Repeating the Bar Exam

The Uniform Bar Exam tests your ability to make sense out of all the strange concepts you learned about in law school. The test is a marathon, not a sprint. It lasts for two days, with six hours of testing each day plus a one-hour lunch break.  The bar exam takes place the last Tuesday and Wednesday of February or July. You register on your state bar’s website and set aside two months to study full-time.

The Multistate Bar Exam consists of 200 multiple-choice questions covering seven subjects. These topics are: Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property, and Torts. Different bar prep companies offer different materials, but I found that the Kaplan multiple-choice questions most closely resembled the questions I encountered on the day of the examination. When doing practice multiple-choice questions, I found it helpful to review the answers and read the explanations about both the ones I got wrong and the ones I correctly answered.

The Multistate Essay Exam, the essay component administered on Tuesday, consists of six 30-minute short questions and two 90-minute Multistate Performance Tests. There are 12 subject areas tested on the MEE:

• business associations

• civil procedure

• conflict of laws

• constitutional law

• contracts and sales

• criminal law and procedure

• evidence

• family law

• real property

• torts

• trusts and estates

• Article 9 (secured transactions) of the Uniform Commercial Code

The Multistate Essay Exam is the component of the bar exam that most closely mirrors standard law-school exams. Examiners are looking for lengthy, complete answers using the Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion format. Rumor has it that points awarded correlate with answer word count. I earned very high Multistate Performance Test scores while knowing nothing about the “dummy” subjects tested simply by citing to all the materials in their case file and library of statutes and then organizing and editing the hell out of my essay answers.

The National Conference of Bar Examiners website has old versions of the Multistate Essay Exam. Bar prep programs often have databases of old essays as well, but the NCBE keeps old multiple-choice questions secret because it recycles those questions. These are incredibly useful, but I would focus on writing out real essays that have actually been administered in the past than a bar prep company’s made-up essays. One tip to practicing essays before you’re fully familiar with the material on which they’re testing is to sneak a peek at the model answer before writing out your own, so that you know you’re on the right track with your answer as to what rules they’re testing. I also recommend looking at a “subject frequency chart” to take note of which subjects appear most often and to study those subjects more heavily.

Between 59% to 81% of total takers pass the Colorado bar exam.  I trained for my first 5K race, because I found that morning running improved my concentration throughout the day and the endorphins made me feel optimistic about success. A law professor gave me gummy bears and KIND bars to give me a sugar rush during the exam. She also suggested mantras to repeat to myself during the bar exam, such as “This too shall pass,” “Keep calm and carry on,” and “I accept this moment. I accept myself.”

I found study groups more helpful than solo studying. I studied with two classmates who became good friends through the process. I found it very helpful to sit next to someone in the library or in a coffee shop while banging out 200 multiple-choice questions. It was also helpful to review outlines with someone else and familiarize myself with material I hadn’t studied well in law school, such as trusts and estates. I also prepared outlines on my own and reviewed these outlines with my mom, who didn’t know anything about the law but enjoyed learning the black-letter rules and quizzing me on them.

If you failed the bar the first time, I highly recommend hiring a tutor. Tutors range in price from $100 an hour to $300 an hour for the most high-end ones. They can help review your substantive knowledge, attain subject mastery and organize your study time effectively. I worked with LawTutors after I failed. They were so impressed with my efforts that once I passed, they hired me on as an Attorney-Instructor to impart my wisdom to the next cohort of test-takers.

Published by The Docket in October 2021: https://www.dbadocket.org/the-business-of-law/education/repeating-the-uniform-bar-exam/