multiple choice. And I spent more time reviewing my multiple choice answers after than I spent answering — for me it was truly understanding where I went wrong that the knowledge gains happened.”
Yes! Here’s something I always recommend…
Take at least as much (likely more) time to review your answers than answering the questions. This is where the learning happens.
Practice is like getting on the scale. Studying model answers is like what you do in between based on the measurements to check you’re on the right track and adjust as needed.
Where are you going to spend more time?
That’s why when you create your study schedule, you should account not just for the time you need to answer the questions but also the time you need to review. You probably need TWICE as much time as you think you need.
While Christian focused on her strength (MBE), she shied away from her weaknesses, the essays and performance tests.
This approach is NOT something I’d recommend, but she knew how she studied best.
💬 “I probably only wrote out 5 or 6 full essays… in hindsight I should have definitely done more but I also knew how I studied best. I knew once exam day came I would be able to do the legal analysis, but my main concern was being able to spot the issues. So I placed a lot of focus on reviewing as many essays as possible using the ApproSheets to understand patterns and trends, rather than writing out a lot of essays.”
(Christian is correct that issue identification is the most important part of an essay.)
💬 “The only area where this strategy didn’t work was with the performance test. The performance test gave me a lot of anxiety for some reason and instead of leaning into that, I shied away from it. On the bar exam itself I ended up running out of the time on the PT — I’d highly recommend you take time to do multiple timed PTs, even if you issue spot most of your other essays.”
(Everybody gangsta until the PT shows up… DON’T SLEEP ON IT)
Still, in the end, what Christian did was way better than sitting through a course and ending up not knowing how to answer any questions.
💬 “By the end of my studying, I did around 2,300 MBE questions and cooked about 70-80 essays. I can’t recommend the MagicSheets and ApproSheets enough — I don’t think I would have passed without them!”
I share these various study methods to show you the possibilities. Your prep doesn’t need to be perfect, as long as you’re conscious about your decisions and learn what you need to. I will always support your decision to do things consciously, not just whatever I say or whatever the course says.
I want to empower you with the ability to trust yourself. Can you trust yourself?
