You’re staring at your bar exam registration deadline trying to come up with a game plan.
Your inbox is full of emails from Barbri, Themis, and Kaplan. “Sign up for our course to pass. Hurry!!!”
Then you see the price tag.
Is this mandatory? Or is it a sales pitch?
If you think about it, there’s no big reason you must take a course. What typically happens is that prospective bar takers default toward courses on auto-pilot after exposure to three years of marketing.
This is understandable. It’s easy for law schools and employers to farm you out to one of the big courses. They’re not going to go out of their way to tell you about other options.
And it’s exciting when the first video starts playing. Time to buckle down and dive in! Yeah!! Whether you’ll end up lost and frustrated 5 weeks is another matter.
The bar exam sounds scary, and that’s exactly what they’re banking on.
Courses are a luxury option when it comes to bar review. Treat them as such.
❌ “What’s the nicest option?”
✅ “Where in this bar prep process are you going to feel stuck, and what can I use to make that part go smoother?”
❌ “Should I use Barbri or Themis?”
✅ “Should I use Barbri or Themis at all?”
The first question is like sorting by business class when shopping for plane tickets. Maybe this is how you want to travel, especially if it’s long distance or an important trip.
There are legitimate reasons some folks should buy a course. Not everyone should DIY this.
But maybe you simply weren’t aware of other options. Ones that also get you to point B more cost-efficiently (and more effectively while wasting less time).
I’m going to show you the evidence and perspectives you may not have considered so that you can decide for yourself.
- The First-Timer Advantage: 60-85% Pass Rates Regardless of Method
- The Repeater Reality
- Where Bar Review Courses Can Backfire
- The Proof: Who Passes Without Commercial Courses (Success Stories)
- When Buying a Commercial Course Makes Sense
- A) You want excellent base materials
- B) You need external structure and accountability
- C) Your learning style is auditory or visual
- D) You haven’t reviewed the material in 5+ years
- E) You learn best in groups and through discussion
- F) You want professional essay grading
- G) You want to do something about your anxiety and uncertainty about bar prep (imposter syndrome)
- How to Self-Study Successfully (One Example Framework)
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- The Decision: Commercial Bar Review Course vs. Self-Study
- Final Thought
Here’s what matters: Pass rates hold regardless of which bar prep course candidates used.
Both Barbri and Themis report pass rates in the 80-90%+ first-time pass rates, but these are self-reported figures with varying methodologies.
What’s more telling is, across various social media posts and student reviews, the common pattern is that course choice matters far less than active study habits, consistent practice, and willingness to supplement with resources that fit their needs instead of an expensive cookie-cutter approach.
People pass or fail based on their study habits, not which course or supplement they used.
The First-Timer Advantage: 60-85% Pass Rates Regardless of Method
Key Fact: First-time bar takers pass at rates of around 60-85% across jurisdictions, regardless of whether they used Barbri, Themis, or self-study. The method isn’t the needle mover.
Bar Exam Pass Rates by State (2016-2025)
What This Visual Shows:
- Blue bars: First-time takers at 60-85% pass rate range across states
- Red bars: Repeat takers at 25-71% pass rate range across states
- Average pass rate for first-timers at 74%
- Average pass rate for repeaters at 53%
Notice the 21-point gap between first-timers and repeaters on average. The gap between first-timers and repeaters is consistent across all jurisdictions. Your exam attempts matter far more than which course you buy or which state you sit for.
If you’re taking the bar exam for the first time, you’re statistically likely to pass no matter what—whether you’re in a lower-performing state (< 70% pass rate) or a higher-performing state (> 80%).
First-time takers likely graduated recently and just spent three years in law school learning the material. They just need to do targeted review and practice instead of “going to school” again.
You could argue that most people pass on their first try because they take a course. But what about the repeaters who also take the course? Is it the resource they use or their study habit?
The Repeater Reality
Not all is lost for repeaters.
In fact, I believe repeaters actually have a better chance of passing than first-timers because repeaters aren’t starting from scratch. They’re starting from experience.
Repeaters tend to stay repeaters because they don’t change their approach.
Key Fact: Repeat takers pass at 25-71% nationally, roughly 14-35 points lower than first-timers across jurisdictions. This rate is consistent whether they take a $3,000 course or use self-study.
Why?
A repeater’s problem usually isn’t access to information. They already took the exam. They know what content exists.
Rather than “not knowing the law,” they’re in a situation where they can’t focus on bar prep, they don’t understand a specific area deeply enough, they can’t write essays fast enough or clearly enough, or they have gaps in their strategy. Often times, it’s because they’re playing defense instead of going on offense with their prep.
A commercial course doesn’t fix this. Going through a course again is the WORST thing a repeater could do.
