Lee Burgess (2): Welcome to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast. Wonder why people fail the bar exam? Today, two of our Bar Exam Toolbox tutors are here to give you their perspectives. 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 to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast. Lee Burgess (2): Wonder why people fail the bar exam? Today, we have two more of our Bar Exam Toolbox tutors here to give their perspectives. Hoang, thanks so much for joining me today to talk about why you think people fail the bar.
Yes. Such a great topic. Lee Burgess (2): I know, right? Love this one. I talk a lot about this one with my students.
Exactly. We are the people who talk about this stuff all the time. Alright, so why do you think most people end up failing the bar?
Yeah, so, I usually boil it down to two things. One of them being mental barriers, which, I don't know that we or even our students appreciate enough. And then the other being not enough time practicing with purpose. I say "practice with purpose" because I think that's a very intentional reason behind what we do when we practice, why we practice, how we practice. And so, there's a lot I'm going to just talk about there, or at least something briefly.
But for the mental barriers, especially if you're retaking the bar, I think there are a lot of things that we think about. Our society is filled with messages and ideas about what we can or we can't do, how hard it is. I'll never forget, I was getting ready to take the bar and my mother-in-law's friend, we're meeting, everyone's chatting, she's like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "I'm getting ready to study for the bar exam." She's like, "That's a really hard test.
My son failed it a number of times." And I was like, "Oh, I hope I pass." The messaging, I think, around the bar exam is such that when you get into it, of course you want to be able to develop the skills, but at the same time, society is always telling you how hard it is, your friends are telling you how hard it is, random people will tell you how hard it is.
People will kind of create this aura around it that it's like, "You'll fail" or like, "It's likely that you're not going to be able to pass." And so, I think mentally going into it. The other thing I'll never forget is, one of my attorney mentors who I'd worked with during law school, one of the best pieces of advice that she gave me was actually, "Don't forget that half of the bar exam and half the bar study is a mental game."
And you need to make sure that you're thinking about how you're mentally going to prepare yourself to do well, not just your skill set and technical skills that you need to be able to pass the bar exam. And so, in law school, I actually developed a meditation practice because of this, because I knew, not just the bar exam, but in law school, just to be able to do well on the law school exams, I had to know how to keep myself calm during a test.
If I saw something I didn't know, remembering to breathe, just so I can remind myself what I did know. And oftentimes the barriers with the bar exam is that you're in this moment, you're going to see stuff you might not know, and oftentimes what happens is if you haven't practiced your mental game, you might panic. And when you panic, you then are losing all the skills. You forget about all the skills that you just spent the last 10 weeks practicing, and then you kind of blank.
And oftentimes when students talk to me about what happened on the bar exam, they tell me about these moments where they just like blank. They didn't know what to do, they didn't know how to complete this problem. And so, I think a big part of why I think students do fail the bar is not mentally preparing.
And it can mean a number of different things for different students, but a very simple thing I usually tell students about is just develop a meditation practice, because when you're meditating, you're really pushing yourself to be in the moment with the thing that you're doing and focusing on that, and not allowing intrusive thoughts to kind of get into your brain about like, "Oh my gosh, what if I can't do this? Or what if I fail?
What if I fail again?" A lot of those things, if they do get to you, it just restricts you from actually being able to perform at your very best. I always tell students, if you've done the practice, if you're able to perform at your very best, you're probably going to pass the bar exam.
But if you're not able to perform at your best and if you're not able to show what you've been able to do in practice, then that ends up leading to like missed MBE questions that you should have gotten right, that you look back on and you're like, "Oh, I should have got that right"; essays where after you're done with them, day one, you're thinking back about and you're like, "I knew that!" And it's that "I knew that!" feeling that I think the mental barriers end up going up, when you
know you know something, but you can't perform in the moment until afterwards and you're thinking back about it you're like, "Oh yeah, it was this. I should have known that." So, the mental barriers is one thing. The other thing I'll say is the "practicing with purpose" point. So with this, I meet some students who don't really have a plan for how they're going to practice, other than, "I'm going to do whatever.
I'm going to just do as many MBE questions as I can, I'm going to do as many essay questions as I can." And to some degree it's like, great, you're doing something. But when I talk about purpose, it's like, why are you doing that type of practice? Why are you doing that essay, why are you doing those MBEs? Why are you doing a mixed set of 20? Why are you not doing a set of just Contracts, 15 Contracts questions, right?
