For the California Bar Exam, Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), and other state bars
Passer’s Playbook — tools and techniques for effective bar prep
Maximize your score by learning how to learn (not just what to study) with blueprints, study schedules, and strategies to prepare efficiently and effectively
How would it feel to never have to see another hypo again?
“I’ve been basking in the glory of finally passing the bar! . . . The more I simply did what you recommend in the playbook, my confidence steadily grew.”
“Passer’s Playbook is like the bar prep bible. It was so helpful in all areas and identified every emotion and issue I was going through and ‘there’s an answer for that!’”
“I . . . implemented it into my study routine. Basically, all of it. . . . I raised my [Arkansas UBE] score 20+ points using your study guidance, reminders, and schedules.”
Don’t put your life, relationships, and career in limbo for 6 more months
(or drop more $$$ on the next round of bar prep)
New York Bar Passer
Get clear on how to spend your limited time for bar prep
(instead of doing random things without direction)
California Bar Passer
“Move the needle” and stop spinning your wheels on the most important exam of your life
Learn what Barbri and Themis won’t teach you
(before it’s too late)
If you’re like many bar takers, you see your neat package of shiny new course materials and shrug:
“How hard could it be? Everything I need to know is in that pile of giant books.”
But does it make sense to you that…
- You go through hours of lectures, diligent note taking, and “studying” only to be EXHAUSTED and forget 99% of it anyway?
- “Big box” bar prep courses tell you WHAT to study, but they don’t teach you HOW to prepare for the bar exam?
- Someone balancing a job or family has the exact same cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all study schedule as someone whose full-time job is to study for the bar?
Not to me.
You’re the dean of your own studies, not anyone else. Not Barbri, not your professors, not even me.
You don’t have to follow “The Plan.” No matter what you use, bar prep at its core is still a self-learning endeavor. Courses and supplements are merely there to support your learning. Like a buffet, or your social media feed, what’s laid out for you are just suggestions.
On my first attempt at the bar exam, I did the things that you’re probably doing...
- Meticulously watching exhausting 4-hour-long videos (pausing them to fill in the blanks), and reading outlines religiously (sending myself thoughts and prayers)
- Fixating on checking off all the assignment boxes and filling in the completion % meter
- Grasping at any sense of security knowing that they had it all planned out for me. “Just follow The Plan, and you’ll pass!”—The National Association of Barbri (probably)
EXHAUSTION.
The truth is, these things usually don’t move the needle. You’ve probably thought about doing some of them...maybe redid them multiple times!
It wasn’t FUN or MOTIVATING because I wasn’t seeing any PROGRESS. Enjoying the process is key! The more you enjoy this process, the more energy you will have to absorb the material and sharpen that intuition. Your brain will reject what you don’t like.
I was being a tryhard but not an overachiever. I was going through the motions without doing the mental work.
Ultimately, it was a failure of myself because of arrogance, underestimation of the bar exam, and mindless tactical hell. It was caused by a failure to focus on the right things that moved the needle.
More importantly, I was allowing someone else to dictate my pace, my studies, and ultimately my fate. It was college and law school all over again, just going with the flow.
Well, could you blame me—or yourself? It’s extremely daunting and overwhelming to even think about juggling over a dozen subjects. It’s soothing to do what feels productive (like reading outlines and trying to memorize rules). You feel like you’re still in control. It becomes hard to see that a course is simply a reference tool, not a duty you must fulfill.
What I realized since was that it was up to me to prevent forest fires. No one can teach you. You can only learn.
That’s why someone who collects all the “best” tools, pays for a huge course, and studies for 12 hours a day can still end up spinning their wheels getting nowhere — while someone who knows how to study can pass without the exhaustion or frustration (seemingly effortlessly).
That’s why you don’t NEED a huge bar review course that just eats up your precious time and energy. It provides structure (especially for first-timers and bar takers who have a lot of lead time) but can be inefficient.
You don’t NEED to spend 1,000s of dollars on tutors. They’re great — if you can find the right one for you and afford them. (To be fair, a good tutor can be very helpful.)
Treat the bar review courses as luxury options with bells and whistles, not the default or the only option (even if they tried to convince you otherwise since your first day of law school). You wouldn’t book first-class flights by default, right?
Courses and tutors CAN and DO work. Supplements DO help. (I’ll show you which ones to use out of the smorgasbord of options depending on your budget, and how to get discounts to offset the cost of Passer’s Playbook.)
But you don’t get an “A” for how hard you work or how much time or money you spend. You earn it for mastery.
You don’t get in shape by hiring a personal trainer or just completing the movements. You push your body consistently and make that mind-muscle connection by actively engaging the target muscle.
Again: No one can teach you. It’s up to you to learn. In the end, you’re the one who has to do it. All the tools out there can work for you as long as you realize that, no matter what you use, bar prep at its core is a self-learning endeavor.
But, as the exam gets harder and more expensive over time, you can’t afford to fall into the same mistakes I did on my first attempt.
It boils down to THREE things for proper bar exam preparation and to succeed on the bar exam:
1
Good source materials: outlines (like Magicsheets), past exam questions, sample answers
2
Will to act. Do you have the ability to self-motivate?
3
Knowing HOW to study (not just WHAT to study)
So it’s time to stop “studying” what to learn.
Let me show you how to learn.
Introducing...
Passer’s Playbook
Passer’s Playbook is a set of step-by-step blueprints, study schedules, cheat sheets, recordings, checklists, and strategies designed to help you learn HOW to learn, improve your scores, and post an award speech (humble)brag about passing the bar exam.
They’re packaged as guides of varying lengths (from a few pages to 400 pages), dozens of sample and example schedules, audio, and video to fit your preferences and precious time.
What’s included with Passer’s Playbook?
Moving the needle begins today. Kickstart your bar prep with keys to success packed in a digestible format. Internalizing even ONE insight here could make a difference to your approach to bar exam preparation and ultimately your scores.
Start with short and medium-length guidance here if you’re short on time because I know you’re very busy.
What you’ll discover:
You are the dean of your own studies. There’s no need to follow someone else’s general one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter schedule. Get CLEAR on what to do every day by crafting your own flexible curriculum that is tailored to fit you like a handmade glove according to your needs, no matter when the exam is.
What you’ll discover:
Learn how to learn. If you have a question about bar prep, chances are, it’s in this comprehensive 400-page guide called the “Big Playbook.” I regret my naming sense.
What you’ll discover (among other things):
Feel like watching or listening instead of reading? I’ve included video and audio recordings of conversations with exam experts and real bar takers. Timestamps, handout, and notes included.
What you’ll discover:
The multiple-choice portion of the bar exam takes up to 50% of your score. Try these extra tools to sharpen your focus on the subjects and topics you want to tackle.
What you’ll discover:
Many bar takers neglect the performance test...until it’s too late and they regret it when they get their score reports. The PT/MPT is a hidden source of big points which doesn’t require memorization like the essays and the MBE. Figure out how to solve PTs once, and you’ll be ready for it even as you focus most of your time studying for essays and the MBE.
What you’ll discover:
Even with the best resource in the world, sometimes you just want to be able to get feedback on a targeted question. I'm not in the business of leaving you to pass the bar exam alone or making you pay a subscription fee.
Passer’s Playbook (like all my products) comes with:
You’ll also get signed up for weekly support emails to keep you on track until the bar exam:
Ready to get started?
Choose your difficulty
There is a difference between knowing the law and knowing how to USE the law.
A simple example: If you can’t see the issue in an essay, all those rules you memorized are WORTHLESS because you’ll have nowhere to fit it in.
Just based on whether you have this one example insight, we can see that one of two realities is about to unfold before you:
Face 6 more months of studying and the uncertainty of waiting for bar results (while losing potential earnings)
Earn the right to make annoying humblebrag announcements about passing the bar exam people have no choice but to congratulate you for
Both paths are going to be difficult.
So choose the difficulty you prefer. It only takes a moment of strength for the lifetime privilege of calling yourself an attorney.
But honestly, you don’t care about any of that at this moment. You don’t care about celebrations.
You just want to move on and remember what happiness was like. That’s what usually happens to passers who leave me a note and simply move on to become successful attorneys. No frills. Life simply goes on without the bar exam in the way anymore.
All you want in life right now is the relief—the security of knowing you’ll be able to find better jobs, pay off those loans, and live a free life without the bar blocking your way.
So how do you start recovering the brilliant confidence you used to have?
The resource I wish I had on my first attempt at the bar exam
“Any fool can learn from experience. I prefer to learn from other people’s experiences.”
Passer’s Playbook is a toolkit of “how to” strategies and insights that will help cut down on fumbling. The mistakes have been made for you already.
Let me paint a more vivid picture for you:
Don’t let the bar exam be a learning experience
Just one insight or improvement could be the difference between putting your life in limbo for 6 more months… vs. putting
this final hurdle behind you forever and moving on with your free life.
The first scenario happens when you haven’t learned how to learn. Many students fall into the trap of “knowing the law” but not “knowing how to use the law.” They go through the motions and end up not understanding what they consume.
And if that’s you, that’s OK. In fact, that’s common and normal!
So breathe a sigh of relief. There’s no need to worry. It’s OK to feel stuck and like you’ve plateaued, as long as you eventually become better.
That’s the comforting part: You don’t even have to be “ready” right now. That’s not the point. You’re preparing to become ready.
If you’re already getting 80% of your MBE questions correctly, you’re doing something right, but what’s next for you? You either upkeep that level...or slide downhill.
Most of your progress will come at the tail end of preparation, like compound interest.
The good news is that bar exam preparation is a learnable skill specific to the bar exam.
Practicing attorneys tend to not do as well on the bar exam because it is a SEPARATE skill from practice of law. You don’t need to know the intricacies of criminal procedure and real property in most attorney roles (your friends will never stop asking you to help fight their landlords, though).
Passer’s Playbook can help you build a foundation in study skills specific to bar prep — to elevate you past the initial stagnation and give you powerful insights to climb beyond the plateau (skipping the left half of the graph above).
Use the strategies tested in the field based on my own and others’ experiences over the years to gain 20/20 FORESIGHT on:
Do you want to pass the bar exam now or 6 months later?
This is about the future...your dreams of becoming an attorney. It’s not just about passing the bar. There’s A LOT MORE at stake here.
And another 6 months of your life spent waiting for results to gestate, simmering in anxiety and uncertainty, is no joke.
The bar exam’s difficulty creeps up every year. And the more you repeat the exam, the stronger more your status quo identity as a repeater becomes. You want to avoid this as much as you can!
It puts not only yourself in limbo—but also your friends and family who may not fully understand why you’re still doing this “bar thing.”
Failing the bar exam means you’d be squandering the only things in life you can’t get back: time and relationships (and unpaid rent by your friend’s Bora Bora vacation pics living in your head).
This is an opportunity to make our friends, our parents, our family, and—most of all, your own dreams—proud.
THAT’S what’s at stake with the bar exam. It’s not just a career and a path to make a living. Professional abeyance limits your life, relationships, and dreams from reaching their full potential.
With these at stake, can you afford to take this exam another time?
The problem isn't that you aren’t smart. The problem is that you haven’t learned how to learn. Since law school, it’s been a test of whether you know something they didn’t teach you. This is not a test of intelligence.
You have more control over this than you think. You don’t have to follow “The Plan.” You just have to learn what law school and Barbri failed to teach you.
After spending six figures on law school, 1,000s of dollars on a prep course, and another grand on application and laptop fees, anything that gives you even a 1% edge to put the bar exam behind you once and for all is worth it.
This is an investment in your career, your livelihood, and moving on with your life guilt-free.
You don’t even have to be sure if you want Passer’s Playbook right now…
Knowing the rules of the game (and giving yourself an insider advantage) is key to winning any game.
Bar prep can be daunting and overwhelming, but it can also be simple (but not easy) if you know what to do. My goal is to share the kind of insights and resources I wish I had when I first took (and failed) the bar exam:
- 20/20 foresight: Avoiding tunnel vision, traps, and blind spots that you may not realize at first
- Not just knowing what to study — but how to study (something law school forgets to teach you)
- Getting out of a co-dependent relationship with your bar review course
Take the back door to success with this on-demand “coach in a pocket” that will teach you the acquirable SKILL of preparing for the bar exam — the most important game of your life.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Yes.
I can’t guarantee that you’ll pass the bar exam. No one can guarantee that. Only you can prevent forest fires.
But I can illuminate a path for you to study smarter. My goal is that you’ll take away game-changing insights that you can apply to your bar prep and increase your odds of passing. You’ll get structure but also develop an approach that caters to you.
Even if you apply ONE insight from Passer’s Playbook, this has the potential to MULTIPLY across ALL your essays or MBE questions. To change days of anxiety and agony into clarity and excitement. To prevent another round of exam fees and delaying of your career.
What would that one insight be worth to you?
California:
New York (UBE):
Missouri (UBE):
Minnesota (UBE):
Hawaii:
Kentucky:
Massachusetts (UBE):
Nebraska (UBE):
Texas (UBE):
District of Columbia (UBE):
Colorado (UBE):
There’s no one cross-section that captures everything in Passer’s Playbook, but here’s the first file in the Accelerator Kit.
Once you pick up a quick win and experience that “aha” moment, you’ll be craving for more than this tip of the iceberg.
There is a lot of material. It’s quite comprehensive.
You might care about the nitty gritty details. Or you might not care about comprehensiveness (just the key insights).
That’s why I made different levels of detail available:
A detailed guide that’s almost 400 pages. According to some customers, it’s possible to get through this several times. But that’s pretty hardcore even to me!
An “Accelerator Kit” that organizes key concepts into a shorter collection of guides (I recommend starting here)
Cheat Sheets and a Blueprint that list only the most important techniques and considerations
There are other resources (such as example and template study schedules) that you may be more interested in. Go for it!
Like at a buffet, you pick and choose until you find the nuggets you like. This is not just another “book” you have to slog through, but rather, a collection of tools.
In fact, DON’T read through it all if you can help it. I know you’re very busy. But when you find something you like, promise you’ll do something about it. This is an Action Guide.
“Motivation” and “inspiration” are fleeting. It comes and goes. It’s a good feeling to wake up one random day and say, “Yeah! I’m gonna do 5 essays and 100 MBE questions today! (Or maybe tomorrow for sure...)”
You should act on this feeling when it does come, but waiting for this is not reliable.
Motivation doesn’t drop from the sky. It comes from the streets.
You use a bit of discipline to establish a consistent habit of studying until you develop MOMENTUM and it becomes second nature. (That’s why bar takers often feel empty after the exam is over.) You find and use effective and efficient study techniques. You get better.
Progress and mastery are motivating and confidence-building. Passer’s Playbook helps you progress.
Scroll here to see the contents and materials included with Passer’s Playbook.
You’ll also get weekly supplementary coaching emails, MBE Q&As, and case studies of passers which break down the approaches they used to overcome their challenges.
Magicsheets are condensed attack outlines. Use Magicsheets to review the issues and rules organized in logical groups, practice past exam questions (MBE questions or essay questions), and memorize the rules efficiently.
Approsheets are issue checklists and flowcharts. Use Approsheets to systematically check for relevant issues and sub-issues (and not randomly “issue spot”) to rack up the points on your essays, even if you have no idea where to start writing because of Blank Page Syndrome.
As you get closer to the exam, the short format of Magicsheets and Approsheets can be an especially useful final finisher review. Bar takers have even reported being able to visualize them during the exam.
Passer’s Playbook is a collection of tools that show you HOW to approach various aspects of bar preparation. It’s a compendium of strategies, insights, and blueprints to help you orient yourself and propel you toward improvement.
These are all separate products. Magicsheets and Approsheets are not included with Passer’s Playbook and vice versa.
I recommend getting at least Approsheets with Passer’s Playbook. Approsheets, although optional, fit with the “issue checking” technique taught in Passer’s Playbook. I recommend them if you struggle with essays.
You can also get Magicsheets condensed outlines depending on your needs.
Both are available in a bundle with savings baked in (available at either link above).
Earlier the better. Learning the substantive law can come later (so you don’t forget or burn out from extended studying), but it’s never too early to learn the how-to.
—Tiana, a foreign-trained attorney who passed the 2016 July California Bar Exam (43% pass rate)
—Olivia, a first-timer who passed the 2016 July California Bar Exam (43% pass rate)
—Amanda, “threepeater” who passed the 2016 July California Bar Exam (43% pass rate)
(These were all pilot testers of the pre-release version of Passer’s Playbook, who ended up passing.)
The more time you give yourself to learn how to approach the exam effectively and efficiently, the less time you’ll spend reinventing and spinning your wheels. The best time to start was yesterday. The second-best time to start is now.
However, two weeks before the exam would be my suggested cutoff point because by that time you should be practicing mostly, not trying to figure things out. You can still use the sample “scramble” schedules I included with Passer’s Playbook even if you are one week from the exam, though.
Yep, Passer’s Playbook is always being updated with new strategies and tips, along with up-to-date information (and discounts) about supplements.
I probably update information in the Passer’s Playbook files and add to it more than I do with Magicsheets or Approsheets!
Yes, you can absolutely go at it on your own.
You could scour through the Internet to gather the tips, test them yourself, and find success that way. I’m not being sarcastic. People are largely the same, and many approaches will work for you. There’s no one path to success.
I’ve spoken with a lot of bar takers over the past decade—online, in person, over the phone, over email, over messages, over text. I lost count, but I’m pretty sure my inbox has email threads with 100s (at the very least), if not 1000s, of bar takers. As I developed a sense of what works and doesn’t work, I started organizing it into the Playbook.
So I like to think that you can get more certainty and value in the Playbook than what you can gather from other places. Is your time worth the price? Your billing rate after passing the bar is going to be hundreds of dollars.
You also technically don’t need a course or a book or other supplements either. Like with all tools, it’s ultimately less about what you use—but how you use it.
The mark of successful students and their unspoken secret is that they 1) rely on help from others, 2) don’t wait for perfect advice, and 3) make the advice they do get work for them.
It’s not weird or unfair to get help. You can still prove yourself to the world without being a lone wolf. It would be much easier to skip the line (and the stress of reinventing and spinning your wheels) and get a head start over your peers. Use whatever advantage you get.
Your future (and how you spend the next 6 to 9 months of your life) depends on it. But this is your life. You are the dean of your own studies.
Yes, in general, expenses relating to bar prep could be covered. You will be able to download a purchase receipt in your account, which students have presented to their employer for reimbursement. However, please confirm with your employer about this.
You can also direct your employer to me with any questions: brian [at] makethisyourlasttime.com
That’s not a question, but here’s a question to help you be more decisive:
“What should I do today to study?”
If you can’t articulate an answer to this, I invite you to use Passer’s Playbook to give yourself a framework to tackle your preparation and get clear on what to do.
Email: brian [at] makethisyourlasttime.com
Ready to get Passer’s Playbook?