Instead, repeaters need to target their weaknesses. If they aren’t liking their essays, they need to study sample answers or get direct feedback on their writing from a tutor or coach. They need to drill the specific MBE topics that tripped them up. They need to redo questions, solve more essays to detect issue patterns, and actually prepare for the performance test. Not sit through 40 hours of lectures on subjects they already know.
The best repeaters (and first-timers) I’ve seen are the ones who trust themselves to do what they know they should do.
Often, this means they ditch their full bar review course as soon as they know it’s not working for them, sunk costs be damned. They personalize it to what works for them instead of letting some mega course dictate what they need to do.
They acquire supplements focused on their personal needs. For example:
- AdaptiBar for drilling authentic MBE questions
- Essay supplements (like BarEssays for California essays)
- Source materials that help them practice and memorize, not just re-familiarize them (mere familiarity is NOT the same as retention and knowledge accrual)
- Past exam questions and answers for essays and performance tests are free!
(Later below, I’ll show you the remarkable evidence and diversity of successful self-study candidates.)
Where Bar Review Courses Can Backfire
When you enroll in a course, you’re paying for the structure and sense of stability. The structure fills your day with assignments. Lectures fill up the time and make you feel like you learned something.
It’s a familiar routine from law school.
Self-study, by contrast, forces you to mull over what’s the work that actually matters. You can’t hide behind a schedule of lectures you “need” to get through first.
It’s the difference in this gym analogy:
To make real progress in bar prep, you have to sit down in front of an essay and see if you can identify and resolve the issues. You have to answer MBE questions and figure out what went wrong and right. You have to set aside 90+ minutes to answer a performance test assignment, painstakingly organizing the materials. It’s mental exertion.
There’s nowhere to hide from the question of what actually moves the needle. You’ll be forced to think about this question eventually, whether you take a course or not.
Yes, you do need some baseline knowledge before you dive into practice. But the mistake is staying in that passive learning mode (more on this below).
What bar takers miss is that you’re still self-studying with or without a course.
I’m not saying you definitely shouldn’t use a course (because it can still be helpful for many reasons as outlined below). But you can and should still focus on active learning even and especially while enrolled in a course. A course is simply a resource that supports your self-study, but it presents itself as something that will prepare you just by “going through it.”
The problem is that courses are mostly about “what to study.” They don’t teach you “how to learn,” nor do they prepare you to write essays or solve MBE questions under time pressure because most of the time is spent getting through the product.
It’s up to you realize (often weeks into the curriculum) that you’re not tapping into your full learning potential unless you take matters into your own hands.
Btw, “doing questions” isn’t even where the real learning happens. Practice is just like getting on the scale. You measure yourself. It’s the work you do and the patience you have between measurements that changes the reading on the scale.
The Trap of Passive Learning
Here’s something the bar prep industrial complex doesn’t advertise.
Most commercial courses are built around lectures. That’s their product. You’re paying for recorded instructor video, slick production quality, glossy pages, and structured pacing. These things feel (and can be) valuable, especially the structure.
They tell you WHAT to learn, but they don’t teach you HOW to learn, retain, and use the material.
Their emphasis around listening to lectures, reading outlines, and filling in notes SOUNDS good. They load you with lectures (passive) and assume you’ll figure out the rest on your own time. But you forget 99% of what you hear in lectures and read about in outlines anyway.
All of this is passive learning, and it’s actually rather EXHAUSTING despite being “passive.”
Your job isn’t to transcribe lectures into subtitles. Trying to wrestle with abstract, theoretical concepts is a worse use of time than using that time to apply them to various scenarios. Knowing the law is vastly different than knowing how to USE the law.
Key Fact: Effective bar prep is less about passive learning (e.g., reading outlines, listening to lectures) and more about active learning (e.g., writing essays, untangling questions, studying explanations and model answers, taking timed tests).
The bar exam tests what you can DO, not what you’ve heard about.
What’s the optimal ratio between passive and active learning?
While active learning sessions tend to produce significantly better comprehension than passive “studying,” optimal time allocation varies person to person.
In my view, passive activities are best used for foundational background knowledge and post-practice review.
- Once you have about 70% familiarity with the subject matter, you can dive into practice questions to test your knowledge.
- Once you get things wrong (you should and you will), THEN use the outlines and lectures to patch the gaps in your understanding.
This means you don’t spend days reading outlines or lecture notes. You don’t need to “know” everything before you dive in.
Instead, spend a few hours to know the structure of each subject (like how Magicsheets groups and organizes issues, rules, and nuances like exceptions). Then attempt to solve some practice questions because that’s how your body absorbs how to answer similar questions. It’s also totally fine to do this open book at first.
Most course-takers do the opposite.
