279: Quick Tips -- Retaking the Bar Exam After Failing

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! Today, we are going to talk about retaking the bar exam after failing the first, or even multiple times.

First, we will discuss how you may be able to use your prior bar exam results to diagnose what went wrong during your last exam. Then we will talk about habits, particularly those that you used during your prior bar study period. We will talk about some common reasons that people fail the bar exam and study habits that may have led to the disappointing outcome.

Most importantly, we will talk about replacing the study habits that did not serve you with new habits that will set you up for success this time around. Let's start with how to get the most out of your prior bar exam results. If you failed the bar exam, you likely want to move on from the experience as quickly as possible.

However, if you jump into studying for a retake without understanding why you failed, you are likely to make similar mistakes when you retake the exam and are more likely to fail again. So rather than jumping immediately into a do-over, it is important to take time to evaluate what went wrong during your first exam and create a study plan that helps you avoid those mistakes during the retake.

An important part of this self-evaluation process is taking a critical look at the habits you used when preparing for your last exam. However, if your jurisdiction provides detailed information about your prior exam results, we recommend that you take full advantage of the valuable information you can learn from a detailed score report and even a review of your essay answers.

When it comes to what jurisdictions provide, some of you will have more information than others, but most states provide a detailed score report with a breakdown of your score on every essay and performance test, as well as a score for your performance on each subject on the MBE. You can learn a lot by taking a few minutes to study this detailed score report. First, it is important to understand how close or far you were from passing.

If you took the UBE, you will be given a total score out of 400 points, with most jurisdictions requiring somewhere between 260 and 270 to pass. Imagine that your jurisdiction requires a 266 to pass and you receive a score report with a 258 total score. You know that you were only eight points short of passing, which indicates that you will likely be able to pass a retake with a little more practice and perhaps targeting some weak areas.

On the other hand, if you scored a 230, you know you will likely need to drastically overhaul your study approach to make up the 36 points you need to pass a retake. Raising your score by 30 plus points is possible; we have seen students do it. But it is important to understand from the outset that this will require a lot of time and hard work.

If you know that going into a retake, you are in a better position to decide whether you have enough time to adequately prepare for the next offered exam. If you do not feel you have sufficient time to prepare, you may decide to wait and take the second offered exam so that you have adequate time. Either way, knowing what it will take to get to over the passing line serves you in your preparation for your next exam. This includes helping inform when you should plan to retake the bar exam.

After you have an idea of how many points you must pick up for a passing score and determine when it is best to retake the exam, you can use your score report to determine where you can earn additional points. In particular, your score report will indicate how well you did on the written portion of the exam versus the multiple-choice questions. The report will also likely give you a score for each of the essay answers, as well as each performance test answer.

You can use this information to inform how you prepare for a retake. For example, imagine that you scored well enough to pass on the essays and performance tests. However, your MBE score was far below passing across the board. This indicates that you would likely benefit from MBE-specific software, such as AdaptiBar or UWorld as you prepare for a retake.

If you already used one of these platforms without success, maybe you just need to adjust how often you use the platform, or maybe you need to do a trial of the alternative platform to see if the explanations in that software are more tailored for your learning styles. On the other hand, imagine that you have a solid MBE score, but you completely missed the mark on three of the six essays. This may indicate weak MEE-only subjects that you must spend extra time studying before a retake.

Alternatively, imagine that your MEE scores gradually declined as you progressed through the exam. This may indicate a timing and/or stamina problem. If that was your downfall on your last bar exam, you would likely benefit from incorporating extra full practice exams into your study schedule for a retake. All of this to say there is a lot of valuable information in your score report. You know the saying that "Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it"?

With the bar exam, your score report and prior study habits are your history. Ignore them at your own risk! The same is true of your prior bar exam essay and performance test answers. That's right - if you fail the bar exam, many jurisdictions will release your essay and performance test answers, as well as the question prompts and model answers that are given to the graders. Requesting and reviewing your answers may be even more painful than reviewing your score report.