So, I think being able to kind of focus in on what your purpose is for the practice that you're doing allows you to then tailor the practice for what you're actually needing to do well on the bar exam, and not just blindly going in and saying, "I'm just going to do as many questions that I can across the board." And then get done with who knows how many questions, but not really having rounded out any of your weaknesses, right?
And so, practicing with purpose, I think, is just a key point because of that reason.
And so, when students get to the bar exam, they've done a bunch of practice, but they really didn't have any idea around why they were doing what they were doing or what they were doing, even the reviewing process, they didn't take much time to review their work, that then leads to a situation where you might be on the bar exam, and again, you see a question and it's a weak area of yours, but you didn't really hone in on that area enough to build it up to round out
what the rest of your score could be. And so, then you miss that, and then you miss it again on the MBEs, or you miss it on the essay, whatever it is. And that then creates a situation where you're not able to pick up those points to be able to pass the bar exam. And it could be a very few number of points that would have helped you pass, it could have been a greater number of points.
But I think the idea is that you really want to be intentional about what you're doing during your practice time, and just not blindly going into just saying like, "I'm just going to do as many of these questions I can." Or the worst thing is like, "I'm not going to practice any of these questions. I'm just going to do all these, and that's going to be great because I know how to do that and it makes me feel good." Bar prep is really not about making you feel good.
It should be about breaking you down and really then building you back up during the latter half of bar prep. Anyways. Lee Burgess (2): Yeah. I think that's great. I think it's so interesting when I started doing this work and I started reading more about what happens in an exam room.
And when you hear students over and over again say like, "Oh, my mind just went blank", it really struck me when I read about the science and I'm like, "Oh, because literally your body deprives your brain of oxygen and your body thinks you're running from the lion and can't think." And it's not your fault. We are genetically developed to have that response.
And so, whether it's a meditation practice or something you do in the moment to take deep breaths, to get your nervous system back online - you do have to practice these things so you can call on them. If you do find out that your body's decided you're being chased by a lion in the exam room, you have to get Yes. Lee Burgess (2): oxygen back to your brain. I mean, it's really fascinating. And I think we have lost some of these coping mechanisms.
I was talking to my son, who was on his way somewhere and he was walking and he got lost. I mean, not really lost. He was like two blocks away, but he got lost. But he said to me, he's like, "Well, I kind of started to panic. So I sat on a bench until I was calm enough to decide what to do next." And I was like, "That's brilliant. As adults, we seldom think that way." Yeah, Yeah, we're still running around trying to figure out what to do.
Lee Burgess (2): Right, we're still running around being lost. And it's so simple that sometimes I feel like children are better at saying like, "I can't think clearly. I should take a beat and get my act together so I can make good decisions." And then he backtracked two blocks and was fine. But I do think that just these simple things, they sound so simple, and they sound not to be related to bar prep.
And I think it's just foolish not to think that this has such a big impact on how you perform. And I think it's like for students too, it's unavoidable. Some of these thoughts that students have, it's unavoidable. I mean, even for first-time takers, it's unavoidable. It's like, "What if I don't pass the first Lee Burgess (2): time?" And so it's like all these questions that we're asking ourselves about what we're capable of doing. Some students, I'm like, "You can do this.
I've seen your work, you can do this. Why are you projecting..." What's the word I'm looking for? What's the opposite of confidence? Lee Burgess (2): If you don't, you lack confidence. That's not a very good word. No, I mean, that's essentially what it is. There's a word for this, I don't know. Lee Burgess (2): We'll think of it right after we finish this podcast. I know, right?
But it's this idea that you allow all of these thoughts about what you're capable of doing or not capable of doing, enter your stream of thinking. So that then locks the very real skills that you have to perform well, your legal analytical skills. You've gotten to a point where you've honed those so well that you can look at an essay, if you weren't in a testing environment, you'd nail that essay, right?
And then you put yourself in a testing environment, and for whatever reason, you start thinking, "What if I don't know this? What if I'm not sure about it? What if I can't do this?" What tends to happen is, you talk yourself back up to say, "I can do this", but then as soon as you hit a road bump, that's when those thoughts come back in, it's like, "Oh my gosh, I don't know what this is, I'm freaking out now. It's essay three, I have three more to go.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish this one." In those moments, how do you calm yourself down? How do you remind yourself about what you did do during practice? A very tangible thing, right? You can say, "I spent X amount of hours, I did this number of questions, I can do this."
And then refocus yourself to apply the skills that you have to the task at hand, and remove all those crazy thoughts out of your mind and then throw your mind back into the task, and then be able to complete it. The other thing is knowing that no one essay is going to make or break your score. No set of MBEs is going to make or break your score. If you don't do as well on question three, know that you have question four, question five, and a full day of MBEs to do well.
