Taking the bar exam is one of the biggest days in any aspiring lawyers life. The exam determines whether or not you can practice law in the state you live in, and some states only allow you to fail the test a small number of times before you’re no longer able to take it. Passing the test on your first try requires intense preparation and studying. Here are a few tips to help you ace the bar exam.
Create a personalized study schedule
Plan out what days and times, and for how long, you will study leading up to the test. If you’re taking a preparation course, they likely provided you with a schedule. While that is helpful as a jumping off point, you will want to tailor that so it aligns with your current schedule. The course you’re enrolled in doesn’t know how you learn the most effectively, so their schedule may not be one that even works for you. Keep your schedule flexible so it can evolve to suit your needs the best. If you find one technique doesn’t work for you, then take it out. If you need extra practice writing real property essays, add them to your schedule.
Use quality materials
While it seems obvious, having high-quality study materials is crucial to your success on the bar exam. If you are using low-quality materials, then you won’t have the information needed to succeed on the test. Find a guide that presents the material in a way that makes sense to you. Also, look for released multistate bar exam questions and essay questions. These are questions that actually appeared on bar exams and will help you to get used to the wording that the test uses. Some commercial guides use their own questions and the wording doesn’t match up with the test wording, which can throw you off.
Emphasize memorization
A lot of law students will go straight from the lecture into practice problems. This ineffective studying method will just result in you feeling overwhelmed and underprepared. You need to have the law memorized in order to do well on the exam. You should be able to quickly recite the rules and regulations after reading the fact pattern. The essay portion will require you to reproduce the rules for the grader. Be sure to study and memorize your outlines so you can apply the law to the given facts.