Bar Exam Tips #4

After finding my blog, a *wonderful* gentleman sent me a fantastic, detailed email about his experience studying for and taking the July 06 Cal. Bar. He also sent me 3 more emails with some of his notes and outlines for the Bar. Such generosity warms my heart. Here's some info he shared with me.


1. The Performance Exam is just about form and properly extracting the legal reasoning from the material provided, and applying that reasoning to the facts of the particular case. It is actually very easy, just very time consuming. They are testing whether you are used to doing this type of writing.

2. To get enough points on the essays, it is VITAL to use the facts. The essays are not tricky, the MBEs are tricky. USE ALL THE FACTS on the essays. The Bar is actually quite kind --- they put enough facts in each essay to give students a chance to demonstrate whatever they know. The Cal Bar is easier than people think; most people scare themselves I think because of the low pass rate. The essays are obviously just Rules + Legal Reasoning. Nothing more. The graders don't want to see anything else. Boring IRAC is good enough.

3. One study technique that I used was to read a BarBri essay fact pattern; try to answer it out loud; and then read the BarBri answer. Then I would try to re-state the answer out loud (or in my head) without looking at the BarBri material. I would then keep re-reading the BarBri answer, and keep trying to answer the problem (mentally or verbally) completely until I could do it cleanly. The process of stating rules and applying facts to the rules was a good exercise for me. It was also more fun that just trying to memorize rules alone without fact patterns. The BarBri materials probably cover all the rules in particular fact patterns, so if you practice their essays then you will encounter everything you need (I hope!!).

4. I remember on the Jul 06 MBEs, it felt like there was no end to the property questions, but actually some of those property questions were contracts questions !!! So, be careful about little tricks like that. Trying to figure out which rule they are testing for each question I guess is the key.

5. Time is not a factor on the Bar EXCEPT on the Performance Exam part.