282: The Most Common Reasons People Fail the Bar Exam (w/Ryan Gurson from Themis)

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.

We would like to take a second to thank Themis Bar Review for sponsoring this podcast episode. Stay tuned if you want a promo code. If you're a 3L, you're nearing the law school finish line and gearing up for the next big step - becoming a licensed attorney. That's why I'm excited to share an exclusive promotion from Themis Bar Review designed specifically for those preparing for the 2025 bar exam.

Themis courses are crafted to help you prepare effectively for the bar exam with comprehensive materials, like 15 to 20-minute lecture videos, targeted outlines, and practice questions tailored to your jurisdiction's requirements. And here's the best part: Themis consistently publishes first-time taker pass rates and meets or exceeds statewide averages. So, you can rest assured that you're in good hands.

In July 2023 students who completed 75% or more of their course averaged a 12% higher pass rate. Themis will enhance your understanding of the material, sharpen your test taking skills, and give you the confidence to succeed on the bar exam and in your legal career. With our special promotion, you can access these top-tier resources at an unbeatable value. Get any 2025 Themis Bar Review course for just $1,695 - the year's lowest price - using the code BAREXAMTB1200 at checkout.

That's BAREXAMTB1200, now valid through October 31st. Don't miss out on this opportunity. Start your bar prep journey with Themis today. LEE BURGESS-1: Welcome back to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast. Today we are excited to have Ryan Gurson joining us. Ryan is an attorney and the Southeast Regional Director for Themis Bar Review. So Ryan, thanks for spending your Tuesday morning with me today. Ryan Gurson-1: Yeah. Thank you, Lee. I appreciate you having me on. LEE BURGESS-1: Absolutely.

So, to get things kicked off, can you share a little bit more about who you are and what led you to work in the bar prep world? Ryan Gurson-1: Sure. And before I start, I just wanted to say I love what you do, the website. There's so much misinformation out there, and you all put out some great resources and it's nice to know that there are credible resources out there for law students. There's not a lot, but you all are doing a wonderful job, and so I'm excited to be on the podcast today.

I hope we can dig down deep in some issues. So, a little bit about myself. I have been at Themis Bar Review/UWorld for 14 years now. I am based in Florida. I oversee the Southeast region Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, that surrounding area of schools. When I graduated from law school, I knew I wanted to help people, and I clerked throughout law school at my time and I found the work, it didn't appeal to me, the clerking aspect of it.

And I had an opportunity when I graduated and passed the bar exam to get into legal education, and I started with Themis ever since I graduated and passed the Florida bar exam, and I've been there ever since, and it's become a passion, I'm sure like it is for you, to help students. And so it was a really good mold to find the intellectual part of the bar exam and still thinking like an attorney, but also in a different way. So, that has really kept me here, and I've loved it ever since.

LEE BURGESS-1: Awesome. We've been doing this kind of work for about the same amount of time, because Alison and I started doing our business, oh my gosh, I think it might be 14 years this February. Wow, the years add up. Ryan Gurson-1: And I shaved before this because I was Father Time with all the gray hair. My wife said, "You better shave that down." LEE BURGESS-1: I don't have any gray hairs, I don't know what you're talking about.

Alright, so to get things kicked off, what are the three most common reasons that you think students fail the bar exam? Ryan Gurson-1: There're many, so I'd like to break them down. So, number one - and this is the overarching, the number one reason, which is a good thing in my mind - is the lack of overall course completion, the lack of preparation.

The data that we see year in and year out, the students that complete the course - common sense, they pass at a higher rate than a student that completed 50% of whatever course that they're taking. Now, there're a lot of factors that really branch off from that overall course completion, which I hope we'll dive into.

But really the number one thing, which should be music to all the listeners' ears is, it really boils down to effort and putting forth a really honest effort over an extended period of time, is what matters the most. Secondly is, "I did the course" or, "I did study, but I was unsuccessful." And I like to think of that bucket really as, "I took the wrong approach while I was in a bar administration period."

And so, maybe you did whatever course that you did, but you didn't do it in a manner that was appropriate for the bar exam. And then finally, we can talk about life issues, where somebody gets sick unexpectedly or something comes up and they miss the last final couple of weeks of a bar administration. Those really are things that I think are out of people's control, because those do happen, right?

But if we're thinking of items that are in somebody's individual control, it would really be - which kind of stem from the first two - is lack of taking enough simulated experiences, which go to anxiety and really not understanding what to expect when you take the exam. So, I would categorize them in those three areas, and then we can really go back and kind of dissect all three of them.

