Bar Exams

4 Signs You Should Postpone Taking The Bar Exam

If you’ve accumulated a backlog of work, now is the time to determine whether you can catch up or if it is too late.

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There are 28 days until the bar exam. #butwhoiscounting. Around this time, students start to, well, freak out, and several will ask if they should wait to take the bar exam in February. Most of the time, this is just nerves talking, and the student is actually well-prepared and in a good place to pass. However, every so often I do advise a student to postpone based on their specific circumstances.

Some of the benefits of postponing taking the bar exam include: having more time to study, the ability to seek out extra help and formulate a new study plan, the time to address stress and anxiety issues before the next administration, and not going into the next bar exam with the weight of failing on your shoulders.

If any of the following describe your situation, you may want to consider postponing taking the bar exam.

1- External distractions

The number one reason I advise students to delay taking the bar exam is when external situations, which are usually temporary, are distracting them from bar prep. Despite our best efforts to live in a bubble during bar prep, the outside world keeps turning around us. And, sometimes, despite your best efforts, things come up that interfere with and cause major distractions while studying. For example, an unexpected death in the family, sudden illness of the student or their family member, family drama, financial issues, marital issues, etc.

If the situation rises to the level where you start to get behind on your work and are finding it hard to focus most of the time, it is probably best to postpone taking the exam. I’ve seen many students try to, unsuccessfully, push through in these situations. It is always heartbreaking because after they fail, they feel awful and like a failure. But really the fact that they didn’t pass the test had nothing to do with their capability, focus, or effort, but rather this outside thing. Now, they go into the next administration feeling like they don’t have what it takes to pass. Don’t put yourself in this position.

2- You’re waaayyyy behind on bar prep work

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There reaches a point in bar prep where if you’re behind, it starts to become impossible to adequately catch up. With midterms happening now, we’ve just about reached that point. If you’ve accumulated a backlog of work, now is the time to determine whether you can catch up or if it is too late.

Many students try to cram all of the “makeup” work into the last few weeks of bar prep by planning to do 100+ MBE questions a day. Listen, real talk time, if you couldn’t keep up with 33-50 questions a day until this point, there is no way you are going to do 100 a day.

The way to figure out if you are too behind to catch up is to make a list of all the assignments you’re behind on and redistribute them on different days until you get caught up. If this creates ridiculous and unmanageable to-do lists, it may be too late for you to make up the work. At this point, I recommend contacting someone from your bar prep company or law school and asking for advice on what activities to cut out from your list and get their opinion on postponing.

3- You’re not seeing any, or very little, improvement in your scores

For the first few weeks of bar prep, everyone is obsessed with their scores. I pretty much throw those comments and gripes out the window. I tell my students that where they start out isn’t important, it is the progress that they make.

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At this point in bar prep, you should be seeing some improvement in your scores. They don’t have to be at passing yet, but you should start to see an upward trend, even if it is not consistent. If your scores haven’t budged, or have even gone down, clearly your current plan isn’t working and you’re running out of time to reassess. This is another situation where I recommend getting in touch with your bar prep company or law school for some feedback on what you can do and whether you should delay taking the test.

4- Anxiety has taken the wheel

I don’t mean the normal stress that comes with knowing that your career depends on one 2-day test. That can’t be avoided during bar prep. Everyone gets stressed out. But sometimes, that stress rises to the level where it impacts bar prep and your ability to be successful. I’ve seen anxiety cause severe procrastination in students, mess up their sleep schedule, cause them to not eat (or eat too much), and seriously impact their ability to focus.

For some students, this doesn’t come as a surprise because they’ve been dealing with anxiety their entire lives. For others, this may be the first time something like this has ever happened. Regardless, if your anxiety is making it impossible for you to effectively study and retain information, you may want to consider postponing the exam. If you do, I highly recommend that you seek out professional help to overcome this obstacle (and the sooner the better) so that you won’t have the same experience the next time you prepare to take the test.

Some people fear that delaying taking the bar exam will make them appear weak or like a failure. However, I would argue the opposite. I think that making this difficult decision means you’re self aware, reflective, and adaptable. Whatever decision you make, good luck!

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 [email protected].

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