They spend most of their time watching, writing subtitles for lectures, reading outlines, and other passive busy work activities. They do a bit of diagnostics here and there, and only scramble to grind practice questions and finally attempt to focus on active learning in week 7 of a stock schedule that was going nowhere. They stare at the blank sheet of paper with cold sweat, unable to put down a single word, finally realizing that they haven’t learned jack despite all that time spent sitting through lectures and paragraphs of rules.
Why waste all that time? You didn’t plan to intentionally waste time. The course was set up that way.
Bar prep, at its core, is all self-study. A course is supposed to be a TOOL YOU USE to help you do that, but it often ends up with the student serving the course, stuck in unproductive activities that FEEL like progress (check the boxes, see the meter fill up…).
The trap that many students fall into is staying stagnant in passive review, rather than moving to the deep end of the pool where you constantly test your skills.
They confuse knowing what the words mean with knowing how to use the words in answering a question. It’s like knowing the definition of a word for your 5th grade vocab test but not knowing how to use it in a sentence.
Understandably, bar takers are overwhelmed with the amount of information they (think they) need to know. It feels safer behind the books because it’s at least familiar.
But this false sense of safety, in the end, results in anxiety and lack of self-confidence. Familiarity with material on a page creates an illusion of mastery. It feels like you’ve learned something when you haven’t.
They see “tort assault” and go “oh yeah I’ve heard of that” … and then find out they can’t tell whether they should choose the battery answer choice, let alone dissect it in an essay and remember to talk about transferred intent.
This is a defensive position. And it’s a recipe for failure. This imbalance can be fixed:
Better Bar Prep Study Ratio
Effective bar prep is less about passive learning and more about active learning.
Passive Learning
- Reading outlines
- Listening to lectures
- Watching videos
- Taking notes
- Reviewing materials
Active Learning
- Writing practice essays
- Drilling MBE questions
- Taking timed exams
- Getting essay feedback
- Studying sample answers and explanations
- Analyzing mistakes
Also consider the 10-40-40-10 rule for practice and feedback:
Passive learning backfires in bar prep.
One repeater who first used Kaplan then switched to self-study told me: “I honestly felt like Kaplan was making me dumber and I was just wasting my time.”
Another passer described the experience this way: “As I progressed through the bar prep course, I realized I was only completing assignments to get the progress bar closer to the 100% complete mark. The passive learning of watching videos and reading outlines was not for me.“
The Cost: $2,000 to $3,000 Differences Add Up
A mid-tier Barbri course costs about $3,000. Themis runs $2,395 to $2,995. Kaplan is in a similar range. These are the “standard” tier options. You can pay more for elite versions with additional perks. You can get discounts in some cases.
A self-study stack might look like this:
- Outlines: $147-197
- AdaptiBar (licensed MBE questions): $365 with a discount code
- Past bar exam questions: Free
- BarEssays for real graded California essays: $175 (or start with my essay answer bank for free)
- Essay feedback (optional): $0 to $500
Approximate total: $500 to $1,200.
That’s a $1,800 to $2,500 difference.
Key Fact: You save up to $2,500 by choosing self-study. And you likely pass at the same rate (70%+ for first-timers).
Bar Prep Cost Comparison: Commercial vs Self-Study
What you actually spend
Commercial Course
Typical Includes:
- 40-60 hours of video lectures
- Structured daily schedule
- Simulated practice questions
- Essay grading
- Some real NCBE questions (higher tiers)
Self-Study Approach
Includes:
- Focused outline to mastery
- 1,350+ real NCBE questions
- Real California essay examples
- Your own schedule
- Optional professional feedback
You Save
$1,063 – $3,988 by choosing self-study
And you likely pass at the same rate (70%+ for first-timers).
What This Visual Shows:
- Left side: Full commercial course stack including base course ($2,000-$4,000) plus typical add-ons and supplements
- Right side: Self-study stack with outline, real MBE questions, and optional essay grading
- The gap: $1,000-$4,000 in savings, with no statistical difference in first-time pass rates
What could you do with these savings?
- Pay down law school debt
- Hire a tutor for targeted essay feedback
- Take a post-bar trip and reward yourself
- Build a financial cushion while you look for work
- Save it in case you need to retake the bar exam
You don’t need to spend thousands on auto-pilot to pass the bar exam.
You simply need a reference organizing issues and rules, practice questions, a way to get feedback on your work (such as sample answers), a bit of know-how, and a way to stay on track.
The things you really need cost well under $1,000. Bar prep doesn’t have to be expensive. And if you’re a first-timer, you statistically have just as good a chance of passing whether you pay for a course or not anyway.
The Proof: Who Passes Without Commercial Courses (Success Stories)
I’m going to throw a lot of names at you now.
These are real people from my platform who gave me verified stories of passing results without using a big bar course like Barbri, Themis, or Kaplan (or they gave up on them midway).
