Welcome to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast. Today we are excited to celebrate our 300th episode with our top five tips for passing the bar exam. Your Bar Exam Toolbox hosts are Alison Monaghan 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! Today, we're excited to celebrate our 300th episode with our top five tips for passing the bar exam. Alright, let's see. What's our number one tip?
If anyone listens to the podcast regularly, this should not be a surprise. It is practice, practice, and then do more practice. Yet, in all the years - and we've now been doing this for quite a few years we still talk to students who don't practice the first time they sit for the bar.
Yeah. I think everybody has the best intentions, but the reality is, it's easy to get sucked into doing other things that maybe aren't quite as stressful as sitting down and actually trying to write out a full exam answer, doing a whole PT. There's so much to do that I can see people are just like, "Well, I've got to learn all this law. I mean, that's my focus, right? I've just got to learn the law. I've got to learn the law.
If I know the law, I'll pass the exam." Unfortunately, that doesn't work,
usually. No, because you can have wrong law and still get quite a few points. That is really the thing that I think gets lost, is this idea that what they're really the most focused on is the analysis piece, and the only way you can practice analysis is by doing hypos.
Right. And I think it's also critical that you do what you actually have to do. So I talk often to people who say, "Well, I outlined a lot of answers." And it's like, "Okay, well, that's sort of step one in the process. But did you actually sit down and write them out? Did you do that in a closed-book scenario? Did you do that under timed conditions?" And generally, the answer is "no".
Yeah. I've also gotten a lot of "I read the model answers", which also doesn't count.
Right. I mean, we're not saying these are terrible things to do. It's just maybe not the best thing and the most efficient way that you could be preparing for this test. And that's the problem, is you don't have unlimited time.
And we know from research around learning that asking yourself to recall things and making mistakes is one of the ways that we learn. You can learn that by watching children learn, you can learn that by trying to learn many of the other things we do in life. But that feeling of being uncomfortable is part of the process, and because you're uncomfortable, you're going to retain it.
So, I think it's so important for folks to remember that doing a practice question, getting it wrong, going back and reviewing it, and maybe rewriting it, is likely going to stick in your brain more than just passively reading an outline. Right.
Or on the MBE sometimes people say, "Well, I just read the answer choices and I read their explanations. And the one they had sounded right to me." And it's like, okay, that's not exactly what we're talking about here. It's like, the person who wrote those answer choices already knew the answer. So, you need to try to actually struggle through. As you know, I relate everything in my life now to skiing, because that's what I do every day. But practice - really fundamental.
If you could learn to ski by watching YouTube, I as a ski instructor would not have a job to do. The reality is, you can get a tip, and that's great and maybe something to go out and think about and work on and practice. But you have to literally go out and do it, and you have to evaluate how it worked.
And then what I'm finding interesting lately - I was thinking about this today so, a couple of days ago, I had somebody show up and give me this great tip that really changed my skiing for like a day. And I've been trying to practice it ever since and really ingrain it in my head. And the funny part is, the more you do that, almost the more awkward and weird it all gets. And I'm beginning to think that might be part of the learning process.
Yeah. I think that's a really interesting point. I was also thinking about this while playing tennis today. So we're now a sporting podcast. But I play tennis, and I was discussing with my coach why it is easier for me to play somebody who's better than I am than it is for me to play somebody who is worse, whatever that means, but is not as highly ranked as I am. And not like I'm ranked like I'm at the U.S. Open. We're talking about community leagues and stuff.
Anyway, for those who don't play tennis, you have a number assigned to how good you are as a tennis player, even if you're not a really good tennis player.
ha, Right, so that people could play about the same
level. Right, exactly. But I can easily play up and I struggle to play down. And one of the things that I found interesting as I was talking to my coach about this, was, he was discussing how when you are playing kind of down, you have to be in charge of the game. They're giving you nothing to play off of. And how much harder that is than if a coach is hitting to you, or somebody better.
You're getting their pace, you're getting their ball placement, their game maybe makes more sense to you, because they're not just popping it back over the court, and then you have to do something with it. And I think that idea of really having to be the driver, really having to rely on yourself to work with this material and make something out of it, is something that we oftentimes don't do. That is harder for me. It is harder for me to play with someone who gives me nothing.
That makes me come up with it all myself.
