Plan, Prepare, Prevail – Bar Prep Tips For Every Kind of Test Taker

When John H. Wilson first took the California bar exam in 2008, a 5.4 magnitude earthquake rumbled through the Ontario convention center, sending him scrambling under the table for cover.

“I turned to the right of me,” he remembers, “and someone brought their computer under the table and kept working!”

Despite the State Bar of California awarding Wilson one “quake point” for the disruption, he still came up a few points short of passing. He tried a few more times, but then his mother fell ill and he put his legal dreams away, instead taking a job in radio and caring for his nephew.

Perhaps because of the pandemic, or perhaps because it was just time to try again, Wilson says he had a moment of clarity recently and has decided to take the exam in February 2023, almost a decade since his last attempt.

“My first step is to remind myself that I know all this stuff and that I was good at it and I’m going be good at it again,” he said.

Wilson, like more than 6,000 others, discovered the Facebook group “July 2022 California Bar Exam Discussion.” The page, which changes its name to match the current bar cycle, was formed in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic for people to discuss the trials and tribulations of studying for the upcoming California Bar Exam amid uncertainty.

Through the page, Wilson has access to free workshops offered by a variety of bar tutors, opportunities to find bar exam study buddies throughout the world, and a plethora of recent bar passers who willingly share their tips on how they passed the bar.

The tips are geared towards all bar takers, whether it’s your first time or not. These tips include:

• Prioritize sleep. If you are tired, stop studying and go to sleep. 

• It is a certainty that Professional Responsibility will be an essay topic, so master that.

• For every Wills & Trusts issue you prep, imagine it is your own money and family involved.

• Use EVERY statute and case they give you on the Performance Test.

• When studying, don’t guess the answers to multiple choice questions. Use flashcards and outlines to “hunt and gather” the answer. Actively hunting for the answers and gathering them into your brain should help you better able to retain the substantive law.

• On your second read of an essay fact pattern, read the essay from the bottom up. This will force you to slow down and read each sentence so that you don’t miss any issues and facts; facts that other test takers will gloss over because they’re reading from the top down each time and reading too fast.

• Practice essays every day and then compare your essays to real high and low scoring examples to learn what you need to do.

• Take advantage of all the Bar prep courses and workshops your school offers throughout law school and during Bar prep. All of them!!! And throughout law school take classes that test Bar topics. If the first time you’re seeing Community Property law is eight weeks before the Bar exam, you may panic. The more you learn in law school, the less prep you’ll have to do for the Bar.

• Whatever worked for you in law school, keep it going! 

The Facebook group also helped Wilson select bar study materials, which he says he’s going to “devour.”

“I didn’t do anything extra for my additional tries because when you miss it by less than 8 points the first time, you don’t think you need to do that much extra,” Wilson said. “What I know I have to do, that I did the first time, and what I’m going to do better this time, is make a plan, or borrow someone’s plan, and follow it.”

For test takers like Wilson who are stepping up to the same state bar for a repeat at bat, attorney and author Jonathan Wright advises exam takers to embrace their past failures.

“I think back often and fondly on that ‘failed’ chapter, and I take it with me in much that I continue to pursue,” Wright says.

Wright, author of The Wright Method: Real World Bar Prep for Busy People, likens failing the bar exam to fly fishing.

“With fly fishing, you’re constantly throwing the line out,” he says. “Pretty much each time you throw that line out you fail to hook a fish, but you keep doing it. But it’s not failure because you get another shot at it!”

Wright also urges test takers to get excited about the next month of studying but not burn out, a sentiment Wilson seconds.

“There’s going to be a rest day every single week,” Wilson says. “It has to be a balanced approach. I’m still going to go to the movies. That’s what I was missing the first time.”

California attorneys who have decided to sit for an exam in another jurisdiction also have to find that balance.

Nicole D’Ambrogi, founder of San Diego Legacy Law and an adjunct professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, passed the February 2022 Arizona bar exam, but she admits it was a balancing act.

“Truthfully, I didn’t have much time to commit to studying for the UBE,” said the mother of three. “I really had to choose my time wisely. I think the hardest part was getting the Live Scan completed because that was not something I could do from behind my desk.”

D’Ambrogi also had to sit for the full Arizona bar exam, not an “attorney exam” like many attorneys testing in California can take.

“Since I had not sat for the UBE, I was unable to transfer my MBE score and was required to take the full exam,” she said. “Not to mention, since it had been longer than five years since I sat for the MPRE, I had to retake that as well!” 

D’Ambrogi, who used Flemings Fundamentals of Law’s Ultimate Bar Tutorial when she passed the California bar exam in July 2013, says her best tip is to know your issue spotting checklist and work it every day.

“If you can spot the issues you can make up the rule and analyze anything,” D’Ambrogi says. “I also am a big supporter of MBEs and sample essay rewrites.”

And if you follow Wilson’s advice and take in an occasional movie, did you know in 2007 a documentary was released following six people as they attempt to pass the California bar exam?

“‘A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar. . .’ wasn’t intended to be a dispassionate examination of the state of the practice of law in America,” writes Rick Friedling of Plaintiff magazine in a 2009 review. “Instead, it succeeds as a vivid, gritty and entertaining snapshot of both the legal profession and those who would become part of it. It is less of an exposé along the lines of “Roger and Me” than an episode of ‘Survivor: Ontario.’”

Good luck!