I recently had the privilege of speaking with Dustin Saiidi of I Passed My Bar Exam about 3 things you need to know before you decide whether self studying is right for you. Be sure to check out the podcast here so you don't miss out on some good tips, as well as a special deal for Dustin's listeners!

Here's a common email that I receive from readers, along with my reply. I think that the person who emailed me has found themselves in a situation that is somewhat typical for repeaters, especially for those who work full-time. And the questions raised are common for almost all self-studiers. I expect that some of you have wondered about these same questions and would benefit from the exchange. Here it is:

I am interested in your book but have a question for you. I have been out of law school for 10 years working at a law firm. I have taken the bar 3 times, passing the mbe easily, but failing the essay (although I passed the pt portion). It has been a few years since I have taken the exam. If you were starting now to get ready for [the bar exam], where would you start? Read the conviser, long outines, listen to tapes??? Where do I begin? 


Thanks, M

Hi M,

Thanks for your email.

I can tell you exactly what I would do because when I took the exam for the second time, it was 2 years after my first attempt. So I was cold on all the law and basically had to start from scratch like you. There are 4 parts to getting ready for the bar exam - substantive review, essays, MBE & PT. But before that, the FIRST thing I would tell you is that if you are going to be working full time while you prepare for the exam, you are going to want to start really early. You will probably only have evening hours and the weekend to study for the exam, in addition to all those other things you need to do in life (like exercise, spend time with your family, do laundry, buy groceries, etc). Therefore, in your case, slow and steady wins the race. So you will want to start as soon as possible.  It sounds like that is probably what you are doing, which is really smart.

Part 1 of prep is substantive review. I would actually shy away from reading outlines, and the reason is this - outlines are really good for summing up the law once you already know it. But, if you are starting cold on a subject, you really need to be "re-taught" the law so that you are sure you fully understand the concepts of the law, their application and relationship to other legal rules. So it's basically the difference between being in a class where someone is explaining the law to you vs. reading an outline of what you already know. If you don't already know the law, the outline isn't going to be much help. So that said, I highly recommend the Law in a Flash series. I used these cards when I not only studied for the bar exam, but also in law school classes when I had those professors who liked to play "hide the ball" and would just go on about legal theory but never explained to the class what the law was. It's a great way to teach yourself the law because the cards are laid out really well and they have tons of hypotheticals which truly test if you fully grasp the concepts. You can use the flashcards for a subject you've never learned and by the end of the deck you will completely understand the subject. So it is the ultimate self-study tool for learning/re-learning the law. If you have access to a law school library you can probably use them for free. If you think you want to buy your own, I have links on my blog on the resources page.

If you already have audio lectures they would be a good way to go, too. Especially if you have a daily commute or can listen to them while you cook dinner, exercise, etc. You will be able to kill two birds with one stone. The audio lectures would be superior to outlines for the same reason I already mentioned - because someone is explaining the law to you instead of outlines which just recap what you're already supposed to have learned.

Part 2 of prep is essays. If that is your weak point, you definitely want to focus on learning how to write a good bar essay. It's pretty much its own art form. You absolutely need to get the Bar Breaker book by Adachi.  My essay strategy is really too long to explain in this email (I spend over 20 pages in my book talking about how to prepare for the essays), but basically it comes down to three things. (1) using GOOD model answers to learn how to write like them and get good at writing bar essays (I go into a lot of detail about how to accomplish this and this is one of the truly unique aspects of my approach). (2) doing a lot of practice essays. You need to start writing practice essays IMMEDIATELY. Do NOT fall into the trap of waiting until you know enough law to start doing practice essays. That is the kiss of death. Do them from day 1. Again, I completely explain the strategy in the book and give you step-by-step instructions about this part. (3) You also need to test yourself to find out how you're doing. I highly recommend using bargraders.com. I used them and can't say enough good things about their service. You take practice essays under timed conditions and within 48 hours your essay will be graded by actual past CA bar graders and will be returned to you. They break the grading down into the IRAC elements so you can see where your weak areas are. They also give comments and feedback which is really helpful. They'll tell you if you did really good in one section, or if you did bad in a section what it is that you did wrong. Again, this is invaluable information to have BEFORE you walk into the bar exam.