And so, there's never a point where it's over, right? Lee Burgess (2): Yeah. When I took the bar, it was three days in California, and on the MBE were a part of the OG group. That really was testing. Lee Burgess (2): That ages me. But when on the middle of the multiple-choice day, I just had a rough morning with those multiple-choice questions. And so I was staying at the hotel and I went back to the hotel room and I text my now husband, who is not a lawyer. And I said, "I think I just failed."
Because after the writing day, I'm a decent writer, I was think I did okay." And so, of course he calls me and is like, "What happened?" And I was like, "It was bad." And he was like, "What do you mean it was bad?" I was like, "It was really hard. I don't think I did a very good job." And then I said, "What are we going to do if I fail?" And he goes, "Well, we'll take a trip." He's a photographer. He goes, "We'll take a trip and you can be my photo assistant." And I was like, "Sounds great."
And for some reason that was enough for my nervous system, to have a plan. If I got fired from my big firm job because I failed, I could go on this trip and be a photo assistant. And then that calmed me down and I went right back and did the afternoon. And luckily I didn't have to get fired from my big firm job. This is literally what I mean by, anything that works, right?
If you call someone and you have someone, just let them know, "I'm going to call you if I need to talk to you and you can remind me of either what I know what I need to do or what we can do if I don't become a lawyer
or whatever." Exactly. I was like, "I just needed somebody to tell me there was a plan if this all went sideways." And that plan, which was not a very good one, was enough for me to move on, because he was just like, "I just need you to pass. We never have to live through this again." It's just like, that's enough. Alright, so we've talked about the importance of being kind of mentally ready to have these coping mechanisms like meditation in place.
We've talked about the importance of practice and really deliberate practice. So, if you're retaking the bar, what's the first thing that you think somebody should consider?
Yeah. So, this is a really hard one, because I recognize that many students who retake the bar have financial obligations, and you have work, you have a job, typically. I mean, everyone is in a place where I think typically you're doing something to have some kind of income. And so, the challenge is, how much time do you actually have to study? And you're balancing all kinds of other things, right? It's not just the time to study.
It's also, going back to the mental side, it's like, "Am I good enough? Can I do this? Everyone else has now done their swearing-in ceremony. I didn't go to that at my school." And so it's all these thoughts that kind of come back at you. So, while you're considering all those things, I think the one thing is probably how much time do you actually have to practice?
Because if you don't have enough time to properly prepare, then there's a question as to whether or not it's worth it to do that administration or just to wait for another one, right? Because you don't want to waste your money just to sign up because that's the next one, and you don't also want to waste your time, because even if you don't have enough time to study, you are going to spend time studying.
It's this balance of like, can you honestly assess for yourself, "Do I have enough time to study and do the amount of studying that I need to actually pass?" And so, I think that's the number one consideration, because if you don't have enough time to study, it's going to be really, really hard.
And you obviously have a set of knowledge and skills already from studying the first time, but I do think there's a relearning process that has to happen, because oftentimes it's like, if we're talking about the California bar, you're talking about the last time you studied probably being the third week of July, and then the next time you start probably being like December, maybe at the earliest, after bar results come out, because no one's going to...
Well, some people study over Thanksgiving, but it's like there's this amount of time where you just lose all this information, and so you will have to relearn it. Then I always consider the fact that for you to retake the bar, you need to make sure you have enough time to actually dedicate to the amount of studying that you need to do.
Yeah.
That's the number one thing I think about.
So important. You've got to be honest. Honesty is better. Even if the honest answer is like five hours a week, then you talk about what you're going to do with that. But you need to be
honest. Yeah. For students who are like,"I'm going to take February regardless", I'm like, "Great, we'll work with you, we'll figure out..." If it is like, "I have three hours a day", okay, cool. If you want to take February, let's figure out a way to help you do three hours a day. I always tell students on the front end, if you have more time, if you can figure out a way to create more time throughout your week, these are the things that you should do.
But I always work with students to make sure they know that regardless of what you decide, we will support you. But always, having more time to dedicate is going to be a bit better than having less time, just because there's so much to cover. And you want to make sure that the second time you take it is going to be the last time you take it.
And being able to do that really means that you really have to have that time dedicated to studying and practicing, again, with purpose, deliberately, doing the things that you know are going to round out your weaknesses, and then making sure you see enough of the problems to know that you covered your bases before you take the bar exam.