No, for sure, that was always the case. I played high school tennis and it was the same thing. I would go out and beat like the number one seed on the other team. And people were like, "Oh my gosh, you're great". And then I would go lose to like the worst person on a
different team. I know.
Drives me
Partly
for me was, I got bored and I just wasn't focused. But yeah, there is something to that. And I was thinking about this as well, what you were just saying - I think it's this weird balance with practice of trusting yourself and your instincts, but also taking feedback. I think it's the Buddhists who have this phrase of, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, or something like that.
Because with skiing, there are things that I've heard for years, and then suddenly one day it clicks, and I understand what they meant by it all those days. But then I have to kind of take it and make it my own. And so, with the practice it's like, you kind of got to get some feedback on how you're doing, but then at some point you have to internalize that because you have to be evaluating on the exam, "Am I performing to the level I need to in real time?"
Yeah. I think what you can really take from our lessons from sporting...
So we're so sporty.
We're so sporty, oh my goodness. If you hung out with us in person...
We're not. We're really not.
...would be like, "You're really that sporty? What?" But, no. But there are things that you can learn from sports. One is, it keeps us in the growth mindset, which is, I think, one of the reasons you and I both like doing stuff like this. I also ski; we ski together. But it's like you're challenging yourself constantly, right? It's not something you can do on autopilot. That's one of the things I like about sports, you have to be engaged.
If I don't pay attention when I'm playing tennis, I literally can't play. Same thing with skiing - if you don't want to hurt yourself, you have to pay attention to what you're doing.
And I think that presence that comes from that and this awareness of the struggle and how you're changing your body or how you're learning and taking in feedback - those lessons are often easier learned doing something physical than doing something in an academic setting like this, where it's like, the practice is the same stuff.
It's going down the ski slope, it's playing the match and not doing well, and then trying to go to your coach or your teacher and say, "Why didn't that go well?" And then internalizing their feedback and trying again. We know in all these other parts of our lives that to get better, you have to practice. Nobody would tell me that I could get a better tennis game by not playing tennis. Or that I could be a better skier by not skiing.
No. Unfortunately, watching the Australian Open is probably not going to impact your tennis game
all that much. No. Even as much as I enjoy it, it does not influence my tennis game that much. Although you can say, "Oh, that was quite impressive." But yeah, that's not the same as putting yourself in a position to have to do it yourself. So, you know these lessons. If you're studying for the bar, there is something you do in your life that has taught you this lesson.
And you need to figure out how to apply it to the bar and realize that this practice is just like all the other practice in all the other things that you do in your life, that maybe you force yourself to do to get better. For some reason, this academic one seems to be really challenging.
Yeah. And I think just accepting that the practice is the struggle, which is kind of the point of this. And that's what's laying down the different neural pathways in your brain, so that hopefully by the time you get to the exam, some of this is a habit. And when you get under stress, you fall back usually on habitual patterns. So you want to have something to fall back on of like, "Okay, I know this is how I do my pre-writing outline. I'm just going to do it the same way I always do it." Yeah.
Our next tip for bar exam success is, organize your life and have a day of plans. So it's like a two-part tip, but it's an important one.
Yeah, I'd say this is kind of the executive functioning piece of the test, and so many people really struggle. And some of this is out of your control. I mean, things happen. We're recording this after the fires in LA. We know people whose houses burned down and they're supposed to be studying for the bar. That is out of your control. However, there are other things that are within your control. And some of this is about timing.
Is this really the best time for you to be studying for, preparing for taking this exam? And if the answer to that is "no", then there's another time for it.
Yeah. And I think that's such an important question. We have talked to so many people who failed, and when you start really asking them what happened, some things, can be tragedies, right? They lost a family member, or somebody got critically ill. But there's a lot of stuff that we hear that's like, "Well, I moved", "I got married", "I went on a two-week vacation." You can plan around all those things. I'm not saying you should move your wedding.
If you want to get married, go for it, but maybe don't also study for the bar while you're getting married. That might not be the best use of your time. If you're a foreign-trained attorney and you're working full-time and you have mountains of law to learn because you didn't go to a U.S. law school, you're not going to have enough hours. You need to plan your life to allow yourself a longer time to study. I also think that resources are really important to look at.