LEE BURGESS-1: Okay, let's go to your second point, which was someone who did the course or did put out effort and then got disappointing results. And you're talking about kind of how they have engaged in the materials. So, with someone who is listening to this, who just got bummer news, where do they start thinking about how they prepped the last time, how they utilized their course, and then how to regroup?

Ryan Gurson-1: So, most students believe that when they go through a bar review program that they're studying to get a grade, and they're taking the mindset that they had in law school, where over three years, all they were trying to do was get an A, or get a certain 90, 80, whatever it is on the curve with their law school class. The bar exam, when you're taking a bar review course, whatever course that you take, nothing counts, right?

And I think what happens is when students first start out in a bar review program, they're completing items to complete them and get an overall score in whatever practice session that they did, whereas the reality is, the courses are one big learning device. It's a learning tool. I always say this.

I do a couple of introduction videos for some of the courses and we say that we do not send in your bar review course to the Board of Law Examiners after the completion of it, because nothing matters, right? Now, do scores matter? They do, but they matter when we get to the tail end of a bar review period, because during the first part of a bar review period, when students are starting, they're going about it very passively.

So, all bar review courses, as you know, they have outlines, they have lectures, they have practice questions. And what I think happens is students get so bogged down in the outline part of it and the lecture part of it, they essentially think that's where the bulk of the learning comes from - which, you're setting a foundation, don't get me wrong.

Outlines are important, videos are important, because what they're doing is they're going over those videos, the key concepts, the bigger, highly-tested items. But where your learning comes from is through the practice questions, right? You're going to learn the most by doing the practice questions, because the reality is that the practice questions hit both ends of it. So yes, you're going to be seeing the law again, but what you're doing is you're seeing it in a context, right?

You're seeing it in a factual scenario, where you can put some bite to whatever element they're trying to give you. Otherwise, just reading it in an outline, it's in a vacuum, and you don't understand what those words mean. I have two kids and my daughter... And I say this a lot in presentations, so if you're a listener out there, you can say, "Ryan, you've said that before." But my six-year-old, I always say, "Lucy, tell me duty, breach, cause, damages." And she'll rattle them off.

I say, "Okay, what does that mean?" No idea, right? I might even be able to give her what the definition is, but if I then tell her, "Okay, I was driving fast through a red light going however many miles an hour with a passenger. Was that a duty?" And she's like, "What?" So, the point is that you have to go through practice to be able to understand the analysis before you can then say, "I'm just going to memorize."

And on top of that, we hear all the time and the approach for students when they're going through this - from day one, students believe that they have to become an expert on something, right? "I just went through a whole set of Contracts lectures, and I went through my first set of MBE Contracts, and I got a 50% correct. I'm not going to go any farther, because I need to now become an expert at Contracts."

Whereas, if you think of the exam as just one big learning process, a little bit over and over and over, over time, all that knowledge really starts to build on top of itself, and so when you complete more practice questions, you're seeing more fact patterns.

And then, sequentially, and incrementally I should say, what you're doing is you're just building on that fountain of knowledge, and so you're going about it the correct way, rather than passively just going back to the outlines or to a lecture. The bulk of the learning is going to come through the practice. LEE BURGESS-1: Well, and I think through those assessments, you're looking for a trajectory, right?

I think that oftentimes we hear that students in the beginning do these assessments and then they get very discouraged or they become very obsessed with the scores, the individual score feedback, or the individual MBE assessment, or the Contracts set questions or whatever it might be. And we've talked about how you need to take this long view, the fact that you're preparing for a really long time. And I think that it's important for students to see these practice and benchmarks as a trajectory.

You start where you are, and then you try to get better. And if you don't see a trajectory, I think that is a big warning sign, and that may need some intervention to really assess what you're doing. You are not supposed to know how to do it in the beginning. It's in the beginning, right? But if you're three to four weeks from the test and you haven't seen any progress, I think that is a big warning sign. And then you want to take a moment and really assess how you are spending your time.

Are you being too passive? Are you not thoughtfully self- evaluating your own work, which is always really hard to do, but people need to do it. But to get less worried about the fact that it's a 50 in the beginning. You just don't want it to be a 50 the next time you get that set of Contracts questions. How are you going to change that trajectory? Ryan Gurson-1: Yeah, that's a great point. And how you should think about it is, "I just did that set and I got a 50%."

And what matters the most is, like we said, not the 50%, but you take that score and you think of it as arrows, pointing you in the direction of where your gaps are and where your weaknesses are. And so, I always tell students when we're coaching them through these, the amount of time that it took you to complete a practice set... If you did 34 questions, for example, it should take you an hour to complete it, based on a minute 48 per question.

