Welcome to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast. Today, we are talking about what to do if you run out of time when writing an essay answer, as part of our “Quick Tips” series. Your Bar Exam Toolbox hosts are Alison Monahan and Lee Burgess, that’s me. We’re here to demystify the bar exam experience, so you can study effectively, stay sane, and hopefully pass and move on with your life. We’re the co-creators of the Law School Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and the career-related website CareerDicta.
Alison also runs The Girl’s Guide to Law School. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on your favorite listening app, and check out our sister podcast, the Law School Toolbox podcast. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. You can reach us via the contact form on BarExamToolbox.com, and we’d love to hear from you. And with that, let’s get started. Welcome back!
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Time management is one of the most crucial aspects of the bar exam, but it can also be the most challenging. You’re asked to read, digest, and analyze so much information in a very short amount of time. On the UBE, for example, you’re given just three hours to complete six essays. That equates to about 30 minutes per essay, which can really fly by in the blink of an eye! So, what do you do when those 30 minutes are up but you haven’t finished writing your answer?
First - and this is easier said than done - you want to try not to panic. While it’s not ideal, of course, running out of time on an essay question happens to the best of us. Even the most prepared students can struggle with the bar’s intense time limits. What’s important to remember is: Running out of time on one essay does not automatically mean you’re going to fail the bar. You still have five other essays on the UBE and two whole exam sections factoring into your total score.
There have been so many successful exam takers who have missed issues in their answer or even left an entire essay blank! Running out of time on one essay is not the end of the world, even if it may feel like that in the moment. So, take a deep breath and keep going! You’re doing your best under challenging circumstances. Step two - and this is probably the most difficult one - you’re going to want to fight the urge to keep writing.
Taking just five extra minutes to finish your answer may seem harmless, but it can actually have disastrous consequences for your exam overall. If you take extra time on one essay, you’re likely to find yourself needing extra time on the next. And it can snowball on and on from there. You want to avoid that snowball effect at all costs. Taking an extra five minutes on each essay will leave you little to no time to write your final essay response.
On the California bar exam, those extra five minutes would leave you with just 30 minutes for your final essay, instead of a full hour. On the UBE, you would be left with only five minutes, which is barely enough time to read the final prompt. That’s why it's so critical to stick to your allotted time limits, even if that means you’ll have a shorter response than you planned. You don’t want to spend a lot of time on the earlier essays at the expense of those that come after.
It's always better to have at least some analysis for each essay than to leave one or more of your essays blank. So, if you can't continue writing your full essay, what should you do instead? The answer to that is to just wrap up your essay response and move on. The best way to do this is to quickly bullet point the rest of your essay. This will give the examiner insight into your thought process for that particular question and how you would have answered if you had enough time to finish.
You may also earn a few more points on your essay than if you cut your response off abruptly. Ideally, your bullets should include slightly more detail than in your outline, but don’t spend more than a minute or two wrapping up your answer. You can always come back and flesh these bullets out more later, if you find yourself with some time remaining.
Now that we’ve established what to do if you run out of time when writing an essay response, let’s talk about some time management tips that can hopefully help you avoid this problem altogether. First, have a plan in advance for how you want to manage your time going into the bar exam. How long on average do you take to read a fact pattern? How long do you want to have for writing? How long can you spend on your outline to ensure you’ll have that time remaining?
Go into the exam knowing how you want to pace yourself on each question, and stick to those allotted times. Don’t deviate – no matter how tempting it may be. Remember that snowball effect! You can even set your reminders to go off a few minutes before your allotted time ends, so you can wrap up your response without eating into the time you’ve allotted for your next essay.
Read the call of the question first. This will allow for more efficient reading. You don’t want to read through a fact pattern, thinking you’re being asked about personal jurisdiction, only to reach the call of the question and realize the examiners are actually looking for you to discuss venue. If you read the call of the question first, you’ll know exactly what you’re being asked and be able to pull out the key facts relevant to the issues at hand.
In a similar vein, our next tip is to underline, highlight, circle, take notes in the margins – whatever you like best – as you read through the fact pattern. This will save you time by making it easier for you to find those relevant facts as you start to outline and write your essay response. You don’t want to have to go searching through the entire fact pattern looking for that one key fact that you can’t quite remember!
Outline your answer before you start writing. Sketch out a skeleton of your rule section and the key facts you’ll need to discuss in analyzing each element or prong. Bar examiners often include irrelevant facts or issues when drafting these essay prompts. When you dive straight into writing, you run the risk of focusing on a question or issue that the bar examiners did not ask for.
Outlining will help make certain that you take the time to fully process what you’re being asked and ultimately save you time in the long run. It will also give you a good sense of the time it will take to write each subpart, and it can help you bullet point your answer quickly if you end up running out of time. Our fifth trip is to not leave the easier essays until the end. Take a few minutes at the start of your exam to look through all of the essays, so you know what the essay topics are.
Spend no more than five minutes on this, and don’t forget to then take one minute off your allotted time for each essay. You’re allowed to complete the essays in any order you chose, and it's best to start with the essays you feel most confident about. You don’t want to get stuck struggling through earlier questions, only to find yourself with little or no time to complete later essays on topics that you know very well.
Get those easier ones out of the way, so you have more time to spend on the topics that challenge you. Finally, remember to be concise and to the point. Your answer should include more detail than an outline, but you’re not writing a novel either. Avoid going off on tangents or throwing in extra law. Examinees frequently spend a lot of time discussing issues or rules the examiners are not looking for. These are huge time wasters, and they earn you zero points!
Read your fact patterns very carefully to be certain you know exactly what is being asked of you. If the bar examiners tell you to ignore a certain issue, ignore it. If you’re told to assume certain facts are true, be sure to do so. You won’t earn points for throwing everything you know at the examiners to see what sticks. Be precise by only discussing the relevant issues and only use the rules applicable to those issues.
The best approach is to stick hard and fast to that IRAC or CREAC structure. It will help ensure that you only include the relevant and necessary discussion. To summarize, go into the bar exam with a plan for how to budget your time, and stick to it. If you find yourself running out of time on a particular essay, quickly bullet point the remainder of your answer and move on to the next question. You don’t want to take valuable time away from any remaining essays.
Remember, the bar examiners are not looking for perfect answers. It is always better to have something written for each essay, rather than leave one or more blank. Sometimes that can be unavoidable, though. So, the most important thing to remember is that your entire bar exam score does not hinge on one essay. If the worst-case scenario happens and you run out of time or miss an essay completely, you’re going to be okay. Keep going and remember that you gave it your best!
I want to take a second to remind you to check out our blog at BarExamToolbox.com, which is full of helpful tips to help you prepare and stay sane as you study for the bar exam. You can also find information on our website about our courses, tools, and one-on-one tutoring programs to support you as you study for the UBE or California bar exam. Thanks again to SpacedRepetition.com for sponsoring our podcast.
Remember, it's only $99, and you even get a full week to decide if it's for you before you pay a penny! Plus, as a listener of our podcast, you'll get an exclusive 15% off the "Boost Deck", which is the product on SpacedRepetition.com made specifically for bar preppers. When you check out, enter "toolbox" in all lowercase letters to get the discount! If you enjoyed this episode of the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast, please take a second to leave a review and rating on your favorite listening app.
We’d really appreciate it. And be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything. If you're still in law school, you might also like to check out our popular Law School Toolbox podcast as well. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to myself and Alison at [email protected] or [email protected]. Or you can always contact us via our website contact form at BarExamToolbox.com. Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk soon!