If you need additional help, if you need a tutor, if you need a different bar provider, whatever it might be, sometimes it's great to take a break and make money, and then come back and feel like you're in a better financial situation. We've seen all sorts of success with people developing plans and executing them. I think where we see it fall apart is when there's no plan, and then life just comes at you, and you're getting ping ponged around by it.
If those things are in your control, you definitely want to do something to avoid that reality.
Yeah. Or their plan is, "I'm going to work full-time and then study five hours a night, every night, plus all weekend." And it's like, that's not realistic. No one can do that. If that's really your plan, that is not a good plan.
Diminishing returns. I was listening to a Huberman podcast. I'm not like a huge Huberman... because they're like two hours plus. Anyway, he does have some good guests on there. But somebody did send me one of his podcasts. And then I was listening to another one because it started going through and then I'm in the car and I can't change the podcast. You know how it goes.
It's what they're banking on.
I know. But he was talking about his schedule, because he's kind of a life biohacker, life hack type person. But he was talking about his own schedule and how he only believes he can work so many hours a day. And he was talking about how like 90 minutes in the morning are his most productive time, and then he has time that's creative time, and time where he can do more mundane tasks. But even he was talking about how he maxes out on the number of hours that he can work.
And this is somebody who this is his whole deal.
Yeah, his whole jam
is working. His whole jam is optimizing life in all ways. Not to say that he has it figured out, but that's what he's focused on, is optimization, right? And so he was talking about learning and being efficient, and doing different kinds of work. And it did make me think about people studying for the bar, because so often we try and have this conversation of how many hours can you really do this? What is the best time of day for you to memorize information versus do practice?
And oftentimes, for most people, it's not 10:00 o'clock at night. But a lot of people like to think it's 10:00 o'clock at night. And there are very few people, few and far between, for whom they're going to do their best learning late at night. And so you really have to create a schedule that's going to give you returns on the time investment, or you're just on the fast train to burnout.
Yeah, exactly. And in addition to setting up that schedule, you've also got to make sure everything day of is ready to go, because that's always really disappointing for people, and when we hear these stories about something going wrong on the day of oops, you forgot to book your hotel room, or it was far away, or your laptop failed, you didn't know how to get to the testing center, you were late to the test. I mean, there are all these things that happen. We've heard a ton of different things.
And you just don't want that to happen to you; you've worked hard for this. Just go ahead and close that loop on the last little bit of it and make sure you show up early with everything you need, you've read the rules. If you're in California now, there are all these new rules about things. You want to make sure that you are going to be compliant, because the bar does not give people a lot of leeway.
No. There are too many people and it's just, they have to be too rigid, right or wrong. If you need something special, you must apply for accommodations for it. Even if you're not sure it's a special accommodation, you need to apply for it. And this includes your jurisdiction has rules about a pillow that you could bring for your back, or a type of keyboard, or a mouse, or all sorts of things.
You need to read those rules and go to the bar and say, if you need one of these things, it's a special accommodation. You don't want to show up on test day with your ergonomic keyboard, and have them, one, even threaten to give you some sort of ethical violation, which nobody wants, or two, just create drama when everybody's already so charged and on edge, and all of that stuff. And I was thinking about the traffic and things like that.
There was just another fire off of I-5 yesterday, and they just closed I-5. You could be somewhere where they could just close a freeway. I mean, things happen.
Yeah. I think you want to make sure that you've minimized as many possible problems as you can.
Yes.
Alright. Well, next up we have our third tip - focusing on active learning.
Oh, yes. This is something else if you listen to the podcast that you should be very familiar with. But it goes back to what we were talking about with the practice, is that the only way to make the magic happen is to get uncomfortable and force yourself to do hard things. And we all get sucked into passively doing things.
I always think about these bar lectures whenever I'm in my car listening to a podcast or an audiobook and then realize I have no idea what they're talking about, because my brain has just gone off somewhere else. I'm thinking about my to-do list or that I need to text somebody or call somebody back. And then you realize minutes have gone by and you have no clue. I've been listening, in theory, but it didn't internalize into my brain.
And we know from data that passive listening is not the most effective way for most people to retain information. It's less effective than reading. And so, it's just a hard thing to say that you're going to accept, is that all these bar providers that give you hours and hours of lectures that they just want you to watch are not going to get you to your goals.