If it takes you an hour to complete it, it should take you a minimum of an hour and a half to review the session, because that's where the bulk of the learning comes from. And when I say "Go back and review the session", it's not just, "Let me pull out my Contracts outline and just now try to reread Contracts." It's, "Let me go back. The ones that I got right, did I get them right for the right reasons?

And the ones that I got wrong, as I'm going through the answer explanations, what act am I going to take to now solidify that rule in my mind? Am I going to make a flashcard? Am I going to go back through the question again and say, did I get caught up in reading comprehension, where it was a 'may' versus a 'shall'? Or was it a lack of application?" And if it's a lack of application, then students should pull all your resources together.

But I think taking the right approach to it and not just saying, "I'm doing it to get scores" is more beneficial than just moving right on to the next one. The same goes for essays too. We talk a lot, all jurisdictions have some sort of essay writing component on the bar exam, right? We've got the Uniform Bar Exam, you've got California - an hour, Florida - an hour essay, Georgia's 45-minute essay. So, you're writing. You're going to be writing.

And students, there's this fear in the bar review programs of not trying to... Well, two things. One, being scared to write out all their graded essays, or also, "Hey, I'm going to try to write out 150 plus practice essays to make sure I fully know how to go about it." And I always tell students, "Well, try to write out 150 essays, 100 essays. It's actually a little counterproductive."

Because once you know the formula for how to write an essay, IRAC, we all know that - issue, rule, analysis, conclusion - the examiners are not trying to trick you. There are no red herrings on the exam. I mean, they'll even say it in some states' exam instructions. You're better off saying, "I'm going to use it, again, as a learning tool." I'm going to use this fact pattern.

Instead of writing out this Contracts essay, when I just went through Contracts and I'm not an expert yet, let me say I'm going to issue spot it for 15 minutes and write down all the things I think where formation fits in. And then let me write out where revocation was, where's damages, and just make some shorthand notes. And then I'm going to go into the sample answer and I'm going to read with specificity and say, "Okay, I understand where the key operative facts are."

And the sample answer is going to say, "This is the rule", so now you're memorizing, you're ingraining the rules farther into your memory. And now you're putting context around it because you're seeing the analysis. I truly believe that you can't memorize something until you understand the application of it - kind of goes back to what we were talking about before, where you have to understand the big picture. You can say words all you want. You can take a flashcard and you can recite things.

You can read an outline. But if you do not engage in a fact pattern, then you're really doing yourself a disservice, because it's not going to actually lead to something that's going to be effective for you on the exam. I LEE BURGESS-1: think those are all great points, yeah. So, we've talked a little bit about some of the pitfalls and the mistakes people make when preparing. What do you think are some misconceptions about studying for the bar that might lead to a failure?

Like, what are people obsessed with that isn't really the thing to be obsessed with? Can we just say Reddit? Ryan Gurson-1: I didn't want to say it in the very beginning, but I'll say it now. And that's why I wanted to give you a shoutout for having a very reputable website and resources. LEE BURGESS-1: It's okay to check out Reddit, but Reddit gives me anxiety when I go in there and read what people are talking about, because I like to see what people are concerned about.

You just have to appreciate what it is, but it can be really anxiety-inducing, triggering, and make people feel like they're in a worse position than they are. So anyway, I'll just throw it out there. Reddit, sorry. Ryan Gurson-1: Let's stay off Reddit. And I tell students when we're talking to them, whatever program you choose, you stick with it and you stay within the confines. When you start to go out and you read Reddit and you start to couple resources together, it becomes really confusing.

One of the biggest misconceptions is really thinking that the bar process starts right when you graduate. And students, because of the gravity of the bar exam and the breadth of it, they don't understand how much content they're going to have to go through. In my mind, really the bar process starts when you're a 1L.

Now, that doesn't mean that you're going to take your definition for formation in your 1L classes and say, "Yeah, I'm going to now be able to regurgitate this from when I'm a 1L all the way to when I'm a 3L." I'm talking about the transferable skills that you learn throughout law school. So, in your first- year classes, you have to understand how to brief cases. Well, guess what you do on the MPT? You're taking a large amount of information and you're trying to organize it, dissect it.

What about an essay in Florida, where it's an hour long, or California, and you have a lot of facts to shift through? So, those skills - your reading skills, comprehension skills that you're learning in your first and second year - they really do transfer over. And students think that, "Hey, in law school, I'm studying one way for law school exams, whereas on the bar exam, that's when it really starts and I'm going to start thinking of the bar exam."

The approach is different when you're going through law school, but the skills that you learn, they're going to transfer over. Same thing with your writing skills, right? When you start to get in your upper-level writing classes and your writing briefs, those are really going to carry over. And what I will say too, since we're talking about law school, to all you listeners out there, I know that the majority of law schools have early bar programs, right?

