I featured James in a previous case study back in 2022. He passed the California Bar Exam as an Australian lawyer back then. Then he passed the July 2025 Illinois UBE.
💬 “Brian, just a heads-up: I passed the July UBE! Thanks for all that you do.”
I didn’t even know James was taking another bar exam. What a masochist.
💬 “After passing the CA Bar exam in 2022, in late 2024 I ended up in the mid-west! Fortunately, given my decade+ experience as an attorney in Australia, I was able to become eligible to sit the Illinois Uniform Bar Exam (UBE).”
Here’s a follow-up to his 2022 case study because I run into folks taking both exams fairly often.
Whether you’re taking the UBE or the CA Bar Exam (or a masochist looking to take both at some point), James compares and contrasts his successful strategies from both exams.
He recommends tailoring your approach to each exam given the differences.
💬 “You might think that passing the UBE would be easy enough (after passing the CA Bar). However, speaking from experience I can advise that it isn’t that simple. In important ways (content tested, timing, structure and scoring), the first day of both bar exams are completely different. This means that if you don’t adapt your strategy accordingly, you could end up failing the UBE!”
💬 “I do not recommend the strategy I used to pass the California Bar be used to attempt to pass the UBE.
These differences dictate the need for a change in strategy!”
💬 “‘I hope that you take away this thought:
If some Australian lawyer who started from scratch and was way out of his depth having never formally studied US law can pass both the CA Bar and the UBE, then I should be able to pass as well. It’s just a matter of being flexible enough to adapt my approach to find what works for me!’”
Resources James used to pass the Illinois UBE
💬 “It was all there in a few pages. This was something I could work with. The time and frustration the Magicsheets and Approsheets saved me was substantial.”
💬 “When followed … [delivers] exactly what it promises.”
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Strategies & Tactics for the MBE – 8th edition
Strategies & Tactics for the MBE Vol. 2 – 2nd edition (4th edition linked)
Past essays and performance tests
Books:
- A Short & Happy Guide to the Bar Exam’s Multistate Essay Examination (MEE) by Suzanne Darrow-Kleinhaus & Irene McDermott Crisci
- Bar Exam MPT Preparation & Experimental Learning for Law Students by Sara J. Berman
James was able to pass California Bar Exam, then three years later, the UBE. So you know what he’s talking about when it comes to preparing for different bar exams.
What to watch out for on MEE questions
While California essays tend to invite you to identify issues present in a hypothetical fact pattern, MEE questions tend to tell you the issues.
💬 “Whilst the subjects tested in California cover a wider range, and include California law, the essays are much more forgiving and open-ended inviting the examinee to go deep and take time to identify and explore issues in detail. There is more room and time for showcasing your legal knowledge and skill.
Essays on the UBE involve a much higher degree of precision.
There is no time or room to do anything other than answering the very specific legal questions being asked.”
For example, a California essay might ask what crimes were committed, but an MEE question might ask whether D would be guilty of robbery.
(If you have Passer’s Playbook, you may have seen me use this very same example in the essay guidance.)
So UBE takers should know how to deeply analyze the given issue, while California takers should be more flexible about issue identification depending on the type of question asked (which can be dependent on the subject).
The sequence of questions matters on the bar exam
Here’s where James switched his approach. It might be a minor change but one worth noting.
💬 “A different strategy is required for each exam as the first day of each exam is fundamentally different.”
💬 “In my view, the entire UBE is either failed or set up toward passing in these first 3 hours.”
In the afternoon sessions of the California exam, James answered the performance test first, then essays after.
💬 “When I sat the CA Bar, I decided to do the MPT first thing after the lunch break, instead of completing it after the 2 essays.
It took me 2 hours to complete the MPT (14%).
This left me with 1.5 hours to complete the last remaining 2 essays (circa 7% each).”
But he doesn’t recommend doing this on the UBE.
💬 “For the UBE, if you do what I did in the CA exam and take 2 hours to complete the first MPT in the AM session, you would only have 1 hour to complete the second MPT.
This is simply not enough time.
It can take 45 minutes to grasp the MPT material and task. With only 15 minutes remaining, you are highly likely not to finish the second MPT, or if you do finish it would likely be such a rushed effort that key points are missed.”
Note that this suggestion is based on taking two hours for the performance test. So on the UBE, it’s important to be able to complete them in time.
💬 “Therefore, your revised strategy MUST include completing 2 MPT’s (back to back) under timed conditions.”
Not finishing a PT in time is one of the BIGGEST mistakes a bar taker can make.
My Performance Test Toolkit (which comes with the Playbook) highlights this as the only text in red in the entire guide. You have to start writing by the halfway mark if you hope to finish the task.
And PTs are worth so much disproportionately that this very mistake could be the difference between passing and failing. Don’t neglect the PT!
However painful it is to struggle and encounter failure now, be able to do during preparation what you need to do on exam day.
💬 “Practicing in this way is painful.
It hurts your brain (at least I assume it would, as it hurt mine alot!).
The upside is that you get a reality check.”
Do the lectures matter?
