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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.

October 26, 2019January 16, 2023 - 2 Comments

Tom goes from many-time repeater of the California Bar Exam to passing after changing the “how to” principles of bar preparation (while working full time)

Tom* sat for the California Bar Exam several times—many (##) times.

He didn’t have any particular strengths when it came to essays, the MBE, or performance tests. It was an overwhelming ordeal from the start.

💬 “I struggled with all of them because I think the whole process was overwhelming. In law school, they told me that if you wanna pass the exam, you need to lock yourself in a room and don’t think about having a relationship. . . . I kind of believed it and subconsciously realized I’ll never be able to do that, and I think I struggled on all facets. That’s from a psychological level.”

At the same time, like many bar takers, Tom was also working to support himself while preparing. This is a common obstacle among success stories. (But as you’ll see below, it isn’t a handicap as much as you might think.)

💬 “I was working two jobs and doing some consulting work back when I took in July of 2017 and just missed it. I worked one job in February and July this time. But I’m working full-time. I mean I don’t have a lot of time.”

On top of that, he also had dad duties. But he decided to focus on what moved the needle.

💬 “I have an autistic son, but mostly it was the working. I had to put 110% at work, and do that with the practicing. I use the word ‘practice’ because to me ‘studying’ is counterproductive, which you describe in [Passer’s Playbook 2.0] about not wasting too much time.”

More specifically, “practicing” paid dividends for Tom.

💬 “When I use the word ‘practice’ in my mind, it helped me consciously . . . because I feel like every moment I’m spending is valuable and it’s giving me dividends. It’s repaying me. Whereas if I just keep going over the definition, it’s meaningless. But if I’m going over an issue in an essay and I see how it’s tested and I reverse engineer the question, or I go over an MBE question which also helps with the essays as well, that’s beneficial.”

Everyone preaches practice, but what does “practice practice practice” really mean? Tom stacked several principles that finally resulted in his passing the 2018 July California Bar Exam (which had the lowest pass rate on record for July exams in CA: 40%).

October 20, 2019March 28, 2023 - 1 Comment

How a repeater with a 9% chance of passing crushed the California Bar Exam… while working full time

Samantha was a “threepeater” who took the California Bar Exam three times. She wasn’t sure she’d pass. To say that the odds were not in her favor would be an understatement.

Having gone to a non-accredited law school with a 9 PERCENT CHANCE of passing for repeaters, she wasn’t sure she’d pass. The exam she took also had a 40% pass rate, the lowest it’s ever been for a July bar exam in California. On top of that, she had caretaker duties and worked full time.

WHAT⁉🤯

💬 “I wasn’t confident at all. I was a hundred percent certain I had failed it. . . . I went to a non-ABA accredited law school. Our regular pass rate is like 16% and for retakers is like 9%.”

Her Achilles’ heel was her low MBE score. On top of that, the California Bar Exam had just increased the weight of the MBE to 50%, making it that much harder for Samantha to kind of overcome the challenge with the MBE.

💬 “My essays were 1570 and my MBEs were 1280. And then the second time, my MBEs came up by 20 points, but my MBE raw score breakdowns were awful both times.”

She knew practicing was important. But it’s not all about the quantity.

💬 “The first time I did almost 5,000 MBE questions. And I failed, and it was awful.”

October 1, 2019March 28, 2023 - No Comments

This foreign attorney who struggled with essays passed the California Bar Exam with the lowest July pass rate (40%)

Lars was a Canadian attorney taking the California Bar Exam. He took it once in 2018 February. Then he passed the following July.

“I took it twice. The first time was in February and I got 1393, and then I wrote again in July and passed the second time.”

Lars was decent enough on the MBE and the PT thanks to his existing lawyering skills, but he needed help with the essays.

“I came really close on the MBE the first time. I think I missed one question but I struggled with the essays. I did well on the PT, the first time, which I think I can attribute to being a lawyer.”

Unlike the MBE and the PT, essays force you to work your “origination muscle”—to come up with words to write (instead of filling in letters) based on what you’ve memorized. We can break it down to a three-step process: Memorize the law, be able to recall it, and able to apply it.

“I kind of thought going in the first time, I would be able to just sort of manage the essays better than I could. . . . As a whole, the issue with the grading of the papers, there is a real issue where I don’t feel like a lot of the graders are grading equally.”

November 17, 2018March 28, 2023 - 1 Comment

Samantha passed the Georgia Bar Exam on her first attempt (even though her law school had a 30% pass rate)

Samantha went to a law school with a 30% pass rate, and she took an unconventional route to bar prep to pass the Georgia Bar Exam on her FIRST try.

Despite the sobering statistic of her school, Samantha began preparation intending to pass the July bar exam in one go.

“I went in thinking I want it one-and-done. I didn’t want to exhaust the resources nor the time to take it twice, so that I can manage to pass the first time.”

Not only that, she had a limited amount of time to work with, given other responsibilities she had to attend to, not to mention her children.

“I worked a full-time job and studied at night. I wanted to maximize my study time and be the most efficient in the time that I had in studying.”

What’s more, the statistics and odds of passing the bar were truly stacked against her from the start.

“The law school I went to had a 30% pass rate. I guess it would be considered a second-tier or third-tier school.”

Her process:

1️⃣ Walking the unconventional route to bar prep (ignoring the fear)

2️⃣ Using a few key resources to hone in on practice

3️⃣ Beating the beast on her own terms, confidently (with the help of 20/20 foresight)