So, in that third semester of law school, where you are given a class that's going to go over some of the more heavily tested MBE subjects, or some essay topics, the majority of schools do that. We have over 80 partners, and we do over 350 customized programs, so 9 times out of 10, the student's going to be able to take advantage of that. And if they take it seriously, what it does is it gives them a foundation for when they get into the bar review course.

So, they look at that experience when they're in their third year, for all you listeners out there, and say, "I'm going to use this as an opportunity to start to ingrain some of the biggest testable topics, so when I get into my bar prep, then it's going to be more of a review mode as opposed to I'm seeing it from the scratch." So, taking that time to start early and not just saying, "I'm going to start when a 10-week long program..." All programs are traditionally about 10 weeks long.

So, if you start early in your last semester of law school, or if your program, if they offer an early start, take advantage of it. And that doesn't mean that you're going to study 12 hours a day from March all the way through the bar exam, but it means that you're going to really extend the runway into it and ease yourself into it, so you're slowly going over those subjects that you didn't take in law school when you're in your bar review course in that final semester in the spring.

Maybe I didn't take Florida Con Law. And so I'm going to go through my bar review course a little bit earlier, so then when I go through it again, it's just re-exposure. Another big misconception, kind of we touched on it earlier, is that I have to become an expert at everything. And you don't. And that's the law school mindset, where "I have to get an A." You don't. You have to pass.

And I hope if your listeners take anything away from this conversation, all the law students out there - the hardest part of the bar exam is not the exam itself. It truly is that 10 plus weeks beforehand, because it is so much content.

And what happens is that most students, if they're not paying attention, they get caught and they treat it when they first get into it, kind of like a law school exam, taking the wrong approach, easing into it when they're supposed to start, and they just can't get out of the hole that they built. And so, I want you to know that the maximum effort that you give - now, there's got to be a balance - but effort really does matter on the bar exam. Mindset matters, and effort really does matter too.

LEE BURGESS-1: I'm going to add one other thing from a conversation I had yesterday, which I think is a common misconception, which is that time management issues only relate to running out of time on the bar.

And I know this sounds silly, but I talk to folks and I think that this is a mindset shift for a lot of people, because I will speak to people who have failed and we're going through their score report and I'll ask very common questions, one of which is, "How was timing?" Especially if I see certain patterns in their score report. And they'll say, "It was fine." Then I'm like, "Okay, so for the multiple choice, share with me more about that."

And someone will say, "Oh, I finished 25 minutes early." And I'm like, "But you failed the MBE portion." So, that is a time management problem, because you are going too fast, and you are not being diligent and you are not taking micro breaks and you are not staying focused. That is still also a time management issue.

I also think on the essays, there's a lot of discussion - some of it on Reddit, some of it on Facebook, some of it other places - where they talk about really gaming the system - borrowing time from one essay, applying it to another essay. I was talking to a bar grader about this, a former bar grader recently, and we were discussing how bad of an idea that is generally. But again, if you have one question that you have no time to do, that is a time management issue.

It doesn't really matter if you got a great score on one. Typically, that bummer score from the one that you had no time to write, it's not going to average out. It's not going to be net positive. But I think that you hear time management just get thrown around, and I think that a lot of times students just think that means they ran out of time.

And I think that students really need to take a different understanding of that issue, especially if you're trying to figure out what went wrong last time and say, "Oh well, if I finished early, that could also be a time management issue." I think especially on the multiple choice, where you hear these stories of folks ending early. But early and not passing is still not the result that you want. So, you've got a really pull this stuff apart and be honest with yourself. And it's tight.

The time is tight for even folks who are excellent at this test. The time is very tight, so you shouldn't have a lot of extra time. Most people are not going to have a lot of extra time. Ryan Gurson-1: No, and if you run out during practice, then you're going to run out of time on the bar exam too. Going back to the course administration and time management of that, when you're thinking of your whole study process here, really, there're two different parts to a bar review course.

The first part is that first passthrough of the subjects, where it's that first intake of all the outlines, the lectures, and that really runs from, let's call it middle of May to that first week in July. And then you're really starting to get into your simulated experiences once you get into July, if we're talking about the July takers. And for the February takers, obviously, you're going to be taking your simulated experiences, a lot of them in February.

But that second part of the course, your time is, again, dedicated to practice, whereas the first part is more getting the basics, right?