Part 3 of prep is MBE. It sounds like you don't need any help in this area. The one word of caution I would have for you though, is this: don't think just because you've scored well on the MBE before that you don't still have to make it an integral part of your study program. I've seen people switch their efforts from MBE to essays because they did good on the MBE but poorly on the essays, only to fail again and find out they did poorly on the MBE and well on the essays. Set yourself up for strong scores on all 3 parts of the exam. But FYI, I do go through MBE prep in the book as well.

Part 4 of prep is the PT. Again, it sounds like you do well in this area. So just like the MBE, I would just make sure you don't neglect it during your prep only to have it bite you in the butt later on. So make sure you do enough practice PTs. If you start studying really early, 1 PT every other week is enough. If you start Oct 1, and do 1 PT every other Sunday, you will complete 11 by the Feb bar. I do have some great tips and techniques in the book about PTs that might help you shave some time off your PT and give you a stronger finish.

Lastly, not to sound like a broken record, but my book answers all your questions and more. If you're concerned about how to get started, what to work on, how to work bar prep into your schedule, etc, the book will really help you. I purposefully designed it answer these common questions and provide a thorough program you can follow. Or you can just use it as a guidebook to forge your own path. Even if that's all you use it for, the many calendars, trackers, worksheets, etc will come in really handy. But for your specific issue (failing the essays), my book will show you how to overcome that problem.

Good luck!

The plan is to pass the bar exam.  To do this, you need to practice taking the bar exam - ALL parts of it.  And you need to practice so much that you get really, really good at every part of the bar exam, or at least as good as you can get at it.  I know you’re probably thinking “No shit, Einstein! Tell me something I don’t already know.”  But if you really stop and think about it, you may not have really known that, or at least how to do it.

How do I know this is news to people?  Because every year thousands of people prepare for the bar exam by writing outlines or flashcards, reading outlines and flashcards, and memorizing rule statements.  They read and “issue spot” essays.  They read and outline PTs.  You can find them in the law library, with a massive book on their lap, Ke$ha pumping in their earbuds, watching ESPN.com on their computer screen as they text their friend who is also “studying” at the next desk.  Or, they might be in a massive hall somewhere, staying current on their news feed while listening to a lecture.  None of these activities (even the good ones like issue spotting essays) are going to be tested on the bar exam.

Right now you are probably disagreeing with me, thinking that you will have to spot issues on essays and organize/outline PTs on the bar exam.  And yes, of course, you do.  But that is only a small part of what you need to do on the exam.  Spotting issues does not a passing essay make.  The same can be said for a perfectly organized PT outline.  You will fail them both.  I will go into detail about how to prepare for each part of the bar exam, but for now, I just want to share the overall approach to getting there.

Now that we’ve established that all these little tasks that have come to collectively be known as regular “bar prep” are not what I suggest you do to prepare for the bar, let’s get back to what you should be doing.  You should practice taking essays, PTs, and MBE questions.  Over and over and over again.  Do EXACTLY what you will be doing on the bar exam.  The old adage is so true: practice makes perfect.  So for essays, you are going to sit down to take a timed practice essay, full length, using your complete concentration.  You will not short cut by bullet-pointing your answers, issue spotting only, or skipping the conclusions.  You won’t stop to read that text that just made your phone vibrate.  You will write it as if you had to hand it in to the bar graders.  You will do this for every essay subject, multiple times.  Same goes for PTs.

In parts 2 and 3 of this blog post series I’m going to talk about why taking practice exams is so important and more importantly, how it is so effective for bar prep.

