Preparing for the bar exam requires you to practice, practice, and practice more, but having the right resources to study is just as important. The focus of this article is on materials that worked for me and were recommended to me by ABA law school graduates and colleagues who passed the exam on their first try. After following your advice, I finally passed.
First, you absolutely must have the current version of Barbri’s Mini Convisor Review. It’s all the black letter law you need to memorize for the bar exam. The law provided in this guide is complete, thorough, and includes all the elements you will need to discuss in your essay answers. Use this review guide to create your rule statements and you’ll be well on your way to passing the bar exam. You can buy it used or new.
The MBE portion requires more practice. You can use any of the MBE question books on the market and there are even online test programs available if that suits you. I suggest Emmanuel’s Strategies and Tactics for the EBM. Answer as many practice questions as you can. He will have to learn from his mistakes and really notice the patterns in the questions in order to answer all 200 questions within the time limit. Then the night before the MBE test, just review your notes created from the answers you missed during practice.
To pass the bar exam, you need to practice. I recommend writing practice essays under weather conditions. Also, it is extremely helpful to have someone else review your answers and provide factual feedback. I’ve taken several bar exam review courses, and all but one over-inflated my practice essay scores, leading me to believe that I was performing better on the practice than on the bar exam. When I finally found Bar Graders on the web and took over 40 practice essays, my exam score improved significantly. These are former bar exam graders and I would not want anyone else grading my practice essays. They should certainly be your only bar review course.
Finally, a few words about the performance test. Try a strategy that makes you work efficiently in the performance test. There are many achievement test strategies that will allow you to prepare a grid layout of the problems that match the law and work from that grid to type or write your answer. Forget the rainbow highlighter, chart and graph approaches because they don’t work and waste your valuable time. Of course, many of the bar review courses include performance test materials, so you may not need to purchase additional materials. However, if you’re wondering what else is out there and what has worked for other bar test takers, then it’s worth looking into additional materials. I wish you the best in your preparation for the exam and in your career.