You're then taking the bulk of your time, time management, however you want to say it, and you're imposing it on, "How can I make sure that when I'm going through all these sets, I'm doing them more in a test mode, where I'm trying to make sure that I'm adhering to that minute 48, I'm really getting my endurance down and my pacing down?" Because when you start to go through those simulated exams which was my third point, is simulated experiences - on the actual test day, if you hadn't been

through six MEE essays previously, or three state-specific essays all in one sitting, and then the next day you try to go take the MBE exam and that's the first time you sat down for a 100- question exam in three hours - that is anxiety, right? And that's what fuels the anxiety with students we see a lot, because they're not trying to replicate the exam throughout the study process.

And just going through those experiences yes, again, we want to see good scores, especially at the tail end of a program. But getting those, just the experience of it, and even doing your graded essays, do them in a simulated exam location. If you're going to simulate the full two days and your school isn't doing it, go to a public library, where there are students around or people around, but it's still quiet. And you're going to get that feeling of everybody around you, right?

And that's going to help get you prepared for what the actual day is going to be. And so, I think it's really important, because you could say, "Hey, now we're getting that simulated experience", and then we're doing the mindset, but then it really builds on your confidence, because part of the MBE is having confidence to choose the right answer and not talking yourself out of correct answers, right? Talking yourself out of right answers into incorrect answers.

We see that a lot with students second guessing themselves. And that goes back to, if I prepared the way that I did throughout this 10 plus long week period, then I am going to have the confidence and I'm not going to say, "Well, maybe there's an exception to the exception that I don't see here." Well, no, maybe it's just a basic question and they want to test you on the basic rule, right? Doesn't mean that every question on the MBE is going to have three different levels of exceptions to it.

So, you choose it with confidence, and that comes over time by having enough quantity of questions, not just clicking through them to get course progress up, because nothing counts, remember. Nothing counts. So, we're doing it with purpose, to make sure that when we are going through them, we know what to expect. LEE BURGESS-1: Yeah, I mean, there's just like an honesty to it. If you're going to do this heavy lifting to do these questions, you've got to learn from them.

I think going through the motions just doesn't get you anything. And although going through the motions can feel good, because you feel like you're checking things off your to- do list, it just doesn't get you the same results. If you're feeling really great about yourself while you're studying for the bar and you're like, "I'm rocking it out of the park", you're probably studying the wrong stuff. It's terrible to say, but that's just the reality of it.

Ryan Gurson-1: You're never going to feel great, right? LEE BURGESS-1: No, it's not a fun period of time. It's not awesome. I wouldn't recommend just doing it for fun, I guess. But you do want to be feeling like you're doing the heavy lifting, so you're getting those results, because it is so important and you have to be honest with yourself. If you're just sitting down and you're just going through MBA questions and you're not really trying or you're not really reading, it's not worth it.

Just stop, take a break, go for a walk, try again later. It's just a waste of your time. Ryan Gurson-1: Yeah. At the end of the day, because we harp on completion, and all programs do: "You've got to go through the program, you've got to go through the program." And we'll have these advising appointments throughout, like I'm sure you do when you're talking to students, and they'll ask me, "Hey, this last session, I got a 50."

And I said, "Okay, well, when did you take it?" "It was nine o'clock at night, and I had just studied for 10 hours. But I needed to get my course completion up, Ryan, because you told me course completion matters." It does matter, if you're doing it with purpose. You trying to just check a box to get your course completion up doesn't do anything for you.

So, I think students and listeners out there, you have to be very mindful of when you don't have any fuel left in the tank, getting a good night's rest and not burning the midnight oil is going to regroup and your cognitive abilities are going to be fresh in the morning, as opposed to trying to every night study 10 hours, 12 hours a day. You know, it really is a cliche that it's a marathon and not a sprint. And I truly believe that. I didn't know how else to say it.

But it can be an easier marathon, if we do what we're supposed to do from the very beginning, and even before easing yourself back into it, because you don't want to be peaking for the bar exam, studying 10-12 hours a day in May, or even in June. It's a full-time job. Students always ask, "Well, how many hours is that?" It's a full-time job trying to make partner, right? But that doesn't mean that you're trying to make partner from day one. You're not studying 14-15 hours - you will burn out.

I was very fortunate to see the COVID exams come many years ago. Yeah, that was really fun. And how different jurisdictions continued to extend the exams, not providing a lot of information. And we would see students, they got burned out, because they had been studying, many of them since their 3L year in the spring, taking our advice, starting early.

And then once that runway got too long, after many of them postponed the exams for like a month later, we said, "Just take two weeks off, take a week off." You have to refresh and you have to realize that it is just an exam. And so, you have to take care of yourself physically, because if you don't do that, your mental faculties will not be there when you truly need them at the end of July, or at the end of February. And so, you have to really take care of yourself and be aware of it.