Who Passed Without a Commercial Course?
Real candidates from diverse backgrounds
Foreign-Trained Attorneys
Working Full-Time + Family
Resilience & Starting Behind
Older & Nontraditional
Years Away from Law (Long Gap)
The Pattern: If a 63-year-old, a French attorney with zero prior US law knowledge, someone who spent 32 years in prison, and a mother of four can all pass without a $3,000 course, the course isn’t what determines success. Strategy, focus, and consistent practice determine success.
What This Visual Shows:
- Foreign-trained attorneys and non-native speakers (French, Australian, Japanese, Turkish)
- Older candidates (ages 49-64)
- A 21-year-old who scored a 325 on the New York UBE
- People 5-20 years out of law school
- Candidates working full-time or a family
- First-time takers and repeat takers who stopped spinning their wheels
- People with significant life constraints, serious illnesses, and unique circumstances
Key Fact: There are 70+ documented case studies of people passing the bar exam without using a commercial bar review course. They represent 9+ countries, multiple age groups, various life circumstances, and varying levels of prior preparation.
Taking Barbri or Themis Isn’t What Determines Success
I could simply say to consider skipping the bar review course.
I could just tell you that “you’ve got this!!”
Or I could prove it with indisputable evidence from diverse groups of bar takers and empower you to believe in yourself and doing what works best for you.
The diversity is striking when you see foreign lawyers, older and younger candidates, people who worked full-time, people with families, people with health challenges, repeat takers, first-timers both confident and terrified.
What else do I need to prove that if they can do it, so can you?
The pattern is clear: Enrolling in a course isn’t prerequisite to success. And there are many different ways to reach the goal. What determines success is your strategy, focus, and consistent practice and review (whether you use or a course or not).
What seems impossible at first is actually doable. A course only slows you down from realizing this sooner because it keeps you stuck in an illusion of safety.
When Buying a Commercial Course Makes Sense
I’m not going to tell you courses are useless. That wouldn’t account for how some people really learn. I’m here to help you run the numbers and weigh the options.
Weighing the alternatives and being honest about this strengthen your decision-making for the best outcome for YOU. That doesn’t happen if you make the mistake I mentioned earlier about defaulting to a course on auto-pilot.
Here are some reasons to buy a course:
A) You want excellent base materials
The contents of a course are not only aesthetic, but they’re very good quality. The outlines they provide are comprehensive for the most part. Although different sources can diverge sometimes, you can consider them the ground truth.
I actually recommend that you have access to Barbri’s Conviser Mini Review (CMR) outline if possible. If you’re not enrolled in Barbri, you may be able to find a used copy on social media, eBay, Amazon, etc.
While Barbri’s sample essay answers are impossibly long and detailed, they’re still an excellent reference for seeing how to set up the issues. Issues are king in an essay (see my video on this).
Still, a course isn’t the only way to have good outlines and sample answers.
B) You need external structure and accountability
If you work better with a prescribed schedule and daily deadlines, if you know you’re a procrastinator and will slack without enforcement, a course provides a structure and a schedule you can at least base your studies on.
But I also think it makes more sense to create your own bar prep study schedule instead of a generic schedule. Bar review courses are still outdated in their approach of assuming everyone has the same amount of time. People from all walks of life are taking this exam.
You already know there are X number of subjects that need to be covered. Work backward from there and set up multiple cycles of review and practice.
C) Your learning style is auditory or visual
Some people do learn better from hearing or watching an engaged instructor recite the material. Lectures would be a great fit in that case.
But remember not to use that as a reason to hide behind them. You don’t HAVE to go through the entire gauntlet. Just like you don’t have to read the entire newspaper if you don’t want to. You can find specific lectures and workshops targeting subjects you personally struggle with.
D) You haven’t reviewed the material in 5+ years
If the last time you saw Contracts or Torts was your 1L final exam, a course can help you with this. A doctrinal overview in a video can be more approachable and get you oriented less painfully than trying to figure out where to start in an overwhelmingly large outline.
If you’re rusty on certain subjects, you can also review specific modules from your course instead of going through the whole thing “just in case.” If you’ve practiced contract law for the past 5 years, you might not need to spend two days taking that module.
If you haven’t been exposed to the material in years, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend starting with Magicsheets, Approsheets, or other outlines, since they assume some level of familiarity. They can instead be used later as a memorization and practice aid instead of going off nostalgic memories of a lecturer (do you remember what you ate yesterday?).
E) You learn best in groups and through discussion
There’s something to be said about the social element of trauma bonding and going through this ritual with another crab in the bucket. Almost everyone else seems to be taking a course, so why not you?
If you learn better by walking through things with peers (without getting distracted talking about Coachella), taking the same course with your friend or study group and comparing notes could help you keep each other on track.