Right. Didn't we see that study, that people who watch something, they feel better about the amount of information they've retained, but if you actually test them on it, they're way worse. I find that fascinating. It
was in the Adam Grant book that I read last year as an audio book, I'll be honest. But then I did have a physical copy and I went back and re-read it so I could talk about it with some sort of authority on the podcast.
Yeah, I found that so interesting. It does then explain why people are so reluctant to give up those videos. Yes,
I know. And folks are shocked when we make the suggestion that they should not spend their time.
They should just stop.
They should stop. They're like, " Alison Monahan: But I paid for it." I It's like, " Alison Monahan: That's great. Do you want to take the exam again, or do you want to pass?" Right. Or if you've done it once, why would you do it again? That's also my favorite. It's like, it didn't work the first time. And honestly, folks, I took one of those commercial courses. It didn't really work for me the first time either.
I aborted and went back to studying the way that I knew I got good grades in law school, because I realized that I was putting in all of these hours and I didn't know anything.
Right. No, I think that's the thing. People walk away and they're like, "I actually did not A, understand, or B, retain any of that information. I think it's one thing if it's a class you've never taken, you have no introduction to. Fine, watch a few hours of videos. But that's it. I don't know why people are sitting and watching hours of Contracts and Torts and things like that. I'm like, "You took this whole class." Unless you're a foreign-trained attorney; that's different.
Right.
But if you did a JD, you took a lot of these classes. I don't think they completely left your brain.
No. Or that you couldn't read an outline and remember some of this law.
Look at an outline, do some open-book questions, and start applying it. It doesn't have to go straight to closed-book.
Yeah. The other thing I think that gets lost in this discussion of active learning is incremental gains. This is something I talk to my children about - and myself - but I also talk to my children about it. Because none of us really like incremental gains. Nobody likes just small victories, because they don't really feel like you're getting to where you want to go. We all want to see really large positive gains. But the reality is, the science doesn't really back us up on that front.
Tiny habits and spaced repetition, which is something we've talked about a lot on the podcast is this idea that if you do a little bit every day, it will all compound like interest and get bigger, and you will learn more. And I think that when the amount of law that you need to learn feels so big, it is very hard to say, "I'm going to take it in small chunks", but that is exactly what you need to do.
And I think that's why we are passionate that students look at spaced repetition, that they look at the SmartBarPrep outlines, they look at a manageable amount of information and say, "I'm going to master this manageable amount of information by chipping away at it every day. And I'm not going to memorize the entire Contracts outline today, because that is impractical." Most of us won't be able to do it. It's just the reality, and that's okay.
Yeah, 100%. I think everybody's looking for a magic wand that they can wave that's going to be like, "Oh, this is going to guarantee that I pass. This is the one magic outline." I think there are even some outlines called "magic outlines". They're not magic. I think it is this slow, chipping away process, and there may be backsliding. There may be days, like we've talked about, where things aren't going well, and you just kind of have to keep plowing ahead with it.
I was going to say "trust the process", but I think that's how people sometimes get in trouble, is they do trust these processes that they're told are going to work, but they're not critically evaluating if they're actually working for the way that they learn or for the time they have available. And I think unfortunate reality is, for a lot of people, they don't work.
Yeah. And you can set up those assessments for yourself.
You should be testing yourself. You should
be testing yourself. I often, when I get on the phone with someone and we're talking about the law, and we'll oftentimes be arguing about how they're supposed to be studying for the exam, and I'll say, "Great. At the end of a..." How many hours are some of these Evidence lectures? It's eight hours; I mean, an insane amount of time. "Can you list off all of the hearsay exceptions and list the rules for each of them with elements?
Can you?" And most people are like, "Nope." And I'm like, "Well, that's a problem, because that's what you need for the bar."
If you asked me that information, I'd be like, "Where are my SmartBarPrep outlines? Here you go. Here are the 15 exceptions. Would you like me to read them to you?"
And there was a time when I could rattle them all off. Now I could probably compile them, because I still know all of them. But there was a time when I had a mnemonic and I had a list and I could rattle them all off. And I had a rule statement for each of them, and I had them memorized cold. And that is what you need to know. Those are the types of assessments you can do for yourself. If you're doing this more video-based approach, this passive learning, quiz yourself.
