N’s internal struggles were as much of an obstacle to his journey to passing the February 2026 California Bar Exam as the usual challenges of passing the bar exam.
My body began to shake, my heart pumped out of my chest, my brain stopped working, I started hyperventilating.”
He dealt with panic attacks dating back to his first LSAT attempt, and they didn’t stop.
To make things worse, he was devastated by the results of the July 2025 exam. He hit emotional rock bottom.
As you could imagine, the weekend the results were released, I went through a range of emotions. Anger. Sadness. Denial. Apathy. Disappointment. Bitterness. Jealousy. Grief. The list goes on. And so does life.
So, I went to work on Monday, kept my head down, and threw myself into work to distract myself from the pain.”
By the time N saw the word “Pass” on his screen in February 2026, 5.5 years had passed since he first sat down to study for the LSAT.
N sent me a 13-page document detailing his struggles, the mistakes from his first attempt, and what changed in this second attempt. (I’ll link you the full story below, including his top 10 insights.)
How did N pass the California Bar Exam despite his conditions affecting his test-taking abilities? What happens when you design your studies rather than following defaults out of fear?
- Quick stats
- Resources N used to pass the California Bar Exam
- Classic novice bar taker mistakes
- Transformation to a passer
- You might be missing out on a lot of learning opportunities
- Being the dean of his own studies
- Your attitude is how you stay motivated
- Exam day: Scoop up as many points as you can, even in incomprehensible situations
- The Game
- Full story
Quick stats
Jurisdiction: California
Attempts: 2
Scores: 1346 → pass
Strength: Multiple choice (MBE)
Weakness: Essays
Unique challenges: Persistent panic attacks and other health conditions dating back to the LSAT
Resources N used to pass the California Bar Exam
💬 “I appreciated that the Magicsheets were only five to six pages at most. This length is much more manageable and helpful than the hundreds of pages provided by Barbri!”
💬 “I found the Approsheets helpful when reviewing my essay outlines to ensure I understood the analytical flows for each legal area and the subtopics within each area.”
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💬 “I used essay prompts from past bar exams via BarEssays.com and then would actually take the time to compare my answers to other students’ answers. Typically, I pulled the top-scoring essays as my guide to challenge myself to work through every issue within each essay.”
If something doesn’t work, try something different instead of hoping for different results.
After failing in July, N spent some time sitting with the result, then went looking for what to do differently. He found Make This Your Last Time while researching how other repeat examinees had passed the bar exam.
You don’t ask Brad Pitt for dating advice. You ask someone who was in pain and had to learn.
What did N do differently between his two attempts?
Before (July 2025):
- Used Barbri’s basic bar prep program and AdaptiBar
- Fixated on Barbri’s daily assigned tasks
- Avoided timed, closed-book essays for most of the prep period
- Burned out
After (February 2026):
- Dropped Barbri
- Prioritized active studying
- Targeted specific weak topics and subtopics instead of mixed review
- Reframed attitude from “I have to” to “I get to”
- Wrote or outlined 100+ essays and answered 2,200 MBE questions
Classic novice bar taker mistakes
N’s July bar prep was full of the usual first-timer problems.
Over the first few weeks, I did my best every day to hit 8 to 9 hours of “studying” per Barbri’s definition of “studying.” This “studying” involved watching the aforementioned video lectures, taking notes, reading outlines (the longest outlines in the world haha), writing essays, outlining essays, and answering Barbi’s multiple-choice questions.”
This seemed productive because he focused on empty metrics.
It feels nice and easy at first. But it eventually caught up to him.
There’s nothing wrong with using the course to get the lay of the land. The problem is when you stay stuck in this consumption mode instead of using it as a trampoline to do what locks in the knowledge and skills to produce a complete answer with nothing in front of you but the question. Be a producer, not a consumer.
Transformation to a passer
Behind every transformation is a process.
This made a HUGE difference in my preparation. It stunk at first, but I found that opting to do more closed-book and timed studying revealed my weaknesses while forcing me to engage with the process of bar preparation more strategically and find joy in incremental gains.”
N increased his rep count as well.
At the end of this bar prep, I felt more confident heading into the bar exam than I did the first time. I felt I had made the most of my bar prep period, I had overcome a lot of the anxiety I had experienced around the exam (particularly with the essay and PT sections) by practicing how to perform under timed, closed-book conditions.”
See that?
You don’t get confident first and then competent second. You become confident second as a result of competence first, which comes from repetition and understanding what comes next. It accumulates one closed-book rep at a time.
Doesn’t this already sound a lot more exciting than wasting hours sitting through a program and retaining nothing?
You might be missing out on a lot of learning opportunities
You might think you’re doing a lot. You get exhausted and feel productive from taking notes and noticing how much the sun has moved. But in reality, you might be spinning your wheels and digging yourself deeper, trapped in an illusion of action as the days tick away.
For his first attempt, N followed Barbri’s daily assignments and measured his progress based on the completion bar.
N got a wake-up call from his humbling first attempt. The strongest motivation often comes from a catalyst moment like that (which I also experienced). Transformation requires pain.
Many students take the bar exam more seriously only after a devastating failure strips away their ego. Sometimes it takes more than one failure until all ego is removed (like Adam who added 140 points on his second attempt but is on his third attempt after taking some things for granted).
Someone who goes through the motions might end up passing but probably isn’t someone I’d consider a serious student. Someone who hasn’t failed may not know what “beyond failure” looks like.
Now you’re catching a glimpse of how a course is simply a tutorial. It sets you up for the game ahead.
The important question isn’t how many questions you should do or how much of the course to complete, because then you’ll just optimize around that number.