But if you have the option, it is an extremely valuable part of the self-evaluation process. In fact, our tutors routinely review and provide feedback on students' past essay and performance test answers at the beginning of our tutoring process. This review often provides valuable information to the tutor, as well as the student. And the tutor will use this information to tailor the student's study strategy to their specific needs.

If you are not working with a tutor, you can still gain valuable insight by taking a close and critical look at your prior essays and performance test answers. Of course, exam graders do not expect you to write answers that are as polished and complete as the model answers. However, you can still use the model answers to pinpoint where you lost points. In particular, be on the lookout for missed issues, incorrect or incomplete rule statements, and/or lack of analysis section.

Hopefully between your score report and a tutor's or your review of your past exam answers, you can diagnose what went wrong during your last bar attempt and start your next study process with an eye towards fixing that problem. That being said, as we mentioned above, some jurisdictions are stingier than others regarding what they're willing to release after you have failed the bar exam.

Most jurisdictions will at least provide a detailed score report with a breakdown of how you did on different sections. However, if you are in a jurisdiction that provides less than that, use whatever information you receive to your benefit and move on to the next part of the self-evaluation process: evaluating your study habits.

Taking a hard look at your study habits and how you might improve them is critical for anyone retaking the bar exam, regardless of whether your jurisdiction provides you with detailed score reports or past answers. Your prior scores or past answers may indicate that you were unsure of the rules on a lot of Civil Procedure questions. However, knowing that you need a better mastery of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure does not tell you how to gain that knowledge.

The "how" comes from an honest evaluation of your study habits as you prepared for your last bar exam and what you should do to study more effectively this time. Now that we have hopefully convinced you that it is important to evaluate and possibly amend your study habits, let's go through some common mistakes that students make when studying for the bar exam. As we go through these common mistakes, ask yourself whether any of them may have plagued your prior bar study experience.

If the answer is "yes", there is no need to panic. We will also talk about the positive study habits that will help you avoid making the same mistakes as you study for a retake. Let's start with common mistake number one: You spent the majority of your study time - over 50% - passively studying. Examples of passive studying include reading an outline to yourself, watching a video lecture, or even listening to a podcast.

While these methods of studying are not bad if used as a supplement to a full-time active learning study schedule, passively using outlines, videos, or podcasts as a primary study method rarely leads to success on the bar exam. If you realize you spent a lot of time passively trying to learn the law during your last bar study period, you need to adjust your study process to incorporate more active learning techniques.

For example, instead of reading an outline silently to yourself, you can review a rule in your outline. Then put your outline away and try to recite the rule out loud, or even explain the rule as if you were teaching the rule to a friend.

Or instead of just reading the rule to yourself in your head, you could read the rule out loud, then you could think of two or three examples of how the rule might come up in an exam question, and either describe the examples out loud or write them in your outline. You can use these same techniques to turn passively watching or listening to a lecture into a more active form of studying.

For example, after the lecturer describes the rule, you could pause the lecture and try to reteach the rule to yourself using an example. Or you could pause the lecture and write the rule out several times on a sheet of scratch paper. At this point, you may be thinking, "My bar prep course gave me three to four hours of video lectures to watch every day. If I pause the lectures after each rule, I would never make it through all of the material."

This is an important reality check for those using a bar prep course that provides a lot of video or audio content. It may be time to rethink your strategy and skip some of those lectures. As noted above, you may want to use select lectures to supplement a full-time active study schedule. For example, you could listen to a lecture about a subject you did not take in law school the night before you actively study that subject.

Or you could listen to a lecture about a subject you just actively studied while you take a break from active studying to walk your dog. But watching hours and hours of video lectures usually leads to a lot of passive studying. If that is the case, we recommend replacing time you would spend watching lectures or using other passive steady methods with more active learning techniques, such as those described above, and/or practice questions.

