Bar Exams

5 Steps To Ensure You Pass The February Bar Exam

Failing the bar exam sucks. But, it does not define you.

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October always brings about mixed emotions for me, because most of my students receive their results from the July bar exam. My heart races with excitement thinking about celebrating with those who pass, while my stomach is in knots anticipating the conversations I will have with the students who are unsuccessful. If you have recently found out you failed the bar exam, this message is for you:

There is no getting around the fact that failing the bar exam sucks. But, it does not define you. It does not determine your self-worth. You are smart and capable. You are also going through a really tough time. You poured all of your time and effort into passing this exam and it did not work out. You are allowed to be upset and frustrated. It is totally normal to feel confused and overwhelmed. But, you can’t take up permanent residence in those feelings. You are going to study for and take this test again. And this time, you are going to pass. Take these 5 steps to get through your emotions and move onto productive studying.

1- Grieve

Failing the bar exam is a major life event. You must allow yourself some time and space to work through your feelings, because you cannot simultaneously be angry, frustrated, and sad, and productively study. People have a wide range of reactions to failing the bar exam. Usually, they go through some kind of grieving process that involves shock, sadness, anger, reflection, and acceptance. Whatever you are feeling, it is important that you take some time to acknowledge and respect it. However, I want to spend a minute speaking directly to those who feel angry, because it is the most dangerous place to get stuck.

I am not a psychologist, but I think the reason people dwell in anger is because it feels the least shitty. Being sad is awful, and people will usually do anything and everything to avoid feeling it. Being self-reflective and looking at the road you have ahead of you is hard work. But, anger is easy. All you have to do is be mad.  At your law school, the board of bar examiners, your bar review company, your dog, and the guy at the grocery store. You don’t have to face the past or the future, and you don’t have to feel bad all the time. Don’t linger in anger too long. You are only hurting yourself and decreasing your chance of being successful.

2- Release

You might have thoughts running through your head, such as “if I had only done X differently”, “I should have studied more,” or “I should have been less distracted.” This, again, is totally normal. However, it is not a productive way of thinking. There is absolutely nothing you can do to go back and change the way you studied last time. In the next step, you are going to have a chance to do an in depth evaluation of your prior study plan. Use this as your one opportunity to be very critical of how you studied last time. Be brutally honest. Get it all out. Figure out exactly what worked and what did not. Then, once you move on to step 5 and create your new study plan, never.look.back.

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3- Assess

The biggest mistake students make when they are taking the bar exam for the second time is to think that they have to do exactly what they did the first time just more of it. In my experience, students rarely fail because they didn’t study enough. More often, it is about how they spent their time studying. In order to figure out what needs to be changed, you need to reflect on how you prepared the first time. Here is a list of questions to get you started:

  • Where did you study?
  • Who did you study with?
  • What time of day did you study?
  • How many hours a day did you actually spend studying?
  • Did you find that you were easily distracted while you were studying? If so, by what?
  • What methods did you use to break down the law?
  • How many practice questions did you complete? (MBE, MEE, MPT, and any other applicable sections to your exam)
  • How many essays/MPTs did you receive external feedback on?
  • How much did outside influences impact your ability to study?
  • How much did stress impact your studying and/or test day performance?
  • Did you complete practice questions under timed conditions? Was timing an issue on test day?
  • What were your weakest and strongest substantive areas?
  • Did you spend an equal amount of time on strong and weak areas? (you should be spending more time on weaker, heavily tested areas)
  • What was your score on each portion of the exam?

4- Reach Out

You may be feeling embarrassed about failing the bar exam and want to stay in your deep dark hole of despair. However, as you probably guessed, I am going to advise against this plan! Look, I get it, you feel like you already you used your free pass for “give me all your support and patience” the last time you took the bar. Remember, your family and friends love you, and that never gets used up. You still need their support and patience. Make sure that you reach out and communicate about what you are going through and how you are feeling.

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You should also reach out to the academic support department of your law school. You paid a lot of money for your degree and you should take advantage of this resource. They can help you with steps 3 and 5 of this process by reviewing your previous study plan and helping you to create a new one. They can also review your exam results with you and help you make sense of what they mean. Even though it may feel like it right now, you are not alone and the sooner you figure that out, the better.

5-Develop

Using the data you collected in step 3 and reviewed with your academic success department in step 4, it is now time to create your new and improved study plan. This is your chance to plan for success. Did you realize that time management and organization were your problems? Great, grab a calendar to plan out your time, and buy some folders! Did you figure out that you did not do nearly enough practice questions? Set goals for yourself today for exactly how many practice MBEs, MPTs and essays you will do. Now is the time to put safeguards in place so that you do not fall back into any bad habits.

As you create your study plan you want to make sure that it is active rather than exclusively passive. This means including things that require you to break down and apply the law. While the videos you watch with your bar review companies are important to refresh your memory on the law, they take up a lot of time and are a classic example of passive studying. Make sure you build in time to create your own outlines or flashcards and to do tons and tons of practice questions.

Finally, you need to believe in yourself. I know that is a heavy, and complex, task to drop in the last lines of this article, but it is crucial. If you don’t believe you can do it, the rest of this won’t help. Work through the steps, but also work on your mindset, because both are necessary for success.

Kerriann Stout is a millennial law school professor and founder of Vinco (a bar exam coaching company) who is generationally trapped between her students and colleagues. Kerriann has helped hundreds of students survive law school and the bar exam with less stress and more confidence. She lives, works, and writes in the northeast. You can reach her by email at info@vincoprep.com.

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