Wouldn’t it be great if you could just snap your fingers and instantly pass the bar exam? Unfortunately, no such magic spell exists. If it does, then it’s at least a secret known to only a few.
For most folks, passing the bar exam is a combination of diligence and hard work. However, it also means avoiding some of the most common pitfalls. Keep reading to learn some of the most common culprits behind students failing their bar exam. Avoid these traps yourself if you want to significantly increase your odds of passing your bar exam when you take it.
The first thing that you need to look out for is too much passive studying. Doing too much of this is the biggest single reason why students wind up failing. In essence, it’s spending too much time watching and reading but not enough actually doing the problems. Bar review companies love assigning students lengthy outlines to read or many videos for watching. These are, without a doubt, invaluable resources that you should take advantage of, so definitely utilize them. However, don’t use them alone by themselves. Make sure these particular activities don’t eat up a lot of your valuable bar review time.
A second problem is not doing enough practice questions. These are the real secret to success on the bar exam, and they’re also why you shouldn’t put too much time into passive review work. You’re only going to have a certain amount of preparation time for you bar exam, and you need to put that time to good use if you want to pass. Practice questions are known to yield quite a high return in terms of added points on your bar exam for the time you must invest in them. Throughout your bar prep, you should aim for over 2,000 multiple choice questions and 20 to 30 essays and practice tests.
Do not try to outsmart the exam. You just can’t do this. There are many students that attempt to pass the test rather unsuccessfully just through their supposedly sheer volume of knowledge. To start with, you do have to know a particular amount of law in order to pass the test. You just can’t get around that. On the other hand, you also need critical skills to pass too, like the abilities to finish the test within the time constraints, formulate rule statements, issue spot, implement strategies involving the process of elimination, and develop analysis. If you focus only on how much you know without using that knowledge, then you’re seriously putting your power to pass in jeopardy.
On top of time management, you have to watch out for others around you, because resource and advice overload is real. Everyone that’s ever taken their own bar exam will have opinions on how you should be getting ready yourself. Usually, they’re going to have only the best of intentions, but this can bury you in options to sift through. Know your own learning style and consider the sources of any input.
For that matter, watch out for yourself. Self doubt is a heartbreaking reason for students to fail, but it can also be your worst enemy.