MBE | Make This Your Last Time

May 16, 2022May 20, 2022 - No Comments

How do Magicsheets and Approsheets fit into your other bar exam study materials?

There are a LOT of study supplements, resources, and outlines for bar prep. As time passes, more and more get added to your potential repertoire.

Sometimes, the sheer overwhelm causes bar takers to load up on all sorts of materials, attend every workshop, DM everyone offering something — spreading themselves so thin that they end up not using any of it!

The materials collect digital dust, and bar takers end up restarting at square one, exhausted. But “the great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” (Herbert Spencer)

I, too, offer study materials for the California Bar Exam and the Uniform Bar Exam. Here’s my answer to questions about them, including HOW to use them. This will be useful whether or not you use my material.

March 4, 2022March 4, 2022 - No Comments

Should you forget about essays and just focus on the MBE (“auto-pass” with the MBE)?

No, this approach has a few potential inaccuracies and dangers.

Below are four of the dangers and a better approach to take instead if you want to prioritize a few areas.

January 29, 2022January 31, 2022 - 5 Comments

The Value of Redoing Questions (You’ll See Them Again on the Bar Exam)

“How do I do MBE questions faster?”

“The way to approach these questions is not staying with me.”

“If I study a subject really well and circle back around to it after studying the others, I’ve forgotten half of the first subject.”

Have you ever felt that?

There is a SIMPLE and UNDERRATED way to fix this: Redoing questions.

“But wait,” you say, “I have seen and remembered those questions and answers before. Should I be worried because I am not practicing new questions?”

There’s only a limited number of ways they can test you, so it’s actually GOOD if you recognize fact patterns. If that’s not the point of preparation, what is?

We can’t expect to “get” something after reading or doing something once. So when it comes to preparing for the bar exam, should you really limit yourself to just doing things once and dusting off your hands?

That’s what causes you to forget. The more you cycle through the subjects, the more you’ll retain next time.

If you had to choose between anxious uncertainty about retaining the material vs. routine boredom, which would you pick?

December 8, 2021January 31, 2022 - No Comments

Which MBE Supplements Should You Get?

There are many MBE supplements out there, although only a few come to mind as the leaders of the space: AdaptiBar, UWorld, and the Strategies & Tactics for the MBE book.

To decide which one(s) you may like, I condensed some of my key strategies for the MBE and looked into which resources could help you hit them all:

Quality of review (quantity without sacrificing the learning)
Track performance by subject and topic
Primarily focus on real questions, but also bring in simulated questions to grind problem areas

Here are the options and what you should consider in choosing them:

November 21, 2021February 9, 2022 - No Comments

Biggest Areas of the MBE to Focus On (Highly Tested Topics)

The MBE isn’t just a mixed bag of questions. It’s actually not even an evenly distributed bag of questions.

There are some topics that are tested disproportionately and more frequently on the MBE! Not all questions are equally important.

💡 There are just THREE highest-priority topics…

💡 These top 3 tested topics EACH account for over a whopping 7% of your score (over 21% total)!

💡 What can you do with the lower-priority topics?

But these takeaways are not that obvious if you simply skim through the NCBE’s subject matter outline. The language isn’t as clear or intuitive. Let’s break this down into charts so we can visualize it better.