{Did you find this post helpful? It came straight out of my book, The Goat’s Guide: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Preparing for the California Bar Exam on Your Own}

So now you know from part 1 of this post series that the Be A Goat study plan is firmly rooted in the precept that you must take a lot of practice exams to be well prepared for the bar exam.  If you’re anything like me, you groan at the despicable thought of writing essays day in and day out.  I won’t deny it - it’s the advice no one wants to hear.  No one wants to write essays.  Reading outlines is so much more preferable.  Why?  Because it’s easy.  Someone else had to do the hard work of getting that knowledge in their brain and creating the outline.  Reading outlines is passive.  It doesn’t challenge you.  It doesn’t show you where you are messing up or what you don’t know.  Writing essays, taking a PT, doing MBEs – this is stuff that no one can do for you.  It sucks.  It’s hard (at first).  It takes more effort and requires active engagement.  But it’s also what you have to do on the bar.  Do the hard work now, and it will pay off big time.

If you do the work, you will find that you won’t have to spend as many hours preparing as those other students. Those other students are the ones who pay thousands of dollars for a commercial bar prep class, and who spend most of their time listening to lectures.  They read outlines.  They make outlines.  They make checklists.  They make flashcards.  They re-read the outlines and checklists.  They quiz themselves on the flashcards.  These tasks become a massive portion of their preparation.

Consider the simple fact that they are going to be in a class for hours each day…. add in the commute to and from class, the lunch break, the commute to the library.  Take note: they HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED STUDYING YET!!!!!  That’s at least 5 hours of their day, and they haven’t yet performed a single task that they will be asked to perform on the actual exam.

But not you!  You are too smart for that.  You’re not going to spend hours each day in class.  You’re not wasting your time doing busy work that doesn’t prepare you for the bar exam, such as reading outlines.  Instead, you are going to be practicing actual bar exam tasks by taking practice essays, PTs, and MBEs.  Because of this, you will actually find that you learn the law SO MUCH FASTER!

You learn the law faster this way because if you make yourself struggle through writing a contracts essay, for example, and don’t know how to do an offer and acceptance analysis yet, you are going to learn real fast!  It’s hard to push through material like that.  Your brain works hard.  You find out really quickly that you don’t know it.  When you finally read that rule of law afterwards, it gets cemented into your brain because you were searching so hard for it before.  Now you will know the rule, and if you don’t get it down the first time, it only takes a few more and you have it.

Let’s say you had been reading an outline instead of doing a practice essay.  Would you have tested yourself to see if you could actually recite the rule of law, out loud, before you read it?  Let’s say you had tested yourself and found out you couldn’t articulate the rule.  It’s not a big deal, is it?  You can just read the rule a second later.  But it’s not the same when your entire essay is riding on this key issue.  If you can’t put the rule of law down on paper and then properly analyze the facts, your whole essay is shit.  You may only get 45 points on the essay, which would make it extremely hard to pass the bar exam.  This type of pressure isn’t present when you are just reading through an outline.  That is why you will never learn as much by reading outlines as you will by testing yourself.  And that is why doing practice essays will work much, much faster than rote memorization.

Make sure to check out the final post in this 3-part series here.

{Did you find this post helpful? It came straight out of my book, The Goat’s Guide: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Preparing for the California Bar Exam on Your Own}

I hope that through part 1 and part 2 of this post series I have made clear how important it is to practice doing the exact tasks that you will be asked to do on the bar exam. It is incredibly important, despite the fact that it deviates from the standard approach that you will probably see most of your friends taking. There is good reason for it, and it really does work. I personally bet the bar exam on it, and I won. I have complete faith that it can work for you, too.

This approach may *sound* like more work (and harder work), and it may seem like there is a lazier, more passive option out there. But the truth is, once you get going, you will find that this is actually a lot easier than you thought it would be. You learn faster and you learn better. And not to be dismissed as inconsequential is the incredible amount of confidence you will gain in the process. Each day you mark down that you did 35 MBEs and 3 full-length practice essays, you will be so incredibly proud of yourself and your progress.

That same confidence will be with you in the bar exam, which is invaluable! There won’t be anything on that bar exam that you’re not equipped to handle, and that’s something you can’t buy. So I hope I’ve convinced you of how trustworthy and superior this approach is. Here’s a fun little story to entertain you, and which makes my point in a way only a true story can!

