Brian, Author at Make This Your Last Time

May 11, 2021June 15, 2023 - No Comments

3 Strategies I Used as a Repeater to Study for the Bar Exam: Fight for Simplicity!

I went on a Zoom call to discuss how to study for the bar exam. If you’re just starting out, you may be lost on what the right way to do this all is.

So I distilled three key strategies from what I did differently to pass the California Bar Exam on my second attempt. These are applicable to all jurisdictions and whether you’re taking a bar exam for the first time or you’re a repeater.

Here’s the recording (volume/quality warning):

Slides (with links and coupons)

Giveaway link (enter by 11:59 PM PT on Thurs, May 20, 2021)

Writeup & timestamps below…

February 4, 2021November 6, 2022 - 2 Comments

How Stan Finally Passed the Bar Exam Using Proven Bar Preparation Strategies (Anyone Can Do This!)

I recently had a back-and-forth with Stan, yet another reader who passed the (online/remote) 2020 October California Bar Exam on his 5th try.

When I asked to showcase his incredible personal journey, Stan offered to rewrite his emails into a more comprehensive story with approaches he discovered, his realizations, and specific study tips to help others join him beyond the bar.

Some of my favorite impressions among many:

✅ Respecting the exam is important but so is enjoying the process

✅ Practice as if it were the real thing. Do the real thing as if it were practice—with confidence

✅ Bar prep doesn’t have to be expensive

✅ Use the right approach to focus on what’s important

✅ The mental aspect (discipline, grit, fear, and doubt) can be what hinders you more than anything

Enough about my impressions. It’s time for yours. Here’s Stan’s story on what he did to finally pass the bar exam.

No substantive edits made except adding relevant links and [comments in brackets] and writing out some abbreviations.

One for Five: How I Finally Passed the Bar Exam

After I told Brian about my journey to passing the Oct 2020 California bar exam, he was gracious enough to offer me a chance to share my story on his blog. I discovered Brian’s website by searching stories on how people passed the exam. I’d bet that’s pretty common.

Before we get into my story, please know my only intent is to show you if I can pass, you absolutely can too. I’m not special, nor am I looking for credit or praise of any kind. I’m just an ordinary guy from LA who took the bar exam five times, dealing with life along the way.

Everyone’s journey to passing the bar is unique. What worked for me might not necessarily work for you. But I would bet a quality everyone needs is discipline. My story is a cautionary tale of why discipline should always be where bar prep starts and ends.

The October 2020 California bar exam was my fifth attempt, but I was finally ready to pass. Let me tell you why you should never think you’re not smart enough or good enough to pass, or that it must not be meant for you.

January 27, 2021February 18, 2023 - 2 Comments

I Accidentally Convinced Someone to Never Take the Bar Exam Again

After results for the 2020 October California Bar Exam came out, my inboxes were flooded with over 100 messages and DMs.

I individually responded to almost all of those over the course of a week and a half. It’s part of a post-mortem ritual that involves celebrating my community’s wins, greeting new readers and followers, and commiserating with the reality some have to face.

One of the messages was from Tracy, who was completely overwhelmed as she planned to take the next exam (text version below):

January 23, 2021January 24, 2021 - 4 Comments

Be a Producer, Not a Consumer

Reading outlines. Reading sample answers. Memorizing.

All good things to do. But that’s simply being a consumer. It feels like progress.

Being merely familiar with something or being able to recognize it—even being able to recite a rule statement—doesn’t mean you can USE it.

Just because you love reading books or watching videos doesn’t mean you’re going to make a good creative. You have to keep putting work out there under the eyes of scrutiny.

Can you recall the issues and rules?
Can you pick out the correct answer (for the right reason)?
Can you identify all the relevant issues by looking at a fact pattern?
Can you organize an answer for an essay or a performance test?
Can you write out an answer in time?

That’s being a producer. That’s what you’ll do on the bar exam. That’s what the bar exam will ask you to do: to know HOW TO USE your knowledge to solve problems.

Consuming only prepares you to do the work that matters. It’s not the main thing to focus on.

It’s harder to test yourself with a question, take way longer than it should, and realize you don’t know how to answer it.

That’s what preparation is for… so that doesn’t happen while you’re on the hot seat.

Be a producer. Don’t just stand there. Give it a try now.

December 12, 2020October 15, 2023 - 2 Comments

My 5 Rules for Passing the MBE

The MBE is probably the lever that will move your bar exam result the most.

Yet we see that training when it comes to the MBE is sometimes shoddy and not really there. We LOOK like we’re trained, and you very may well be, but the actual exam experience is different from the simulations.

When you’re actually on the hotseat, you’re automatically less good at the things you’re normally good at on a day-to-day basis.

"I did 4000 questions on AdaptiBar and was 72% overall, so I'm confused on what I need to do better for my MBE."

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

I don’t want you to find out that you actually weren’t training well as you fall to its level on the real thing. Instead, I want you to pass the MBE (and the bar exam) with flying colors.

To that end, here are my five rules for passing the MBE: