How Adam Added 140 Points on the CA Bar Exam (But What Cost Him the Pass?)

Adam took the February 2026 California Bar Exam for the second time.

Starting with an overall score of 1201, Adam closed a 140-point gap between July 2025 and February 2026. That’s a remarkable jump by any measure.

He did this as a foreign-trained lawyer with zero prior knowledge of U.S. law, no commercial bar prep course, and roughly two months of prep.

If you did the math, you’ll have noticed that he didn’t pass this time… His February total score of 1341 was 50 points away from the pass score of 1390.

This is the 75^th installment of Fire-up Friday, but it’s the very first one where I’m featuring a non-passing attempt.

Why?

Defeat is fodder for your next victory. We ought to document both what worked and what didn’t work.

Adam’s story isn’t over yet. This is just part 1. He’s coming back for the rest of his points in July.

In the meantime, we get to find out what worked for his second attempt, and what he could do differently for this third.

There are insights we can glean from Adam’s mistakes and improvements. He has graciously allowed me to share his painful story. And he must have done SOMETHING right to go from 1201 to almost passing.

(Hint: Passing is easily achievable for Adam from here on. A 50-point gap in California is smaller than you think.)

Resources Adam used to gain 140 points on the California Bar Exam

Here are his July 2025 and February 2026 score reports:

What can you glean from this?

1) Pay close attention to the performance test (PT)

There are many reasons the PT is the most overlooked way to add points to your bar exam score.

• It’s a skill-based task that doesn’t require any pre-knowledge. Locked in once learned, like swimming.
• It’s a leveraged and concentrated source of points that’s worth more than you think.
• You get one shot at it (two on the UBE).

And on top of that, you KNOW the PT is going to show up, unlike the essay subjects people obsessively and fruitlessly try to predict.

It’s the lowest hanging fruit you could pluck from the tree. Unfortunately, it’s the reason I see for so many almost-passing scores when it’s not taken seriously until the last two weeks (or ever).

Adam already knew this because we’d spoken throughout his prep. In fact, Adam was scoring pretty well when self-grading his practice essays and PTs (according to AI).

His raw ability was there. So were the writing chops he’d built and improved over two prep cycles and from his experience as a foreign-trained lawyer.

But Adam’s PT score barely moved.

It’s possible that he became too reliant on his prior experience as a lawyer, and took the PT for granted and chose to focus more on the essays.

It’s possible that he took to heart the scores provided by AI based on some unknown rubric. You must treat AI like a stranger offering candy, questioning it before going along with it.

And he made the biggest avoidable mistake bar takers make on the PT: running out of time (and endurance on the two MPTs for the UBE).

(I cover this in my PT Cheat Sheet, PT Toolkit, and Passer’s Playbook. So I’m urging you to take steps to prevent this.)

a) The bar exam doesn’t care about your work experience

In high school, I got my ass kicked in a tournament by someone lower ranked than me. I’d felt smug because of my “credential.”

If you’re foreign-trained, a practicing attorney, or coming in with substantive legal work on your resume, yes, you do have a head start.

Lawyers tend to do better on PTs because they write like a lawyer (and worse on essays because they don’t write like a bar taker). But don’t rest on your laurels.

Knowing how to write a brief to a judge =/= knowing how to take the bar exam.

b) Consider reordering essays and PT (CA only)

You don’t have to answer the questions in the default order. Tackling the PT first in the afternoon is one way to manage your time and energy.

(Same with the morning session; e.g., you could start with PR, your best subject, or hardest subject while you’re fresh.)

You can occasionally miss an issue and make up a rule in an essay. That’s nowhere near as bad as submitting an incomplete PT that answers half the assignment. A half-finished PT you scramble to put lipstick on when you’re tired in the afternoon is hard to recover from. Wouldn’t you rather sacrifice 5 points for missing a rule than getting a 50 on the PT?

A complete sketch > an incomplete masterpiece (on essays too).

That’s Adam being honest about the single decision that cost him another 6 months of his life and the pass we both looked forward to.

The bar exam has a way of forcing you to accept the brutal reality gripping your very soul.

But once you know the truth, you can fix it.

2) Effort and practice scores don’t guarantee results

Adam’s MBE numbers going into February were the strongest part of his prep. He was consistently above 80% on AdaptiBar across all subjects. He got a scaled MBE score of 1392 on the actual exam.

Did this reflect his proficiency directly? Adam noticed discrepancies.

80% on AdaptiBar is an enviable position. It shows that you understand the material and the patterns. It is not a guarantee of what you‘ll score on exam day. The conditions are different. The pressure is different. The question pool is mostly fresh.

Know that the exam will throw you off—whether you get a weird question that makes you go WTF, bad proctors, lunch breaks where you get lost around the area, loud noises keeping you up when you’re trying to sleep, etc.

On the actual exam, expect to be about 70% as good as practice. I’m not saying you will be, but account for that possibility.

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.”—Archilochus

Get 120% as good in practice to be above that 70% in reality. Practice performance is a good but not perfect indicator of exam performance.