Say, "Lee told me to list all of the hearsay exceptions and all of the rules, and I couldn't, and that's a problem." Well, there you go.
Yeah. No, I think quizzing yourself consistently is a really great way of doing it, because again, when you find out you got something wrong, that's what helps your brain remember it later.
Yep. So, in a way, you should almost be able to sit down and write what's in a SmartBarPrep outline, by hand, out of your head. I know that sounds very overwhelming, but not if you do it incrementally every day.
Well, and you could start with a green. Start with the frequently tested rules. That's like a third of it.
Yep. So, tiny things, every day. Most people study for the bar for, what, 10 weeks? Eight to 10 weeks? Think about how many days that is. You think about learning a chunk of material, one page of material over all of those days? That is not that much material. It is a reasonable amount of work if you thoughtfully do it every day.
Yeah. If anyone's not familiar with space repetition, go listen to those podcasts with Gabe Teninbaum. He's amazing. He talks about the science behind it. It's very convincing. Ten minutes a day - that's all you need. You'll have 90% of the information in your head at the end of like eight to 10 weeks.
Yeah, it's wild. Next up on our top tips is: Don't give the bar too much power. It's important, but it is not life or death. I feel like we have this conversation with both our current students and prospective students a lot, because this test can really take on a life of its own.
Yeah. And I think this is a tricky one because, yes, the test is important, we get that. It's very stressful. It's a hard thing. It's potentially preventing people from supporting themselves and paying back their student loans. Some people may have a job that's at risk. There are really big things riding on this test, I get that. However, at the same time, I don't think focusing on those things that are riding on you passing or not passing is actually going to help you pass.
Yeah. In the end, it's still a test. It's an important test with consequences, but it's still a test. You have taken lots of tests over the years. And the question
on the test is, how do you accumulate points? And when you look at it like that, it's like, "Okay, well, let's actually figure out what pieces I might be able to get more points on. How can I get more points when I'm not getting points?" Everybody's better and worse at certain things. It's like, what do you want to focus on? The MBE has seven topic areas that's fewer than the essays. Do you want to put more time and energy there? I'm not telling you what to do.
I'm just saying, this is how I would analyze the situation.
Yeah, 100%. And when I look at somebody's scores, I often approach it from that point of like, where are we going to find some cushion? Where are your strength areas, and how can we collect more points there? You can be strategic about this test; it is a game. You'd still have to do all the heavy lifting that we've been talking about, but it is important to keep it in its place.
And I think where folks really find that it becomes impossible, or almost that they are frozen and can't move forward is when they just feel that the stakes are too high. I think back in the early days of us doing this work, we have a really great podcast. Pre-podcast. This was a blog post. This is how long this has been around, a blog, when we had a blog that was very popular.
But the blog post was like "The Question No one Asked Me", and it was basically someone who had failed the bar once, was shocked that out in the real world when she was practicing law, no one had any idea that she ever failed the bar. Nobody cared. Nobody looked at when she passed. The only people who I think really look at those sorts of dates are people like us, when we hire, because we ask how many bars you took, and did you pass them? But
even then, we've hired people who didn't pass the bar the
first time. Yes, because they had great lessons
learned. We have people for us who failed the bar. Yes,
because they have great lessons learned, and there are all sorts of things. So, it's really just, in the end, a blip on your career, but it does feel so big. So, if you need to create some mindfulness practices, to try and walk in nature, to do whatever coping mechanisms that work for you to keep it in its place, I think that's really important. And you also have to make sure that the anxiety from other things happening in the world doesn't also spiral in and make it bigger than it is.
This is one thing that you can control.
Right. Yeah, no, I think that's the thing. It's like, yes, it's important. But it's also not that important, which is a fine balance to strike.
Yeah. The last tip we're going to focus on today is the importance of the mental game, which is a lot.
This is, like we said, a very stressful, hard thing to do. A lot of people are struggling with some mental health issues already, particularly things around anxiety, maybe you're getting accommodations for various things. There's a lot going on for a lot of people.
And I think having support, and also just having a strategy for how you're going to handle the ups and downs of this process, because it's never going to be completely smooth, whether we're talking about the day of, or we're talking about the preparation. You might get to the test and the first essay you look at is something that you're like, "Oh my gosh, that was exactly what I was hoping not to see." And there it is.
There it is. And you still have to keep going. You can't stop.