While in law school I participated in a mock trial competition.  My partner and I were 1Ls, and we were evening students.  That means we hadn’t had Evidence or Civ Pro – no classes that would give us any basis for understanding the rules of trial.  As 1Ls, we were supposed to be paired against another 1L team.  An error was made, and for our very first mock trial (on a Friday night) we were pitted against 2Ls who had had both Evidence and Civ Pro, not to mention an entire extra year of law school.  It was a massacre.  We had no idea what we were doing.  We didn’t know when to make objections, what to object to, how to correctly ask a leading question or even question our own witnesses.  It was an extremely painful, stressful and embarrassing situation.  But we were learning from each mistake we were making.

After the blood bath, we regrouped, evaluated the destruction, and re-assessed our trial skills before the next round the following morning. Saturday morning, we were placed against another 1L team for the second round.  This 1L team was in the day program, so they actually had more legal knowledge than we did.  But we had learned a lot the night before and were confident in our new skills.  We creamed them!

We advanced on to face our next opponents. It just so happens that we had advanced on to face the same exact 2L team we had competed against the night before.  But this time, things were different.  Really different.  We knew what to do this time.  We realized they had been getting away with murder on Friday night because of our lack of knowledge.  When they tried the same tactics this time, we shut them down.  Over and over again.  I was even able to get their most hostile witness to impeach himself on the stand.  The night before I couldn’t even get him to talk.

We beat them, and the look on their faces was priceless.  They were completely shocked not only that we were winning, but that we were the same team they had humiliated the night before.  We were bad ass.

Even though we felt humiliated and defeated on Friday night, we learned more through that short struggle that we would have in a year of a trial skills class.  Why?  Because we weren’t listening to lectures about how a trial works, how to object, how to preserve the record, how to claim privilege, etc. Instead, we learned by doing, and that type of learning is the best kind.

{Did you find this post helpful? It came straight out of my book, The Goat's Guide: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Preparing for the California Bar Exam on Your Own}

I want to discuss a very important issue for those of you who are either considering or planning to self study for the bar exam.  My belief is that this is THE most important factor in determining whether self study is right for you.  Because the truth is that it's not right for everyone.  You need to take an honest look at yourself and determine whether the following factor would keep you from successfully completing a self study program.

That factor is motivation and discipline.  The reason why I lump these two qualities together is that I believe they work together as one.  They are two sides to the same coin, as it were.  If you are highly motivated to pass the bar, you will make yourself do what needs to be done to pass it (i.e., discipline).  I once heard the statement: "Discipline is remembering what you want."  That always stuck with me because I think it is a near perfect definition of discipline.  A lot of times we tend to think of discipline abstractly.  A disciplined person is someone who does everything perfectly and never procrastinates.  Perhaps they even enjoy being disciplined for its own sake.  I don't know if  that perception is accurate.

If you think of discipline simply as remembering what you want, you have a deeper reason for making disciplined choices.  If I want to lose weight and be healthy, I remember that goal when making eating choices.  It's a lot easier to choose carrot sticks over cake when you recognize that a smaller pant size is on the other side of that decision, and you're not just depriving yourself for kicks.  Likewise, if you have a strong desire to pass the bar exam (and not everyone does), it will help tremendously when doing a self study program.  You will wake up and think of your tasks for the day as being one step closer to passing that exam and ...... (getting that job, attaining the prestige of being a lawyer, proving the self study nay-sayers wrong......you fill in the blank).  You don't want to be waking up every day dreading the process.

Motivation and discipline are obviously important for any bar examinee, not just self studiers.  But it is crucial for self studiers.  Why?  Because you aren't taking a commercial prep class.  You don't have that environment to go to every day.  You won't have the instructors, the room full of classmates.  For all my criticism of commercial prep courses, this is the one thing they have going for them.  And in my opinion, if you do choose to pay the thousands to take one of their programs, this is really what you're paying for.  If you're in their program, you and probably all your friends are going to be together almost every day.  You're going to be listening to the same things, you are going to be doing the same work (in general), you are going to have each other.