It was similar on the written side. Adam felt ready going in based on his practice performance.

The actual scores were mixed. The 70 on PR Essay 3 was great (his answer here). Others landed lower. The PT, of course, was the big hole we identified above.

This is not a reason to stop practicing or to distrust your scores. Practice scores are still the best indicator you have and tell you what you’re capable of. But it doesn‘t mean results are guaranteed.

3) How to gain 140 points on the California Bar Exam

You don’t get to add such serious points on the California Bar Exam by accident. Let’s get some insights into what Adam did RIGHT.

a) Anchor your strengths

By early February, he’d worked on over 2,200 MBE questions on AdaptiBar, and the MBE turned into his strength.

His weakest subject (Civ Pro) was above 70%. His NCBE Complete Practice Exam came back at 73%.

Adam made solid gains that carried the bulk of his score. Without this foundation, he wouldn’t have come so close to passing.

b) Active engagement with model answers

Adam was engaged critically with the model answers until he could find their flaws.

(Especially important when going through past PR questions, where model answers may reference outdated ethics rules.)

There’s a version of bar prep where people read sample answers, nod, and move on. But this part is where most of the learning happens.

I explain this here and draw an extremely crude arrow that represents how much time to spend on passive stuff, practice, and reviewing and getting feedback.

c) Get things wrong, and then get feedback

Adam scored poorly on the written section on his first attempt.

He focused on fixing that the second time around: Daily essay outlining and writing. Daily PT outlines. Creating short hypotheticals. Using AI for rapid feedback and revision.

I don’t have enough data to defensibly say AI will help you with exact diagnoses, but the benefit Adam got was being able to get feedback and study its recommendations faster and get more reps in → turn the flywheel faster → create an uptrend in his scores and competence → confidence. (It’s NOT confidence → get better!)

Notice how Adam really immersed himself with the writing process. He turned the prism to see the essays from different angles. He always made sure to get some kind of feedback. He used tools at his disposal to get constant feedback. This is how you learn.

Does this contradict what I said about AI above?

No, like with any tool, you can use it judiciously without depending on it to give you a magic indication that you’ll pass.

There’s a tendency for people to optimize based on just one thing. “If I just do THIS, then I’ll be set.” You can hold two ideas without going all in on one.

As a result, Adam’s essay scores went up significantly in February.

d) Optimism, curiosity, and enjoying the process

How was Adam able to do all of the above?

Adam treated prep as something to enjoy, not endure and suffer through. He had a baseline curiosity about the work itself.

This one matters more than it sounds. It’s how you get sustainable motivation and momentum. It’s how Adam kept the consistent reps going and stayed optimistic.

💬 “My first attempt was finished with disappointment. But I got to know the pattern of CBX and laid a foundation for the 13 subjects, which were totally new to me at the beginning of my bar prep.”

Burnout is real and can kill otherwise productive prep cycles. Stewing in frustration is unproductive. If it’s not fun, you can enjoy not having fun.

e) More than the bare minimum

In early January, Adam flew to Miami to sit for the NCBE NextGen beta test.

He didn’t need to, especially while he was busy with his own prep. The results here weren’t going to count toward his February exam score whatsoever.

Do you ever hear phrases like these?

“I don’t need to.”
“I don’t owe them anything.”
“Why do I have to?” 

👆 words of someone trying to get away with the bare minimum

Why do less when you could do more? Why couldn’t you be the one to do it?

Adam reaped the benefits from proactively doing those extra things he technically didn’t have to do.

He got more exposure to different question types and exam conditioning. This was part of his preparation.

He also took the MPRE in November cold, with two weeks of prep, and scored 114.

He religiously read and responded to every newsletter I sent.

These are NOT the actions of someone simply going through the motions. He was actively engaged in his own rescue.

“He still didn’t pass!”

Breakthroughs are made when you see for yourself what’s actually possible. The point of this deep dive is to show you that.

And actually he went to “didn’t pass” from “couldn’t pass.”

• He got a second read, meaning his score was in the borderline range where graders couldn’t be confident. Some of the people you see passing and suddenly writing LinkedIn thought pieces got scores rounded up. You just don’t see it because they ended up above 1390.
• How many people can claim that they went from 1107 to 1290 on the written side, and 1295 to 1392 on the MBE side, at the same time? This is not by accident.
• Taking two more attempts to pass was still within expectations. This was an uphill battle.

What would you do if you were starting with a 1201?

Most people in that position are frozen in place from the overwhelming disadvantage they start with.

Course correct over time

Adam’s score went up by 140 points because he made meaningful changes in his prep strategy and throughout his prep.

He didn’t just do what he did on his first attempt. Some repeaters go through the same course that got them where they are. You will repeat history if you do the same thing again and expect a different result.

Now Adam gets to keep what he’s earned.

Now Adam has data that pinpoints the exact holes to patch next time. This is something first-timers can also do via repeated attempts and failing NOW.

Now you have another example of what works and what doesn’t.

We’ll be back in November with part two of Adam’s story… and maybe yours.

Reflection email from Adam