Yeah. Once we helped someone prepare for the bar exam in 10 days, which is not something that I
would recommend. I've heard about this.
Yes. Everybody's heard about this, but I will say that I appreciate the honesty. This person came to us and just said, "This is what I got." And so we just worked with it. And that was much better than just not being honest with us. And he ended up passing. And I think the honesty was part of the reason why he passed.
Yeah, I think that's so important, is being honest with how much time you have. And then that honesty I think for the student, it then gives them some expectation as to, "What do I actually need to do? I know I'm working eight hours a day, full-time job, so that means how many hours do I actually have? And then how do I decide what is going to be my morning routine before I go to work? What is going to be my evening routine when I get home?
What am I going to be doing during my weekends?" No one thinks bar prep is fun, but it's something that you have to do to pass the bar exam. So, no one's going to be enjoying it, but if you create that time for yourself and you're able to be honest with yourself about how much time you have, then you can decide strategically, "For those hours that I do have each day, what am I going to be doing? What essay am I going to be writing?
How many MBEs am I going to do, and what types of MBEs am I going to do?" All these specific questions that, again, I go back to this "practice with purpose" idea because I think students need to be very clear about what the hours of the day they're going to spend doing. If you have an 8:00 to 10:00 block blocked out in the morning for bar study, what are you doing during that block? Have you planned that out? Decide what it is that time is going to help you with?
So yeah, I think the honesty is super important.
Yeah. Alright, and what is the one thing you find yourself saying over and over to your students?
It's not even a surprise. Practice. I think I might be
able to guess. Practice, practice,
practice. Every problem they come to me with, I'm just like, "Hey, have you practiced?"
I know. So
true. "How much practice have you done? Did you review your essay?" I don't know, it's just something about this that I always come back to, just because I truly believe that obviously you need to know how to practice, but it is reps. We were talking about the Olympics. An Olympian, in order to perform well... There're so many sports analogies with bar prep and it's, to me, a very physical activity, which I don't think most people understand.
Obviously sitting down doesn't seem like a physical activity, but people sometimes sweat.
It's exhausting, yeah.
But it is one of those things where the amount of times that you've repeated the thing that you're going to be asked to perform on a certain day on is going to dictate how well you do on that performance, right? If you haven't really practiced at all...
If you're a sprinter and you're really good naturally, but you've only practiced so many times before a race, you're not going to be performing at your very best, and you're certainly likely not going to win your heat against whoever else who may have practiced way more. And so, the idea is that you want enough repetitions doing what you're going to be expected to do on bar exam day, so that when you get to bar exam day, it's like a walk in the park.
You're just like, "Oh, I've been doing this for 10 weeks, 8 to 10 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week. I should be able to walk in..."
"I got this."
It should build confidence in you. I've done this so many times that I can go in now and know that I've seen basically everything, and the bar examiners are not very creative, so I've basically seen everything they can throw at me. There might be one weird thing that I'm kind of unclear about, but I'd be willing to bet that 90% of everything else, I'm going to probably know, right? And so, that's why I say practice, practice, practice so many times.
It's because it oftentimes is the key to being able to unlock your knowledge and skills around all this work. And going back to my other point, it's not just like random practice. It has to be really intentional. You have to know that it's not just writing a bunch of essays; you have to review the essays. You have to know what you got wrong and you have to understand what you did well.
You have to be able to shift your legal analysis structure if you're seeing you're missing a part of IRAC, right? Or you're not really using the facts to help you answer... Whatever it is, right? But that's a whole part of practice. So, practice isn't just like getting problems done; it's also reviewing and understanding what you did well and what you didn't do well, and then maybe even rewriting your answer if you completely bombed that essay.
But that type of work is really what will move you across the finish line to be able to pass the bar exam, is the amount of time you actually spend repeating the process that you're going to be expected to perform on bar exam day. And so, for the students who I know hammer out their practice, do it intentionally, really round out their weaknesses, they walk into bar exam day confident about what they're capable of doing.
When I talk to them afterwards, they're like, "I felt good about most of everything. There're a couple of things I didn't know, but I felt like I had done this before." And I think that's what you want to be able to tell yourself, is like, "I've done this before. I've seen this before." And it might be a different fact pattern, they might ask you the question in a different way, but you've done it before. You've seen it somewhere before, you've analyzed it in this way before.
You just have to kind of tap back into what you've practiced and then perform it on the exam day. So yeah, if you're in any of my one-on-one tutoring meetings, you'll hear "practice" at least 15 times.