If you don't have any fuel left in the tank, put it away. Go outside, read a book, take a shower, right? I go to the exam every year in Florida, and whew, we see some people like... We want you to still be a human, right? Still be a human and care about yourself, because then it's going to help you feel good on exam day. LEE BURGESS-1: Yeah. We talk about using your best brain to study. Most of our best brains are not at 10 o'clock at night.

And I think this is a real challenge, especially for people who are studying part time, especially retakers who are working and studying. It is super tricky, because you're often trying to study in the evenings, but you really do have to figure out how to give yourself that boost. Do you have to take a walk after work to clear your head, so you can come back and put in that time?

Do you have to take breaks during your longer study days, to create sessions for yourself, so you can continue your effort throughout the day? But burnout is real. I see plenty of people fail the bar exam because of burnout.

It is not to be ignored, and it is something to be very honest with yourself about, and it's a great thing to check in with yourself, to check in with family and friends who might be able to see it a little easier, if they can see that you look like you're starting to become a shell of yourself. This is a stressful thing to go through, so you're not going to be like skipping around. Some people might be, I definitely wasn't. But you do have to make sure that you can show up and perform.

We are taping this right at the end of the Olympic season and the Paralympics, and you hear athletes talk about that so much, right? Peaking at the right time, because they can't go into a competition burned out - they will not be able to perform.

And I think sometimes we don't talk about that enough with the test, is this idea that you're really trying to be the best version of yourself on that exam day, so you can think on your toes and the anxiety doesn't take over and all of that sort of stuff. I'm not a runner and it's like a marathon, but I do play tennis. And they were talking about this at the U.S. Open, how none of the people who medaled at the Olympics in the singles were in the finals of the U.S.

Open, because they said that they had kind of added that extra tournament in there, snuck it in there in August, and then they were all exhausted. And these are professional athletes, right? And so, we have to just be really aware that this applies to all of us.

And if you're struggling, I would much rather you take a whole day off and go on a hike or hang out with your dog or go out with your best friend or spend time with your family or go be in the mountains by yourself, whatever it is, than like put yourself into the ground so you don't sleep, because you're never going to be able to show up and be your best self. And that's really all we're asking for.

Ryan Gurson-1: Yeah. I always say, you don't fail the bar exam by taking off a Sunday every now and again. I mean, go and be with your family. Now, if you take three weeks off, that's a different story, right? We don't want to hear LEE BURGESS-1: that. Yes. And no self-sabotaging behavior, right? Like, please don't plan your wedding to be during the bar - I've heard that. Try not to move during the bar exam - that's another really crummy one.

Anything that's elective, try not to do while you're studying. Life can sometimes hand you some icky stuff, like you mentioned, like people getting sick, I've had students have their appendix out, family members have health crises, people lose somebody. You cannot avoid what happens in life, so that is fine. You can avoid the avoidable though. And so, don't set yourself up to make Ryan Gurson-1: your life LEE BURGESS-1: life more Ryan Gurson-1: harder. You're right.

I mean, no major life changes or distractions, because it's just bandwidth that you don't need to divert mental energy to. And then it becomes something that just pulls you away from what's really important in terms of getting to the process, that long 10 plus week process, because really, everything still feeds into effort. And when you're pulled away, and like you said, there are times where you just can't help it because it's unexpected and out of your control.

But when it is in your control... And we've heard all the excuses. We've heard them all, and I will have students call me after they're unsuccessful, and we'll go through the score report, and I'll say, "Well, what happened?" And, "Well, I had this, and my girlfriend was doing this, and I had a buddy that got married and I went to Europe for a bachelor party." Well, of course. I mean, a lot of it is common sense.

And that should really make the listeners feel good of maximum effort, because it's things that you did learn in law school, you're just learning them on a larger scale. And you're taking a different approach to them to make sure that, again, you're not trying to ace the exam, you're focusing on what's the most important things, right? Rule of perpetuities, pick C. Wow, right? Don't go down that hole trying to just learn everything. You don't need to be an expert on everything.

You have to master the basics, right? And that's where you need to key in. I have students, they'll say, "Well, contracts. What about formation of contracts? How do you feel on formation?" "Oh, I was more focused on damages." What about negligence and torts? The biggest subtopics, especially in that final part that we talked about, once you get in July - that's where the energy is really hammering in. And then over time, as you hit more practice questions, you will pick up those nuanced rules.