Not to be dismal, but if you self study, you may not know any other person who is also self studying.  This is a big challenge for a number of reasons.  First, you will probably have to face the negativity of others when they find out you are going to self study.  They will probably think you all manner of things: foolish, reckless, stupid.  (Although there will be others who are jealous of your courage to do what they are too scared to do themselves.)  Second, self study can get lonely!  Not only have you pretty much had to say goodbye to your friends, family and social life for a few months, but now you won't even be with your law school friends, either.  I mean, studying is hard enough as it is, you at least want to commiserate, right?  And when you are around your friends who take a commercial program, they are going to be on a different schedule than you.  When there are hundreds of them, and only one of you, it's hard not to get intimidated by what they're doing and wonder if you should be doing the same thing (which is why being a sheep is easy and being a goat takes fortitude).

Lastly - and this is the big one - if you hit the wall or get in a rut, no one is going to be there to put you back on track.  You won't be able to go to class the next day and feel inspired or motivated externally by others.  You have to find it within yourself to get through the hard times.  You have to make yourself write essays when you don't want to.  You have to get through those MBEs every day.  If you can't do this, you can find yourself in a bad situation.  You might lose an entire week or more.  If you take a class, all you have to do is show up the next day and they will either scare or motivate you into shaking the dirt off your boots and getting going again.  But if you self study, you have to have the fortitude to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make things happen.

You might relate to me.  I was smart (which is why I got into law school) and therefore everything came easy to me in school.  I rarely studied and always got straight As.  Although it sure was nice for a very long time, I never developed the discipline to study.  Even in law school I pretty much skated by.  In general I gave up the As, but I got to keep my abysmal study habits.  I crunched during finals, and graduated with a solid B average.  But I hated studying, HATED it!  I didn't want to work hard.  I never had to before.  But as we all know, you can't pass the bar without doing the work.  It's just not possible (although I think I've come up with the best program for doing as little work as possible!).

So when I studied the first time around and found out I was pregnant, I got totally off track.  If I had been in a commercial program, I probably would have re-focused back to the task at hand a lot sooner.  I may have been able to push through the physical challenges a little better.  Would I have passed?  Who can say for sure.  The second time around, though, I was a different person.  Sure I didn't have the pregnancy challenge this time, but now I had a 1 year old and less time to study.  The big thing for me was the humiliation of failing the first time.  It still bothers me.  I was petrified of failing again.  I couldn't even imagine how I would have dealt with it (and I did try to have a plan just in case).  Also, I wanted to just be done with it.  I didn't want it hanging over my head.  I was tired of my friends saying I was a lawyer and having to correct them that I still have to pass the bar.  I didn't like having that loose end yet to tie up.  I didn't want my family to have to go through another study attempt and all the sacrifices that required of them.  I just wanted it done.  So I was really motivated.

Although the motivation was there, the discipline still had to be developed.  It's one thing to want to study, it's another to teach yourself how to sit at a desk and stay there until you get your designated work accomplished.  It took some practice to learn how to get the books out and get started right away.  But it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.  Once I had my reason for being there and doing the work, it was easier to get going.  And once I got going, it was easy to stay going.  After I did one day, I knew I could do it another day.  And another day.  I gained momentum and was really proud of myself for being disciplined.  It's like when people tell you that they enjoy working out.  It becomes fulfilling in and of itself.  I loved it when at the end of the day I could mark down that I had done 3 practice essays.  It felt good and I wanted that feeling again the next day.

So think about it.  Do you have sufficient motivation and discipline to get through this enormous task on your own?  What's your reason?  Is there a fire in your belly to slay this beast?  You must be able to draw upon that motivation when things get really, really hard.  If you do determine that you have it in you to go the self study route, there are things you can do to help alleviate that isolation I talked about.  I'll talk more about that in my next post.

In my recent post, Your Biggest Challenge, I discussed how important motivation and discipline are for doing a successful self study.  In short, if these are not qualities you possess, it is unlikely that you will do what is necessary to pass the exam.  A commercial prep course is probably best for you.

