Baring All

Now that the February 2012 bar exam is over, you will be playing the "waiting game."  If you played your cards right, come May 2012, you will be celebrating your being admitted to the bar.  And, if not, you will be sent a score sheet by the bar examiners - which you may be afraid to open -- and that you will need to face to determine a game plan for the next exam.

I'd like to give you courage should you not pass, to play the game again, by telling you my story.  I first sat for the bar exam in Feb. 2009.  I retained a tutor whose method I didn't really understand, whose lectures seemed alien to me, and whose comments on my essays were sketchy, at best.  This tutor, who shall remain unnamed, is a nice person with good intentions, but he was of little assistance to me.  I found myself in sea of law, reading the Bar Bri "phone books" which I purchased on-line.  I wrote 36 essays and attempted to memorize the rules.  To improve my MBE's - a huge weak point -- I took the 6-day PMBR course, which was helpful, and the Bar Bri Essay Advantage course which was also helpful but which really boiled down to a few salient points, all of which I used.  I wrote 4 practice PT's before the exam.

I failed the Feb. 2009 miserably.  One of the profs at my school looked at my score, sucked in his breath, and sighed loudly.  "You've got a long way to go..." and then he gave me a list of private tutors.  I don't think he believed that had I what it takes to pass the exam.

I could not afford - nor face - the July 2009 bar exam and decided, instead, to wait until the following July.

Prior to the July 2010 exam, a private tutor was recommended to me by a friend.  I began with this tutor but, part way through, life events turned against me and I was unable to afford the tutoring.  But, what I learned from this tutor was not to study the "phone books" or memorize the black letter law, but to discover the essay "templates" from the model essay answers published by the bar examiners.  He also advised me to do 25 to 50 MBE's daily -- under timed conditions -- and to "journal" each question that I got wrong with the "trigger facts" and rules.  This tutor's advice concerning the essays was spot on.  But, his advice concerning the MBE's didn't work for me.  While I made a 194 point improvement over my February results in the written score, my raw MBE score was only 3 points higher.  (To be fair to myself, the pass rate for the February 2009 exam was the lowest in five years.)

Going in to the July 2011 exam, I wrote 56 essays, analyzed another 52 by formally outlining them, and then did at least 10 MBE's under non-timed conditions per day, and looked up each MBE result, and journaled the trigger facts and rules for those MBE's that I got wrong.  I began to study in March 2011, and during this time, lost my place to live and had to move, worked 20 hours per week, and most difficult of all was that my mother died in May.  My mother was a huge influence in my life - she believed in me even more than I believed in myself - and she told me before she died that there was one thing she wanted me to do for me.  "Pass that **** bar exam!  Follow your dreams!"

Thus, if you think that there's a chance that you may not have passed the bar exam, dust off your books in April 2012 and begin a long term study plan.  Be methodical.  Leverage your strengths but work to improve your weaknesses.  Reference my blog article on "The Game Plan."  It's a plan that works but it also takes diligence and lots of it.  And, believe in your ability to win the game because you can.

Essays/PT	Feb. 2009	July 2010	Difference
1	55	60	5
2	60	72.5	12.5
3	50	70	20
4	67.5	55	-12.5
5	50	67.5	17.5
6	60	52.5	-7.5
A	55	70	15
B	70	60	-10
MBE	103	106	3
Written	1301.3	1495.355	194.055
MBE	1222	1284	62
Total	1273.5472	1421.3807	147.8335
% Pass	33.5	54.3