You want to get the majority of the easy questions, most of the medium, and some of the hard. And guess what? That gets you to a 63-65%, and you pass. So, you're trying to be very strategic. And there comes a point in that final month where we're talking to students, and I'll have somebody say, "Well, Ryan, I just got a 130 on my simulated MBE. I'm still thinking of doing a hundred MBE questions a day." No, I don't want you to. I want you to maintain it.

I want you to maintain it, so I want you to divert a little bit and let's talk about where you need to focus your time on maintaining that high competent MBE, but then let's go shift to where we can memorize some other rules. So, you have to have a very honest conversation with yourself in bar prep. And if it feels uncomfortable, you should probably be doing it. We see the trap a lot, where students say, "I love torts.

I'm just going to hammer Torts questions, or I'm going to hammer Torts essays, because I'm going to get every Torts question right and it's going to make up for my deficiencies in Crim Pro", whatever it may be. And the reality is that you don't have to be an expert on any one subject. You just can't put up a goose egg.

So, if you learn the basics - and again, we learn the basics by practice, rather than passively reading outlines or just passively listening to lectures all the time - practice is going to be the key for students, and it's really going to guide you into those areas anyway. LEE BURGESS-1: So, when I was studying for the bar, I had been with my now husband who I've been with forever for a year. We had our one-year anniversary like at the beginning of bar prep.

And my parents are both lawyers, and they came to visit for emotional support. And then my mom took my husband, now husband, then boyfriend aside, and was like, "So, can't break up with her. I don't care what happens. You can't break up with her this summer." And my husband's like, "Uh, I don't know you that well. We've only hung out like a couple of times." We were all at graduation together. And she's like, "I'm just saying, you can't. You can't.

You just have to stick it out until the end of July, and then in August, you can do whatever you want to do. But do not sabotage her over the next two months." He was a little spooked, I'll be honest, but it was kind for my mom to do that. Ryan Gurson-1: Hopefully that was brought up in the speech at the wedding, right? LEE BURGESS-1: Oh, he brought up the bar exam time at our wedding. It wasn't the highlight of our relationship. Ryan Gurson-1: I think I was studying, we just had gotten a puppy.

We had gotten a husky puppy and it was like every hour I was going to let out the dog, and that was my study break at the time, to pee-train the dog. It's like, that probably wasn't a good thing at the time to worry about the dog, when I should be worrying about my course. LEE BURGESS-1: But on the other hand, you got a mental health break. I mean, people bring dogs to the library to give you emotional support. So, you had your own emotional support puppy.

We could talk all day, but I did want to touch on one other topic that also comes up in a lot of conversations I have with students, which is students who get extended time or some sort of accommodation such as that. How do you see that changing how students kind of approach using your program, and can they tweak it to meet their needs if they do get that extended time, which is the most typical accommodation I think we see that affects a lot of how you prep?

Ryan Gurson-1: So yeah, most students we see 50% time or time and a half, right? It's very common, and I know I'll speak for our course only in the sense that we have ADA accommodations, and so it's a simple form, and then the whole course gets tweaked. And so, if you are getting time and a half, and you have a 60-minute Florida essay, now you have a 90-minute Florida essay. So, all the course components are going to be changed.

And especially when you're going through those simulated experiences, again, you want to make sure that you're doing them, obviously, under the appropriate time conditions that you get. I also think about it too, that if you get time and a half - well, then that probably means that you're going to need extra study time too, and a traditional 10-week long program, you're going to need earlier access, right? So, we offer early access at Themis and UWorld, and a lot of courses do.

But you should really then be taking advantage of your early bar prep programs in your third year of law school, whatever the class that your school is putting out, because if it's going to take you time and a half on the exam, you're going to need an additional study time. And so, you have to be cognizant about that and don't think that your practice questions are going to be longer. You need to start earlier too, is really the key for those students. LEE BURGESS-1: I think that's true.

Those deposits in the bank, right? You've got to just make some early deposits, and give yourself that cushion to give yourself that extended time, especially I think for ADHD students or anyone with any sort of attention deficit issue. You may have to test out how to study to get maximum benefits. So, it might be the Pomodoro method where you're really doing these breaks. You're just doing these small focused amounts of time, and you're building up to being able to do longer periods of time.

Or you have to work with whoever is your team that supports you to decide what your coping mechanisms are going to be. This might be very different than the challenges you took on in law school. So that early start, it's great to have the program tweak, and it allows you to start experimenting on what you need within the parameters of your accommodations to make it the best experience for you so you can, again, just show up as your best self.

That's really the theme - show up as your best self, whatever that best self might be. Ryan Gurson-1: And we always say, ask for help early. When students come to us and it's July 20th - that's a whole different conversation how we can help or your school can help, versus coming to us in April, March, May, whenever it may be to really understand the process, because you're not alone.