We will talk more about the importance of practice questions shortly. But before we do, let's jump into our second common mistake that causes students to fail the bar exam: Learning only the gist of the rules. This mistake is often the result of using passive study techniques. For example, if you spend three hours passively watching a video lecture about subject matter jurisdiction in federal court, you may gain a general understanding of the topic.

However you are unlikely to remember any of the specific rules or legal buzzwords that you will need to answer a subject matter jurisdiction question on the bar exam. You will likely also miss nuances and rule details that you will need to know how to accurately answer MBE questions about the topic. In other words, you cannot pass the bar exam by knowing the gist of the rules. To pass the bar exam, you must memorize rule statements word for word, or as close to word for word as possible.

This includes knowing the specific legal buzzwords that exam graders look for in your essay answers. You must also know the rule well enough to apply it in a nuanced situation, as you will be required to do in essay questions and on the MBE. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to memorizing precise, complete rule statements. You must drill the rules over and over until you can recite them from memory.

Active learning techniques are critical to rule memorization, so remember to use active techniques such as those noted above to memorize rules. For example, you can write out a rule or recite it over and over to yourself as you pace your office. You can use flashcards or rule statement quizzes to force yourself to recite rules from memory. Practice questions are also a great way to review and test your knowledge of the rules.

This brings us to our next common mistake: You did not start doing practice essay and/or MBE questions until the end of your bar study period. Memorizing precise and complete rule statements is only the first part of passing the bar exam. The second step is practice. As you know, the bar exam does not simply ask you to write out the precise rule statements for a given topic. Rather, the bar exam asks you to apply the rules to specific factual scenarios.

On the MBE, the exam requires you to be sure enough in your application of the rule to select the correct answer over a trick answer choice designed to make you question your application. For the essay questions, you are required to not only apply the rule, but also explain its application in a legal analysis. Answering MBE questions and writing passing bar exam essay answers are skills that you must develop to pass the exam.

That is why we recommend that you start doing practice MBE and essay questions as early as your first week of bar study. In fact, you can use open- book practice questions as an active learning tool to help you memorize the rules. For example, if you are doing a practice essay question regarding subject matter jurisdiction, and you cannot remember the precise language of the rule for diversity jurisdiction, take five minutes to look up the rule in your outline.

Then practice writing the correct rule language in your essay answer and apply that rule to the facts. Actively practicing with your rule statements is a particularly efficient way to study, because it, [1] helps you develop the skill of answering bar exam questions; and [2] it helps you memorize the rules. That brings us to the last common mistake that we will talk about

However, even students who practice writing essay answers from the beginning of their study period still lose points on the exam by failing to include strong legal analysis sections in their answers. This is where outside feedback from a tutor or a mentor may be helpful. Alternatively, if you choose to self-evaluate your practice answers, you must pay particular attention to your legal analysis sections. Ask yourself questions such as: Are you doing more than summarizing the facts?

Are you explaining how particular facts satisfy elements of the rule? Are you using words like "because" to explain how you reach a particular conclusion? When in doubt, take a look at the analysis section in the model answers, and think about whether your answer includes a similar explanation. Writing strong legal analysis actions is key to passing the essay on the performance test portions of the bar exam.

Your legal analysis sections are where you earn the most points and where you can set yourself firmly within the pool of passing applicants. On the other hand, writing conclusory essay answers may lead to failing the exam, even if you know and correctly apply the rules. That is why it is important to take particular note of your legal analysis sections as you do practice questions for your retake exam. That wraps up our discussion of quick tips for retaking the bar exam.

If you have any questions about how to evaluate prior exam results or start studying to retake the bar, please reach out to us via the contact form on BarExamToolbox.com. We would love to help you evaluate your prior score, plan for your retake, and/or put you in touch with one of our amazing bar exam tutors. And with that, we’re out of time. 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 have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out to Lee or Alison at lee@barexamtoolbox.com or alison@barexamtoolbox.com. Or you can always contact us via our website contact form at BarExamToolbox.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!