Some platforms let you see how well you fared against other candidates on practice questions. The constant comparison might just make you more anxious, though.
F) You want professional essay grading
Courses give you access to graders who will mark up your essays/PTs and tell you what’s wrong. This is valuable.
You could also hire a tutor for this (or use a service add-on like BarEssays for California).
By the way, it’s free to learn how to IRAC and how to write bar exam essays that get high scores, and study published model answers to make continuous and incremental improvements in your essays and performance tests.
G) You want to do something about your anxiety and uncertainty about bar prep (imposter syndrome)
“Trust the process,” they say.
A course wants to hold your hand through the process. Materials introduced at the pace of the lowest common denominator. No child left behind.
If you’re anxious about the exam and want a sense of structure and control, having that psychological benefit throughout the several weeks or months of prep can matter.
The cost-benefit tradeoff of that reassurance is up to you. Again, we can weigh the options.
If you need accountability from a study group or a friend checking in on you, you can organize the same thing on your own. You might get reassurance from social media like Reddit, talking to people who’ve passed, joining or forming a study group (online or in person), or working 1 on 1 with a fellow bar taker or coach.
Key Fact: There are benefits to courses. But remember that a course is like any other supplement. It’s still a tool for you to wield consciously.
A course doesn’t plug you into the Matrix and automatically turn you into an expert just by “going through it.” There are lower-cost alternatives for those benefits as well. But when stakes are high, you can tempted to pay for the default path that others seem to take. Here’s how to use a course effectively.
What’s the right process for you? It’s whichever one helps you understand and retain the material and answer questions correctly.
Btw this is the same answer to the question: “What’s the ‘best’ bar prep supplement?”
Weigh the pros and cons, decide which fits your needs better, and MOVE. If you’ve decided to self-study, see below for what works.
How to Self-Study Successfully (One Example Framework)
If you decide to skip the fancy course, here’s what works. In fact, this is how you’d prep effectively even if you supplemented your studies with a course.
You only really need three core things for successful bar prep:
- Source materials. Outlines, flashcards, even videos, anything you can reference for the testable issues and rules.
- How-to knowledge. Raw materials are useless unless you know how to install information in your head and turn them into insights you can use on the exam. Just because you have access to bricks doesn’t mean you know masonry.
- Ability to self-motivate and the will to act. Knowledge is useless if you can’t act on it.
1. You need an outline (or two)
You need an organized reference for memorizing, practicing, and reviewing. One encyclopedic reference This will be your bread-and-butter go-to source material.
This reference should include issues and corresponding rules, nuances, exceptions, defenses, and other doctrinal principles that can be tested by a multiple-choice (MBE/MCQ) question, essay question, or integrated question set (ICQ).
Magicsheets are condensed outlines that exist for this reason. Same with other outlines. The goal is something you can read through, get the lay of the land quickly, and obtain a working knowledge of testable issues and rules.
This is the passive learning part. Read through the outline. Understand it on a surface level. Take notes. See the structure of the subject.
Then stop reading the outline. You’re done with passive learning. Don’t get stuck reading outlines over and over for days. It’s time to move on. Don’t worry. It’s also used as part of the active learning process as you review your work.
Like machine learning, constant testing, iteration, and error correction is how you do human learning. Wrong answers go down. Correct answers go up.
This is how you “learn the law,” not by memorizing some words on a page. This is exactly how 64-year-young Richard passed the UBE.
2. Attempt practice questions, and study reference answers
Practice includes MBE questions, essay questions, and performance test questions. Most people neglect PTs until later. Do NOT sleep on the PTs.
The most important part comes after, where the learning happens: Studying the model/sample/representative answers for essays and performance tests, and explanations for MBE questions. And comparing it to the practice work you just did.
MBE practice
Use AdaptiBar or UWorld for MBE practice. Both have real NCBE-licensed questions, keep track of your scores by subject and subtopic, showing you your weak areas. Both have explanations to learn from and patch holes in your understanding with. You could also pick up the more budget-friendly Emanuel’s Strategies & Tactics for the MBE, which has fewer but still NCBE-licensed questions and excellent explanations.
Go for not just quantity but also quality.
Quantity: Start with 10 questions per day and ramp them up to 30-50 as you get more comfortable. Do them untimed and open book to start. Don’t feel bad if you need to peek at outlines.
Quality: Review each question and explanation thoroughly until you understand the reasoning. After you answer a question or a set of questions, read the explanation for every single choice, not just the ones you got wrong. Understand why the right answer is right and why the wrong answers are wrong. Just because you got a question correct doesn’t mean you were right. Track which ones you miss and why.
Minimum: Aim to master at least 1,000 MBE questions before the exam (probably more). Mastery means you get all 1,000 correct if you were to answer them later.