Awesome. . Hoang Pham: I want to add this one, because there's one other thing I say all the time if you talk to students. I always say "You got this", because I do think it's an affirming validation for students who are entering this both study and also bar exam, is knowing that at the end of the day, you put in all this work, you put in this time, you put in the effort. You can do it.
And just to remind yourself, even if, again, if you're in the moment and you have a mental break that you need to get over, just telling yourself "I can do this" can often be what will get you over the hump. Amazing. Well, thanks for the perspective and for joining us.
Of course. Thank you! Lee Burgess (2): Next up, we have Adam! Hi, Adam. Thanks so much for joining us.
Hi Lee, my pleasure.
So, today I wanted to check in and talk a little bit about students failing the bar. So, why do you think most people fail the bar?
So, there're obviously a lot of reasons, but I think for most students, what it comes down to is a lack of practice. That's typically the thing that I see most often. Most students are coming in straight from law school, they have a lot of experience taking law school exams, and I think there's this perception, "I know how to do this. This is just another version of what I've already done.
I mean, yes, there's more material to learn, but once I memorize that, I can just sort of go in and take it and I'll be fine." And the reality is that it's kind of a different beast. You need a lot of the same skills that you learned in law school, but the timing is different. There's a huge multiple-choice component, there're the performance tests, which are a completely different animal.
And in order to really succeed in that, you really need to have done a lot of those questions in advance, many times over many weeks. And students that don't do that tend to not do as well.
I 100% agree. So, what do you think is the most important thing someone should consider when retaking the bar exam?
I mean, this relates to what we were just talking about, and I think that's thinking about what's going to go differently the second time around and why.
I mean, if the issue first time around was a general lack of preparedness, or lack of practice, or not giving yourself enough time, or picking the wrong program, whatever it is, you want to ask yourself, "What am I going to change in order to make sure that the second time goes better?" So, that can be picking a program that's more suited to their needs, giving themselves a longer runway before the exam. I mean, that's oftentimes hard if people are working, but obviously that's helpful.
Focusing on different skills in preparation for the exam. Maybe it's timing that was a problem, maybe it's stress, maybe it's writing. Whatever it is, just making sure that those changes are being made, because if you just go into it and do the same thing you did the first time, you're probably going to get a pretty similar result.
Yeah, unfortunately, right? Very seldom do we hear about folks doing the exact same thing and getting a different result. Sometimes it happens, I'm sure, but it usually doesn't work that
way. And it's the same thing with many parts of life. You've got to change it up a little bit and see what works for you. And there's no shame in it. You try something the first time and it doesn't work, you've got to try something else.
Yeah, exactly. What is the one thing, maybe other than practice, practice, practice, that you find yourself saying over and over to your students?
So, typically "Trust the process" is a big one. The important thing, in addition to practice, obviously, is making sure that you kind of leave it on the field, recognize the exam for what it is. Really, it's a marathon and not a sprint. So, whatever program you pick, it's going to have different components, it's going to focus on different things. Whatever it is, you really want to trust that system that you've selected and kind of give it your all for the entire time.
And there're a few different reasons for that. I mean, it's hard to assess something in a very short period of time, right? You almost never see results from something in a few days, even in a couple of weeks. Oftentimes you really need to do constant repetition and just do something over and over again to see what's working. So, that's definitely an important thing to do.
And also - to go back to what we were saying about figuring out what didn't work and making a change - if you keep changing what you're doing every day, every two days, three days, whatever, it's very hard to figure out what went wrong. Was it this thing that I did, was it that thing that I did? If you really just commit and give it your all, hopefully it goes well, obviously, but then if it doesn't, you know what went wrong and it's like, "Okay, this is what I need to change next time."
Yeah. I don't know why we think that we can change things so fast. For instance, every time you start, at least me, you start a new workout regimen and you're like, "Why aren't I so much stronger after a week? I've been working out this week."
Yeah. Well, because it feels bad, and sometimes you make a change and... I think of watching lectures that a lot of programs have as being one of those things where it's like, "This feels good", right? Somebody's talking to you about something and you're like, "Oh, I understand that." And because you understand that you think you're making progress, when really, do you know how to use it in practice? Do you know how to apply it?
Are you actually getting stronger or are you just doing something that feels good in the moment?
Yeah. Yeah, it's an ongoing challenge, takes a growth mindset to do that. And I think we always have to recommit to the growth mindset almost every day in almost all parts of our life.
Absolutely. Lee Burgess (2): Awesome. Well, thanks, Adam, for taking time to chat with us today. My pleasure. Thank you.
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