Even those who are motivated and disciplined can use a boost.  Having a game plan for pushing through those really tough times is a smart idea.  Unfortunately, in bar exam world, there aren't a lot of plays to be had.  As I discussed in Superbowl Prep for the Bar Exam, one approach is to give yourself a break to refresh.  Another is to stalk bar exam blogs like this one for encouragement.  The approach I want to discuss at present is finding/building a network of other self studiers.

The first point of business is finding those people.  When I re-studied for the exam last year, I knew of classmates who graduated with me who were also re-taking the exam.  Thanks to facebook, it only takes a quick glance at their page on bar exam results day to know if they passed or not.  I took a calculated risk in messaging one of these friends to inquire if they were going to be sitting for the following administration of the exam.  I was really nervous about doing this, because they were in the midst of dealing with the disappointing results.  But as I explained that I had to take the exam again too, and wondered if we might support each other and help each other through the process, I think it came across okay.   I received a welcome response, as well as information about other classmates who were in our same position.  So I gathered us together via email.

The second point of business is turning your network of self studiers into a common resource.  Each person is going to have their own needs - their own strengths and weaknesses, their own focus for the exam.  Some may be first-timers, some repeaters.  Some will be studying full time, some will be working full time.  Some may enjoy the school library, some may be home-studiers.  Some may have taken a commercial class before, some may be employing a different self study program than you.  The key is not to focus on these differences.  You don't have to be all doing the same thing to support each other.  What you really need is a small group of people to check in on you, to keep you accountable.  You need people to email when you're struggling through something and need help.

My own group consisted of 5 people, including myself.  I'm pretty sure everyone except me had taken BarBri before.  All of us were repeaters.  I think all of us had jobs or other full time responsibilities that kept us from studying full time.  My intent was for us to get together at least once a week (Saturday or Sunday).  For the first meeting, I wanted everyone to bring their past exams so we could compare and learn from our mistakes.  Also at this first meeting, each of us was to share our past study experience: what classes and materials we tried, what we thought of them, etc.  That way others could benefit from our recommendations if they were considering trying something we already had.  After this first meeting, I intended to have us do a 3 hour practice exam at our weekly meetings; the idea being that we rotate through a 3 hour PT, 3 Essays, and 3 hours of MBEs, thereby giving us practice under simulated conditions.

It was like herding cats.  It never worked out how I intended it to.  Not one meeting was fully attended, and I quickly realized after a short period of time that the weekly meeting idea wouldn't work with my friends.  There was always at least one person who couldn't make it for some reason or other.  And people showed up late.  And we talked.

I still think it's a great idea and would recommend it to those of you who can get a committed group of people together.  For whatever reason our group didn't work as I imagined.  I think it makes a big difference if you have a group of first timers who are studying full time without family or work responsibilities.  That said, my little group was good in other ways.  We found that our email group was a great way to communicate throughout the week.  If we had a question or issue, we'd email the group or a friend in the group.  If one person was looking for audio lectures on Crim Law, someone else in the group always seemed to have it and would email the file.  If we were looking for an outline or mnemonics, someone would share theirs.  But the biggest help of having this group was merely having a group.  Being part of a group where everyone is facing the same challenge and working to succeed.  We had a sense of community and knowing we weren't alone, even if we didn't see each other.  We had a number of people we could call or email to encourage us when we were frustrated.  We all understood each other's pain.  Even seeing the emails pass back and forth was a constant reminder of the approaching bar exam and that we needed to continue making progress.  This was the biggest benefit to having the group.  It helped me keep motivated and disciplined.  It helped with feelings of isolation.  It also helped knowing that others, like me, were self studying, even though the vast majority of people were taking a commercial prep class.

So to encourage you in building your network, try to get the word out that you are self studying for the exam.  See if you can find friends of friends from classes before or after you who are in the same position.  Maybe there are other law schools in your area - be bold and put up a flier that you're self studying and want to connect with other self studiers.  Decide amongst your group what role you want it to play.  Do you want to have a structured practice exam every week?  Do you just want to share materials?  Let it serve the members of the group.