This is active learning. This is what moves the needle. (For more on improving your MBE score, see these underutilized strategies.)
Performance tests (PTs/MPTs)
Overwhelmed and distracted by everything that seemingly needs to be memorized, many bar takers neglect PTs until they’re scrambling in the last few weeks.
Most bar prep courses load PTs at the end, which is late for meaningful course correction if needed. Early and regular visits are better than trying to cram.
And I’m putting this portion of the exam before essays because this is one area you KNOW:
- Will appear on the exam
- Takes up 14-20% of your score (depending on jurisdiction)
- Is purely skills-based (no memorization or pre-knowledge required)
In the last few weeks, you still have MBE and essay questions to grind through. Don’t add to that stress by cramming this low-hanging fruit.
Frequency: Start with 1 PT every week (not clustered). I suggest setting aside time every Tuesday because that’s when the PT will be tested on the bar exam.
If don’t have a block of time like that, use a weekend.
Ramp up to 2 PTs every week if you’re not feeling confident. Confidence comes from competence, not the other way around.
Get plenty of practice PTs here.
Timing: Allocate 3 hours for each practice PT.
90 minutes for attempting the PT + 45-60 minutes to review the sample answers and compare how you organized the issues, which rules and facts you used, and how you argued the rules. Extra time is for in case you go over.
Note that you should always allocate time in your study schedule for review time, not just for practice time. Studying the model answer and cross-checking with your reference (outline for MBE/essays) is where the learning happens.
The biggest pitfall students run into with PTs is not having enough time to finish. My recommendation for this is to outline your answer in the first half (40-45 minutes at most) and start writing no matter what after 45 minutes. A complete answer is better than an incomplete masterpiece.
Minimum: 6-10 PTs total across prep (not all at the end). Start early (30%-40% into prep at the latest), space them out, and don’t cram them back-to-back if you can help it in case you need to work on them. Spacing and revisiting PTs keeps your skills sharp and prevents cramming.
Essay writing
Know the pain of creation.
Write an essay. Don’t time yourself at first. Do time yourself later. Study model answers or sample answers, and compare your work to them.
Pay attention to which issues you get. No issue = no IRAC = no points. Check your rule statements too.
How do you “spot” issues in a bar exam essay? Law schools assume you know this. But there’s a random way to “spot” issues… and a methodical way to scrape all the relevant issues and points from an essay. Learn how to “check for issues” here.
Optionally, you could also send your work to an essay grader, such as a tutor, a service like BarEssays for California, or a grader if using a prep company.
Minimum: At least 5-10 essays per subject should cover the big issues.
Optimizations:
Double your practice efficiency (eventually): You can shortcut the essay practice process by “cooking” your essays: Outline only the issues and rules within 10-15 minutes.
Remember that issues are king. If you know how to write in IRAC, and if you know how to identify (use issue checking) and solve the issues, then that’s half the work right there.
Focus on MBE subjects: Most likely, at least half of the essays will test MBE topics. This also does double duty since they, of course, appear on the MBE itself.
I’d rather you skim over the essay-only subjects in lieu of more focus on PTs or MBE subjects. You might lose out on 1% of your score if you fail the essay-only subjects but save 5% of your score by nailing the PT or MBE.
NextGen UBE components (MCQ, IQS, PT)
The NextGen Bar Exam is rolling out starting July 2026.
Multiple-choice questions (MCQs)
NextGen MCQs are similar to the legacy MBE questions, but there are a few differences.
Types of questions:
- Issue identification—select topics instead of outcomes (NextGen style)
- Select two (NextGen style)
- Select the outcome and reasoning (classic MBE style)
Wording variations:
- “You are a lawyer…” “Your client…” “Advising the client…” (NextGen style)
- “Legal topics most important for you to research…” “Legal topics most likely to affect…” (NextGen style)
- “If the court finds for the landlord, what will be the most likely explanation?” (NextGen style)
- “The defendant…” “The plaintiff…” (classic MBE style)
Remember, as always:
- Core skills are identifying issues (by noticing key facts) and/or applying the rule
- Niche rules and nuances still matter
- Sometimes you have to select the least worst choice
I will update with more on integrated question sets (IQS) and performance tasks (PT).
In the meantime, check out the sample questions here. If you’re taking the NextGen UBE, I suggest that you master at least these sample questions so that you can answer them 100% correctly for the right reasoning.
I go through the sample NextGen MCQs here:
Take full-length practice exams
Once you’re about 4 to 6 weeks away from the exam, start taking full-length timed exams. These simulate the exam conditions.
Spend at least one day on a mock 200-question MBE. And another day reviewing them. Remember you should spend at least as much time evaluating and learning from your work as you spend doing the questions.
Get at least one full day of essays and PT(s) done before test day.
