Stories of transformation
Real stories from bar exam takers who decided to DO IT and move on with their life
Are you next?
Rather than give you platitudes, I want to show you indisputable PROOF you can do it.
Here are some examples to help you audit your beliefs and turn your pessimism into optimism.
Scroll to stories from California / UBE / Elsewhere
Jinnyi
Passed the 2020 February California Bar Exam (26.8% pass rate, the lowest on record)
- Attempts: California Bar Exam 2 times
- Weakness: Essays ("I did not even know how to START any essays")
- Unique challenge: Mental and emotional insecurities, panic, doubts. Drained by big bar course
Drew
Passed the 2021 February California Bar Exam (Attorneys' Exam)
- Attempts: California Attorneys' Exam 2 times
- Weakness: Essays and PTs, doing the mental work
- Unique challenge: Working full time with parental responsibilities
“I honestly felt like Kaplan was making me dumber and I was just wasting my time. . . . I was able to find a more effective plan that ultimately DID indeed work for me.”
“Essentially, I think I was trying to minimize brain damage, though not passing turned out to be far more brain damage than going through the pain up front.”
Doreen
Passed the 2022 February California Bar Exam
(33.9% pass rate)
After preparing for 6 weeks
- Attempts: California Bar Exam 2 times. February 2021 (sitting remotely), February 2022
- Weakness: Essays, getting enough memorization done, learning the black letter law in enough detail, and practicing essays (“practicing essays was a struggle from start to finish”)
- Unique challenge: ADHD, major anxiety when it comes to studying, being a night owl
“I don’t think I passed this bar … just [being] realistic”
“I will probably take it again in July, and I will be using your methods and materials again”
“I was completely prepared to treat it like a practice exam, learn from my mistakes, etc.”
Stan
Passed the 2020 October California Bar Exam
(first online/remote administration)
- Attempts: California Bar Exam 5 times
- Weakness: Select subjects
- Unique challenge: Financial difficulties, average background, mental/emotional/ego fatigue, conquering inner demons, middle of pandemic
Lars
Passed the 2018 July California Bar Exam (40% pass rate)
- Attempts: California Bar Exam 2 times
- Weakness: Essays
- Unique challenge: Foreign attorney (Canadian), not used to closed-book exams, worked full time
“If you have the will, resources that work for you, and discipline, you can pass. You just have to be ready for it.”
“I came to the understanding I wanted to be able to have gone through . . . enough practice essays for every topic that there wouldn’t be anything that blindsided me.”
Samantha
Passed the 2018 July California Bar Exam (40% pass rate)
- Attempts: California Bar Exam 3 times
- Weakness: MBE
- Unique challenge: Caretaker duties, non-accredited school with 9% chance of passing, worked full time
Tom
Passed the 2018 July California Bar Exam after MANY attempts
- Attempts: California Bar Exam ## times (he wanted to keep the number between us)
- Weakness: Essays, MBE, Performance Tests
- Unique challenge: Many-time repeater, took a year off, worked full time, dad duties
“I studied less this time than I did the other two times, but I studied smarter.”
“Every moment that I was using, I’m asking myself: Am I doing something that’s helping me prepare?”
Notice that most of these passers DIDN'T have the most time.
It wasn't about spending the most time… but studying more EFFICIENTLY and EFFECTIVELY.
Ready to do the same?
UBE Stories
Joe
Passed the 2018 July Kansas Bar Exam (UBE)
Attempts: Kansas Bar Exam 1 time
Weakness: Essays (MEEs)
Unique challenge: Essay topics that were new to him, started preparation with 7 weeks to go
“I really wasn’t pulling together essays until after I spent a lot of time, specifically with your Approsheets. I did that for most of the essay subjects, especially the ones that I didn’t have any contact with, and I really saw myself picking up a lot more issues that way and scoring a lot higher. After that, I think that’s when I finally, finally started to feel like there’s a chance I was gonna pull it off.”
Other Stories
Samantha
Passed the 2018 July Georgia Bar Exam
Attempts: Georgia Bar Exam 1 time
Weakness: MBE
Unique challenge: Mom duties, worked full time, 30% chance of passing
“I don’t learn by watching lectures all day. I didn’t learn like that in law school, at any point in my life did I learn like that. So why would I do that for the most important test in my life?”
Still want more success stories?
Scroll to see some non-traditional students and how they pulled it off
- Maureen: 63 years old, slow typer, no big-box prep course. She passed the 2018 February California Bar Exam on her second try (27.3% pass rate).
- Siarra: Canadian applicant who passed the 2021 February California Bar Exam on her second try after believing that she could pass without a traditional commercial program.
- Akshay: Realized his childhood dream by passing the 2020 February California Bar Exam on his second try (26.8% pass rate).
- "Kevin": Took the California Attorneys' Exam three times unsuccessfully, until he stopped writing like a lawyer and started writing like a bar taker.
- Anonymous: A foreign-trained LLM who took the New York Bar Exam five times after persevering and steadily increasing her scores until she passed.
- Plato: A non-native English speaker passed the 2019 February California Bar Exam bar on his first try without using a big-box prep course (31.4% pass rate).
- Valerio: Foreign attorney with LLM who passed the 2018 July California Bar Exam, the exam with the lowest recorded pass rate for July (40.7%).
- Rana: “Not everyone is at the top of the class . . . I had to step away from what I was ‘supposed’ to do, to what I actually NEEDED.” Passed the 2018 February California Bar Exam, 27.3% pass rate.
- Ashleigh: A repeater of the California Bar Exam who passed the 2019 July exam by playing to her own strengths. One trick she used was to do the Performance Test first in the afternoon portion of the written day.
- Naoki: Member of the Japanese bar (3% passage rate). Non-native speaker. Never went to an American law school. Worked full time. Passed the 2017 July California Bar Exam.
- Marlow: Studied while working 40+ hours a week. He "doesn't do well on standardized tests," and it had been years since graduating law school… and he passed the UBE with flying colors.
- "A": Repeater who passed the 2017 February California Bar Exam (34.5% pass rate) while working full time.
- Karrie: Mother of four children, learned the law all over again three years after graduating from an unaccredited school. Improved by 130 points to pass the California Bar Exam on her second attempt by studying smart, not just hard.
- Camille: Second-time passer of the California Bar Exam. She used different strategies over the course of a year, such as getting study buddies who were committed to her success and using modern tools to create much-needed alone time.
- Barry: Third timer, a foreign lawyer from Ireland. Focused on the MBE, his weak area, to pass the Texas Bar Exam.
- Kathleen: 49-year-old mother with English as her second language. Tried various resources and techniques and implemented what worked for her on the California Bar Exam.
- Jennifer: Cut through the fear and closed a 150-point deficit as a "threepeater" of the California Bar Exam.
- Steph: Was in prison for 32 years, had to learn how to use a smartphone and the Internet, and closed a 150-point gap to pass the California Bar Exam as a second timer.
Want to join their ranks?
If you’re serious about passing the bar exam, I've shown you PROOF that it's possible for anyone, with hard work and smart work.
It’s not all doom and gloom. This isn’t unrealistic. It’s easy to let pass rates take the blame, but plenty of people do pass.
And you can be one of them—if you make it a priority.
Don’t shy away from success.
“If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it.”—Scott Adams
I'm offering these tools so that you can become another success story instead of another statistic: