Featured Articles | Make This Your Last Time

May 15, 2026May 15, 2026 - No Comments

How Adam Added 140 Points on the CA Bar Exam (But What Cost Him the Pass?)

Adam took the February 2026 California Bar Exam for the second time.

Starting with an overall score of 1201, Adam closed a 140-point gap between July 2025 and February 2026. That’s a remarkable jump by any measure.

He did this as a foreign-trained lawyer with zero prior knowledge of U.S. law, no commercial bar prep course, and roughly two months of prep.

If you did the math, you’ll have noticed that he didn’t pass this time… His February total score of 1341 was 50 points away from the pass score of 1390.

💬 “Regret to tell you, I failed again. I scored 1341.0200. . . . No matter what, thank you for all your help.”

This is the 75^th installment of Fire-up Friday, but it’s the very first one where I’m featuring a non-passing attempt.

Why?

Defeat is fodder for your next victory. We ought to document both what worked and what didn’t work.

Adam’s story isn’t over yet. This is just part 1. He’s coming back for the rest of his points in July.

In the meantime, we get to find out what worked for his second attempt, and what he could do differently for his third.

There are insights we can glean from Adam’s mistakes and improvements. He has graciously allowed me to share his painful story. And he must have done SOMETHING right to go from 1201 to almost passing.

Passing is easily achievable for Adam from here on. (Hint: A 50-point gap in California is smaller than you think.)

May 10, 2026May 10, 2026 - 41 Comments

Should You “Trust the Process”? You’re the Dean of Your Own Bar Exam Studies

Here’s something that people who pass the bar exam never say:

“All I had to do was listen to all the bar course lectures and take a lot of notes. Just complete the course and you’ll pass!”

Sometimes we think “doing whatever it takes” to pass the bar exam means exhausting yourself and throwing 1000 hours and even more dollars into a black hole. (But it doesn’t have to be expensive.)

Or following some unsustainable cookie-cutter schedule that doesn’t care if you have a job or a family. Good luck if you fall behind by one day.

Or letting a perfectly fine morning slip through by religiously sitting through 4 hours of droning lectures. Worse, pausing lectures to fill in all the notes.

Then not even remembering 99% of it.

Rewinding the video for the 5th time because you can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire

I remember those days. All of those things above are things I stopped doing on my second attempt at preparing for the bar exam.

May 3, 2026May 12, 2026 - 11 Comments

Why You Feel Exhausted Studying for the Bar Exam

Let me guess. Is this your idea of bar prep?

Listen to lectures while sitting still like a statue
Pause to take notes and fill in the blanks (doubling the time it takes to finish the lectures)
Re-read giant outlines you highlighted last week (osmosis didn’t work) before falling asleep with the lights on

It’s like you’re experiencing the most annoying part about traveling—sitting for hours next to someone who takes up the armrest even though they got the window seat.

And repeating this every day. Is this what Limbo is like?

You’re drained and demoralized because you’re trying to “study” but aren’t feeling a sense of progress as words and days pass by you.

But why are you trying to do this the hard way?

April 23, 2026May 9, 2026 - 1 Comment

Do I Really Need a $3,000 Bar Prep Course? Is Self-Study Enough to Pass the Bar Exam? What the Data Shows

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 just a sales pitch?

What typically happens is that prospective bar takers default toward courses on auto-pilot after exposure to three years of marketing.

Understandable! You’re not sure where to even start, and law schools will farm you out to big courses. They’re not going to go out of their way to teach you. (What are they, some kind of charity?)

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 anyway in 5 weeks is another matter.

The bar exam sounds scary, and that’s exactly what they’re banking on. We’re drawn to what feels “safe” and familiar even if it may not the best thing for us. But if you think about it, there’s no real reason you must take a course or be in that situationship.

Courses are a luxury supplement when it comes to bar review. Remember that, and treat them as such.

❌ “Should I use Barbri or Themis?”
✅ “Should I use Barbri or Themis at all?”

❌ “What’s the nicest, ‘best’ option?”
✅ “Where in this bar prep process am I going to feel stuck, and what can I use to make that part go smoother?”

The first question is like sorting by business class when shopping for plane tickets. Maybe this is actually how you want to travel, especially if it’s long distance or an important trip (or someone’s paying for it).

There are legitimate reasons some folks should buy a course. Not everyone should DIY this.

But maybe you weren’t even aware of other options that also get you to point B more cost-efficiently (and more effectively while wasting less time). The first time I took the bar, I didn’t know there were paths other than the default one given to me. I even got excited because “everything I needed to know was in that box of books”!

Lots of people pass with a course. Lots of people pass without one. It’s not the course that determines your success.

I’m going to show you the evidence and perspectives you may not have considered so that you can decide for yourself whether you should take a course or self-study.

February 14, 2026April 25, 2026 - 1 Comment

40 Bar Prep Lessons for My 40th Birthday

Today’s my birthday! Yep, on Valentine’s Day.

Turning 40 feels much different from turning 30.

People would joke about how back pain starts in your 30s. The “joke” would get real tiring after the first time. For a whole decade, I thought they were being dramatic. Then my back started hurting a few months ago.

My metabolism too has tanked, and my skin is stretching and sagging in ways never seen before. And worst of all, I’m NOT as funny as I was a decade ago (in case that explains things) 😩

Seeing the “4” in my age reminds me that I’ve lived a long time. That I’ve been making this your last time for a long time, since I was 28.

And I’m not slowing down. In fact, I have plans to do even more.

It also means I’ve seen some things (in bar prep at least).

What matters? What’s noise? What are patterns, mistakes, traps, and breakthroughs that inevitably happen?

Some ideas have evolved as I spoke with thousands of bar takers, but most of what I believe about bar prep is what I believed when I first started writing about it. “How to bar prep” hasn’t changed.

To celebrate turning 40, my gift to you is 40 quick lessons about bar prep before the exam.