Bar Exam Preparation
Bar exam takers have passed using Barbri.
They’ve passed using Themis.
They’ve even passed using Kaplan Bar Review… And this is despite all the shit I talk about Kaplan because they’re like Olive Garden trying to be everything which ends up being bland and giving you diarrhea. Just look at how many fucking tests they prep for LOL
Continue reading “Don’t obsess over the “best” bar exam supplement. Be the BEST STUDENT instead.”Surprise, surprise… Barbri doesn’t work for everyone. As a foreign-trained Australian attorney, James needed a way to get a handle on the sheer volume of material and become skilled at USING it.
To do that, he also needed to understand the bar exam in the first place because there were differences in legal practice in Australia and in the U.S.
He then passed the 2022 July California Bar Exam and put together a thorough write-up in collaboration with me, linked below.
This is a rare opportunity to dive DEEP into the mind of a recent bar taker. He drops many gems on what worked for him, with commentary by me such as:
One of my readers put it this way: ‘Make the bar exam process work with your learning style, not the other way around.’“
But enough about me. This is about celebrating and empowering bar takers like you to overcome this hurdle.
My breakdown and James’s full story below:
Continue reading “How an Australian Lawyer Passed the California Bar Exam Despite the Sheer Overwhelm”Back when I first took the bar exam in 2013—
Wow, where did the time FLY? This is getting depressing already.
Anyway, I was able to write these beautiful rule statements. Something out of a treatise. Flowing with prose fit to be in a presidential speech. Baroque music in the background. Some renaissance shit.
What’s really depressing is that despite my perfectly memorized (and perfectly recited) rules, they were still mostly useless.
Ask the average bar taker, “Where do you want to be in February/July/exam time?” And that’s the dream they have—to have the “black letter law” memorized perfectly.
They chase after knowledge over experience and intuition. Mere exposure and familiarity over understanding.
Memorizing rules is important for sure! But memorizing the rules is merely the cost of admission. What’s the real goal here?
Not just knowing the law but knowing how to use the law.
Continue reading “Why Bar Takers Can’t Remember What They Need To”I want to talk about dreams.
The world is changing, and so must we. We can’t stay the same and can’t pretend everything else will stay the same.
Changing means not staying complacent.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” —Charles Darwin paraphrased
Do our dreams have to change? Your dream of becoming an attorney doesn’t have to change… BUT how you get there might have to.
Continue reading “dreams of becoming an attorney”To pass the California Bar Exam, you need an overall scaled score of 1390.
That could look like a scaled score of 1390 for the written portion and 1390 for the MBE. These are generally referred to as “passing scores” since they put you on track to pass.
But how do the raw scores on your essays and PT convert to scaled scores? What do you need for a “passing score” for an essay or PT?
In answering those questions, it turns out there’s quite a sensitive correlation between the written raw scores and the written scaled score.
That is to say, EACH 5-point uptick gets you MUCH closer to passing the California Bar Exam. In fact, if your written score is in the low/mid 1300s, you’re MUCH closer to passing than you might think.
Here’s how…
Continue reading “This Formula Shows the Importance of Each 5-Point Increment on the California Bar Exam”