Instead of blasting through in pursuit of the number, why not deeply analyze your work? Spend at least as much time reviewing your work as doing the work. (There are efficiency techniques like essay cooking to double your essay practice output.)
This means you have to start developing trust in yourself and take ownership over your studies instead of getting fixated on arbitrary numbers from Barbri and Themis. If you spend all your time on the tutorial, you won’t have time to beat the rest of the game.
Again, it’s not wrong to use a course. But when
you’re on auto-pilot and not conscious about what you’re doing,
or you feel like you’re not learning the material,
or you’re doing things out of fear, doubt, uncertainty, or overwhelm,
or you don’t want to face your weaknesses,
pause.
Audit the things you’re doing. Your ego is blocking you from pursuing your truth.
Ironically, you might be missing out on a lot of gains by following the course exactly out of FOMO.
Traditional courses never tell you to surgically target your weak topics. They don’t because the course is built for the lowest-common denominator. By definition, they can’t cater your personal needs. A plan built around your personal needs gets you further than a plan built for everyone else.
That’s why you must take ownership over your studies (and if needed, chart your own path away from the default).
Being the dean of his own studies
A bar review course is merely a supplement to your self-study. If you understand that, then you’ll be free of the need to cling onto and follow it exactly as if it were a bomb-defusal manual.
After his first failure, N made some changes that aided and abetted his learning. First up: finding his weakness.
Condensed reference materials replaced 100+ page outlines for efficient daily review.
Armed with the data, he implemented an active regimen using tools that kept him light on his feet.
First, I found transferring PT practice from Saturday/Sunday to Tuesday was incredibly beneficial because I was more energized earlier in the week than over the weekend.”
(This is recommended in the PT Cheat Sheet and the PT Toolkit.)
You could argue that he didn’t have to watch the videos since he had one whole attempt to go through them already (months ago btw).
You could argue that he already got a decent score (44 points away from passing) so there wasn’t a huge gap.
Sort of. The point is that passive review alone doesn’t stick whether you do it once or do it again. Trying to solve one essay on contract formation + studying a strong answer can teach you more than listening to someone sing about the mailbox rule. The point is that you’d have a better chance of passing whether you’re 44 or 150 points away. There’s no reason to argue when you could be doing the same.
Everything you do during prep should answer: Am I learning how to answer questions correctly?
Your attitude is how you stay motivated
N admits he’s not a naturally positive person. That’s basically a job requirement for lawyers. He was already ready to practice law!
But he reframed it to something that wasn’t going to make him hate his life. In fact, he enjoyed the experience. Joy is the secret ingredient to productivity.
Treat the prep as something you get to do, and you can sustain more of your motivation (and momentum).
This was especially important for N who had been prone to panic attacks since his LSAT days. While his coping routines got him through tests, they never addressed what was driving the anxiety.
His isolation during his first prep attempt didn’t help…
This is what overly rigid structures imposed by a scary bar review course (or your own fears making you follow them) do to you!
You lock yourself in and think all you have to do is the tasks and complete the course and you’ll pass. This is a very common and misguided line of thinking that they won’t admit until it’s late in the process (sometimes too late).
For his second attempt, N built social contact back into the schedule.
Once again, be the dean of your own studies. This could mean following the course if it’s the kind of structure you need. This could mean deviating from the course if you know it’s not for you.
“You mean you can *gulp* CHANGE the schedule…they…give you?”
Yeah man, this isn’t prison. It’s not set in stone.
The schedule works for you, not the other way around. I’ve shown you many examples of this on the blog and in Passer’s Playbook.
Fixating on useless metrics even after realizing it’s not for you is pure insanity and—to be blunt—the wrong approach. The bar exam doesn’t give you extra points for completing a course.
Do what you can to calm yourself because the nerves may not fully disappear. Even if you have to roam the streets on the edge of sanity.
If all fails, you have backup options A & B: adrenaline and bullshit.
Exam day: Scoop up as many points as you can, even in incomprehensible situations
Exam day rarely goes according to script even on a second attempt. Something will go wrong. An issue you’ve never seen. Getting lost during lunch time. Not getting sleep.
It might even feel worse than the first time since now you know more about what you didn’t know. That’s why “confidence” isn’t an accurate way to tell if you passed or not. It’s often the overconfident who get humbled harder.
That said, you’ll have more tools the more you’re prepared. The more nimble you get at crisis management.
Despite all this, I knew I had put in the time and hard work to have a shot of passing the exam if I just managed to get through it. I was confident I could handle the pressure and nerves of the exam that day once I actually got into the exam itself.”
Unfortunately, I did not perform as well on the PT. I struggled to grasp the assignment from the file, and I couldn’t make sense of the statute included in the PT under the time constraints. Something simply wasn’t clicking for me on the PT.”
Panicking on the PT that could have been the kind of moment that ended the exam on N’s first try. This time, he remembered to salvage as many points as possible instead of chasing a perfect answer.
A complete outline is better than an incomplete masterpiece.
N’s MBE and timing training also came through.
In other words, it’s time to “be arrogant” once you’re in the hot seat. (Passer’s Playbook users can find an audio interview and notes on this.)
The Game
Along N’s 5.5-year journey from LSAT to getting his California bar license, he had to face his inner ego, face a devastating setback after making classic mistakes on his first attempt at the bar exam, and managed the panic attacks he’d carried throughout.
He had to rebuild his strategy to beat the game. But you either learn or succeed. His first failure was fodder for his next victory. As long as you use every experience as a stepping stone to figure out what works for you, passing is inevitable.