So, I always say, come to the experts that have actually passed it your law school administrators, your bar review company. Stay off the chat rooms and come to us, because we're the ones that have experienced it and can give you that plan for how to approach it throughout this upcoming bar administration.

There's just too much chatter online and all these websites are doing a disservice to students, providing the misinformation when the reality is that if the students come to us earlier, we're here to help. We want to help. That's why we're in this industry, all of us. And so, we want to speak to you early on. Early intervention is the key, especially if you know you're going to be going on a trip or... You know you have life situations.

We all have a life and surrounding variables that make the bar administration challenge them at times. And so, talk it through with somebody - one of your advisors or your law school professors or administrators, and they will help put you on a plan, but you've got to come to us. LEE BURGESS-1: Ooh, maybe we should suggest a social media detox when you start studying for the bar.

Just like take Instagram and all the things off your phone, block it on your computer, give yourself a good number of weeks where you don't interact. I would be fascinated to see how that would shift the bar exam... Ryan Gurson-1: Well, people would be shaken. LEE BURGESS-1: I know, I know, but it could help. It could help. Ryan Gurson-1: It could definitely help. I think it would help, because why surround yourself with everybody that has the same anxiety you do?

Come to somebody that's going to calm you and ease you and tell you it's going to LEE BURGESS-1: be okay. Oh, it's so true. I I remember one time during the bar experience coming home to my poor now husband, really freaked out, because I was studying during the day like a job and I was coming home in the evenings and I was like, "Everybody's talking about how long they're in the library and I'm not studying enough and I'm not going to pass."

And I remember him just saying, "Where in the class did you just graduate? Didn't you just do really well?" And I was like, "Well, yeah." And he was like, "And don't you have some fancy BigLaw job?" And I was like, "Well, yes, I do." And he was like, "So why do you care what everyone else is doing? Because you have been successful at all these other things, I don't really understand why you wouldn't be successful at this too."

But I was just in the lunchroom, just like feeding off of everyone's anxiety. And this is even before Instagram. This was before you could feed off of everyone in the world's anxiety. This was just my lunchroom at school. Ryan Gurson-1: Yeah. Don't feed into it. Come to the individuals that have been through it and can put you at ease, as opposed to hype you up. And the students that are in the library, on Facebook for 10 hours or whatever, Twitter, they're just putting in face time.

You don't get face time points, right? The points that matter within the program. So we see that a lot. I remember seeing that in law school more than anything. So yeah, the guy that's in the library for 20 hours a day, the last in the class, right? LEE BURGESS-1: Yeah, I know, right? And it's the person you never see who always gets the high score award and you're like, "I've never seen that person before. Who is that person?" Ryan Gurson-1: I know, I know. LEE BURGESS-1: Yeah, I know.

Well, this has been a really fun conversation. Thank you so much for sharing some time with us. If students want to learn more about Themis and UWorld and the resources you're offering, how can they do that? Ryan Gurson-1: I would first check with your law school director. Themis always has attorneys at every law school that come on a regular basis and speak with them. We always have a promotional table up. Outside of that, I would go to the website, ThemisBar.com.

There're always great promotions taking place. We won't make this a sales pitch, but really check out the resources that we have available, especially in law school. All resources in law school are free for all students, and use them as just another resource. I always like to say that your professor in law school really is your judge, jury, executioner. You should go with what they say. Use the supplements to kind of fill the gaps. On the bar exam, that's a different story.

Come to us, we're the experts. But go to the website, you check out the resources and really see our approach. I think all companies kind of teach it a little bit differently. And so, we take a very methodical academic approach. Hopefully you've seen today how we approach the exam and the bar administration. It's really what our course is about, to give you the best chance of passing. LEE BURGESS-1: Awesome. Well, Ryan, thank you so much. Enjoy. Is it still hot in Florida? I would assume. It is.

Okay, yeah. Well, enjoy the end of your summer into your winter summer, or whatever happens down in Florida. Ryan Gurson-1: Well, I'll tell you when it gets 70, I get a little chilly. We've become acclimated to the humidity. I like the humidity. It's like a nice warm blanket on me all the time. And so, anything under 70, yeah, we've got the flannels on at night. So, LEE BURGESS-1: Yeah. I live in Northern California, now have for so long that I just wilt in all other climates.

I just can't do it. So I'm always impressed, because I've turned soft. I grew up in a very hot place, but I can't do it anymore. Ryan Gurson-1: I've become soft the other way. If it's cold, I need to be by my place. So, LEE BURGESS-1: Yeah, I get it. Well, have a good rest of your day. Thanks for your time.

If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out to myself 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!