Keep track of your weak areas
As you go through practice, see where you’re scoring lower, e.g., bottom worst MBE subjects. Look at your essays. Identify the subjects or skills you’re struggling with. Do double duty on these areas. That could mean literally giving yourself double the time by starting and ending each cycle of subjects with those weak areas.
This is the repeater advantage applied to first-timers. You want to be ruthlessly focused on what actually needs work.
And if you’re a repeater, you’re ahead because you already know your strengths and weaknesses.
Stay on track with a personalized study schedule
Create a study schedule that works for your life and accounts for the above. Full-time study? Aim for 6 to 8 hours per day. Part-time? 2 to 4 hours on weekdays, longer on weekends.
The hour-by-hour specifics and the exact number of questions matter less than tailoring your prep, targeting your weak areas, and moving consistently.
But your schedule is also a fluid document. It can be adjusted as life circumstances dictate (unlike a stock schedule you fall behind on permanently once you miss one thing).
Check out this video going over broader strategy:
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A: Yes. No one tells you this in law school. The data clearly shows that first-time takers pass at 60-85% across different jurisdictions regardless of whether they use Barbri, Themis, or self-study. I have case studies of 70+ people who have passed without commercial courses. They represent diverse backgrounds, ages, and circumstances. The course is not the limiting factor.
A: There is no statistically significant difference for first-time takers. First-timers pass at 60-85% nationally regardless of method. For repeat takers, pass rates are 25-71%. The course doesn’t change the outcome. What affects the outcome is whether you can pass the first time, and if not, whether you’re open to trying a strategy that works for you.
A: Between about $1,000 and $4,000. A commercial course costs $2,000-$4,000. A self-study stack (outline, MBE questions, optional essay feedback) costs $500-$1,200. That’s a meaningful savings while skipping the fluff that keeps you in an illusion of safety.
A: An outline is an essential review reference + questions to practice on.
There are other commercial outlines. Magicsheets are my flagship condensed outlines. Optionally, a long outline like Barbri’s CMR can be useful as an encyclopedic reference to dive deeper. You can also use AI to explain or explore examples.
Use a MBE question bank such as AdaptiBar or UWorld for real NCBE-licensed practice questions (or a book like Emanuel’s Strategies & Tactics for the MBE, fewer questions but less costly). You also want past essay and PT questions (free here).
A: It’s different, not harder. A course provides structure and dictates your day. Self-study requires you to create your own structure. If you’re self-motivated and have high trust in yourself, self-study is easier because you cut out the busy work (lectures, reading assignments that don’t matter). If you need external deadlines, a course might help. But a study group or coach can provide that too.
A: Buy a course if (1) you want excellent base materials (e.g., outlines are comprehensive and accurate), (2) you work better with external structure and accountability (e.g., you know you procrastinate or will get anxious without structure), (3) you have an auditory learning style, (4) you haven’t seen the material in 5+ years and need a doctrinal refresher, (5) you learn best with others (social support matters to you) and can’t find a free study group, or (6) you need professional essay grading and can’t get it elsewhere. Even in these cases, consider cheaper alternatives first (e.g., study groups, targeted supplements).
A: You’ll regret it even more if you fail with a course. Regardless, even if you fail, you’re still ahead of first-timers. Repeat takers start from experience, not from scratch. Repeaters who pass typically credit how they studied (e.g., focus on practice and review, targeting weak areas), not how much they spent. They finally have the time to do the work that matters after dumping the course that didn’t help them pass.
A: This is the very typical, default path that most law students take. But you statistically don’t need to. First-timers pass at 60-85% depending on jurisdiction. If you want structure, external accountability, or professional essay grading, a course might be worth it to you. But the additional cost doesn’t improve your pass odds meaningfully. You’d get the same outcome with a $500 self-study stack and a bit of self-motivation. (Check pass rates by state to see where you sit.)
A: No. And don’t ask this question ever again.
Your problem isn’t access to information. It’s probably one of: weak MBE, gaps in understanding in specific area(s), weak essay writing, or neglect of PTs (common). Target those. Check this page to diagnose your score report. Get the tools you need to patch the holes you’ve identified. A full course is overkill for a repeater.
BUT if you’re a repeater who’s never taken a course, it’s worth considering as an alternative approach. The reasoning is that you’re changing your approach. A course just might give you the structure you needed.
A: You need a doctrinal overview, but not necessarily a $3,000 course. Barbri CMR (in used markets), Magicsheets, and other outlines cost about $150-200. Read one through. Then practice with past exam questions. Review your work and cross-check with the outline. That’s your overview. A full course is unnecessary if you just need to refresh your memory.
A: Peace of mind is real. If paying for emotional reassurance would significantly help you study better and reduce anxiety, it might be worth it. But you can get similar reassurance from talking to people who’ve passed, joining a study group, meeting with a tutor, or looking back at your own credentials (you graduated from law school; you can do this; you ARE capable).