Maybe.
I’ve never given a blanket suggestion to ditch lectures, only to use them the way they’re helpful and that they may not be worth it for you if you’re not getting much out of them.
You can fact check this from over a decade ago in my guest post. Have I ever lied to you?
(Man, this shit was revolutionary back in 2014. Now it’s ordinary knowledge (you’re welcome) that just needs to be reinforced because newcomers appear every year and escaping old habits is a psychology problem rather than a knowledge problem.)
💬 “I started out by watching the Barbri lectures. Whilst much of the advice I have subsequently seen advises bar takers to skip the lectures as you already attended them when you earned your law degree, as a foreign lawyer I needed the learn the basics.
For that reason I found the lectures much more interesting than I assume anyone else would. The lectures are very long. However when the sheer volume of content that needs to be covered is considered I think that it is what it is and the length is actually reasonable.”
In his view, if you already studied the materials in law school, you may be fine moving on from the lectures.
💬 “Of course if you have already studied in the US then I totally understand the need to urgently move on to the next stage of study.”
So really, ask yourself: “What are the lectures helping me accomplish?”
✅ Do you pick things up better from listening rather than reading?
✅ Are there tips you can’t get from facing the questions yourself?
✅ Are they giving you a structured overview that outlines don’t give you?
✅ Have you been out of school for a long time or have never been to an American law school?
✅ Are you referring to them selectively for areas you need extra help with?
✅ Do you have the time to fit other tasks (like practice and review)?
These are valid reasons to lean into lectures. These are not:
❌ Is it simply the default, something you’re “supposed to” do?
❌ Is it just a way to lull yourself into comfort and complacency instead of doing what will move the needle?
❌ Are you doing it because you’re tired and figured you could absorb information passively?
❌ Were you aware how much time and energy it’s taking away from other work (like practice and review)?
❌ Are you being stubborn because it’s a sunk cost?
If you mostly relate to ✅, then lectures may be valuable to you. If you mostly relate to ❌, then consider reevaluating and being truthful with yourself.
Bar review courses aren’t the only way to learn. They are simply one supplement in your self-study endeavor.
Although James needed a foundation, he still found the amount of materials overwhelming.
💬 “Everything you need is provided with Barbri and to my mind in hindsight this is part of the problem.
There is so much material to cover it is simply overwhelming.”
💬 “These are no ordinary exams, and the sheer amount of material dictates some creativity in your approach.”
That’s why he grabbed condensed materials to apply the information instead of drowning in it.
💬 “Whilst the process of creating your own succinct summaries is an extremely valuable exercise that I would not normally circumvent, in the case of the CA Bar and UBE, I think that an exception applies.”
💬 “Finally, I could just focus on practising for the exams.”
Anything that helps you turn information into insight, whether they be lectures or easy-to-reference materials.
What about the MBE?
This part is similar between both the UBE and the California exam.
💬 “The overlap is the MBE part and general exam prep guidance that applies to both exams equally.”
Most people use AdaptiBar or UWorld to prepare for the MBE. Perfectly fine.
James mainly used Strategies & Tactics for the MBE to get the paper experience.
💬 “My thinking was that if the MBE is 100% on paper, I should practice primarily on paper.
Both these books provide ample questions to thoroughly practice on…. I did one question at a time (with no time limit) and immediately assessed all the answer choice explanations for quick feedback… I sought to understand the reason why I answered rightly or wrongly.”
Also ordinary knowledge now:
💬 “My aim was to seek understanding for every MBE question. As Brian says ‘Quality, not quantity.”
While “quality over quantity” is parroted as ordinary knowledge now, it’s more like “don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.” Get both.
James also made sure to get the timing down.
💬 “Later, I started timing my responses by setting the timer on my apple watch using siri before I started each question… If I needed more time I took it.
The consistent repeated 1:42 (1 minute 42 seconds) and later 1:30 (1 minute 30 seconds) with my apple watch set to vibrate on my wrist + ring to tell me I was out of time.”
This was actually an important part of his practice. It’s not just about answering questions correctly. Here’s when you shift from optimizing for learning to optimizing for performance.
💬 “This constant repetition helped me to develop a real internal sense of when the time limit was about to be reached.
That is, I either finished early (well before my watch alerted) or literally started to anticipate the alarm a few seconds before it started to alert.
This is an extremely important sense to develop especially for more difficult MBE questions as once your internal alarm rings you know you are overtime and have to make the best call you can on the answer.”
Confidence comes from evidence. Show yourself you can do it instead of wondering whether it’s true.
💬 “Getting caught up on a difficult question and spending way too much time on it is in my view the #1 most costly mistake you can make on the MBE.
When I started to be able to consistently answer most of the MBE questions correctly within 1:30 (1 minute 30 seconds) this helped me to significantly increase my confidence levels.”
There’s a lot of overlap but also some differences to consider, especially with essays and the sequence of questions.
What else did you notice?
Full story
Here’s James’s published write-up for his UBE experience.
Here’s James’s 2022 case study about passing the California Bar Exam.