A: Ask yourself: Can I create a schedule and stick to it? Can I drill MBE questions without someone telling me to? Can I sit down and write essays without external deadlines? Can I seek out sample answers and feedback instead of waiting for a course to provide it? Do you trust yourself to independently do what you already know to do?
If yes to 4 or more, self-study can work. If not, consider a study group, coach, or course for structure.
A: Spending time on passive learning (e.g., watching videos, checking off boxes, filling in notes, reading outlines all day) instead of active practice (MBE questions, essays, exams, review with outlines).
Whether you’re studying with a course or not, force yourself into a high active/passive ratio. Better to get a lay of the land quickly, familiarize yourself 70%, and then patch the holes through application and review.
(Learn why passive learning creates anxiety and how to shift to active learning.)
A: This is a personal question. It could work, but it’s not necessary.
It’s best to keep it simple. Pick one course or one self-study stack and commit. Every tool should have a purpose:
One outline you trust (plus the CMR), one MBE tool, one course if desired, and a source of essays and sample answers. That’s enough.
Of course, there are also people who experimented with and used multiple resources to pass. There’s nothing wrong with trying a new resource when you’re stuck, but candidates often hurt themselves by bouncing between too many resources and stretching themselves thin.
“I’m going to join three study groups, enroll in both AdaptiBar and UWorld (even though they have the same NCBE questions), and get 5 different outlines. It couldn’t hurt, right??” It CAN hurt.
A: Yes. Let’s say you want to spend 400 hours on prep. You can spread 400 hours over 12 weeks is about 30-35 hours per week, or 3-5 hours per weekday (morning and/or night) plus longer hours on weekends.
Not enough time? Time isn’t the bottleneck. Constraints actually force you to be creative with your time. Several people who used my resources to pass were forced into situations where they had to be efficient with their time, focusing on what mattered most. (See strategies for how to study for the bar exam while working and reclaim your time and energy. See also Cara’s example study schedule in Passer’s Playbook.)
A: Only if you’re unfamiliar with the subject matter. That could mean you’re a foreign-trained attorney or someone who hasn’t studied the law in 3 to 5+ years.
But it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. The bar exam is mostly the same for everyone. It’s up to your preparation quality (active practice, focused feedback, time on task), not the course. We’ve seen folks 20+ years out of law school pass the bar exam without a course (tap to scroll up to see again).
The Decision: Commercial Bar Review Course vs. Self-Study
Here’s what I’d do if I were in your position.
If you’re a first-time taker and you graduated in the last 2 to 3 years: Self-study. You’re statistically likely to pass regardless. Use that $2,500 for something else.
If you’re a first-time taker and it’s been 5+ years since law school: You can go either way. If you feel lost on doctrine and want an overview, a course might help. Or put together a self-study stack if you’ve got the self-drive and trust yourself to follow a plan that makes sense to you. The outcome will probably be the same.
If you’re repeating: Self-study with targeted focus. Figure out what failed you last time. Buy supplements specifically for those areas. Get essay feedback. Don’t retake a full course.
If you know you need external accountability: A course, a study group, or a tutor/coach. Not because the course content is necessarily better, but because you need the structure.
If money is no object and the peace of mind matters: Buy the course. The additional $2,500 might not move your chance of success meaningfully, but if it helps you stay on track and focus during the day like it’s your day job, it’s not a bad investment. Regardless, what matters is HOW you study and learn, not WHAT you use, so review the self-study method above.
But don’t buy a course because you think it’s mandatory. It’s not. Thousands of people have passed without one.
Final Thought
Bar prep companies have a financial interest in telling you that their course is necessary.
What you need is active learning instead of trying to absorb words. Words streaming into your brain are meaningless unless you build the skill of using them.
So give it a try. Practice. Study the model answers. Develop a study plan that fits you like a tailored suit. Those things don’t require a $3,000 course. They require strategy. Good thing you’re already here because MTYLT is the largest blog by far on bar prep strategy.
You can do this on your own. Many have. They are capable, and you definitely are.
If you don’t have an attack outline yet, start with Magicsheets. It’s the foundation everything else builds on. (Bundle with Approsheets for issue checklists and flowcharts for essays to combat that blank-page syndrome.)
If you don’t have a clear strategy or personalized study plan, grab Passer’s Playbook. It includes real example schedules from bar passers who worked full-time, had families, were repeaters or first-timers, etc. Most importantly, it gives you plenty of “how to move the needle” guidance that turn raw information to useful insights and skills (courses do not do this for you).
Still thinking about it? Subscribe to the weekly emails. I’ll walk you through more strategies, give you MBE questions as weekly checkpoints, and case studies of successful passers to build belief that you can do this too.