You've got to do something with it. And I think that's going to be a challenge for people who are taking California, because they're going to get one at a time, and if it is one where you're just like, "Oh my gosh..."
You have to sit with it for all 60
minutes. You've got to sit there on camera for 60 minutes and try to come up with something.
Yeah. I also think that you look around at other hard things that people do. I thought about this a lot when I was watching the Olympics, because there's a lot of discussion now about performance coaches and the greats are using therapists and things like that. And what do you think they're talking about? They're talking about failure and fear of failure. And of course they have pressure and media and all of that stuff.
But a lot of it is, how do they stay present and not think of the next thing or worry about the consequences? Everybody acknowledges that if the stakes are high, that this is very important.
So if you're struggling with your mental game, you want to figure out what resources you can tap into, because if you walk into the room and feel the panic rising and have your mind go blank, which is totally possible, happens to people in the room all the time - it's a fight or flight response, it's nothing special to you if your mind and body think you're being chased by a lion, and so all the oxygen gets deprived from your brain to go to other essential organs. So, of course you cannot think.
But you can't write an essay in that way. You can't do it. You've got to have a way to get yourself out of it.
Right. And you need to have actually planned that out and practiced it, because when your brain goes blank from test anxiety, you have to do something like a breathing exercise to actually get it back online. And if you're just sitting there panicking, being like, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh" - that can very easily spiral and you might end up wasting half the time and never write anything.
These are the things that can really derail your exam day, so these are things you have to have worked on beforehand. And there are tons of different options, but you need to find something that you can consistently go to. Going back to the Buddhists, they talk about training as a warrior. And they're not talking about going out to shoot people; they're talking about training your mind so that when you're in a situation that's very stressful, that training is almost habitual.
Yes. Now I can talk about cold plunging, which I do love to talk about.
How many of these Huberman videos have you been watching, Lee? I feel like that's he'd be into.
He is into that, but that's not why I'm into it. But the interesting thing about cold plunging is that they say it's great for anxiety and controlling your dopamine levels. Yes, and all of that stuff. I love that book. Anyway, but one of the things that's interesting is if you do it semi regularly, which I now do because that's the point of my life I'm at, where I cold plunge.
But it is amazing when you practice calming your nervous system, because the thing is, it initiates a fight or flight response. Your body does not want you to go in; it is very cold in there. But you have to be uncomfortable and tell your mind that you are safe and that it is fine and that you're going to do it anyway. And there's a small period of time where you feel the anxiety, and then you feel it dissipate. It is a very powerful thing.
We can create other situations, maybe without 50-degree water, where you can do that as well. But it is this idea that the more you do it, the more used to it you are. And then that fight or flight response doesn't get as big, because your body is used to calming itself down.
So, when you sit down to do this very important practice that makes you uncomfortable, that might be anxiety inducing - yes, you might feel the adrenaline start to pump, even if it's just to sit down and do a practice question, you then have to say, "Well, this is my opportunity to take those deep breaths and calm my nervous system down, so I can do it in the exam room", since there's no cold plunge at the bar.
Yeah. I remember when I was doing my open water scuba certification, we did it in Monterey Bay in like a 7mm wetsuit. And most people were actually in drysuits, but they wouldn't let us do that, because it wasn't in the rules of how you got certified. And I remember going underwater and basically having a physical panic attack on the body, because it was so cold. And I'd never been in a wetsuit before, I didn't know that of course, it has to warm up.
For a minute, you're just literally in this freezing cold water, and your body is just like, "I've got to get out of here." And one girl did. She went up and she was like, "This is not for me." But I remember sitting on the bottom and I was negotiating with myself like, "Okay, this is really unpleasant, you want to leave. Why don't you just try to wait like five minutes, see how it goes?" And then I started looking around, and then it was great. I was like, "Wow, this is beautiful.
I'm like in the aquarium, but it's real life." And I was fine. But I remember that sensation of like, "I can't do this." Yeah.
What's also interesting is, I bet if you're worried about this mental game piece of the bar, you can go through your life and say, "What other hard things have I done? What situations have I been in where that panic has set in?" I think for most people, we can come up with a few different scenarios of where you literally felt this physical response to panic, and then how did you get out of it? How did you work through it? How did you get to the other side? And take those lessons.
I think sometimes we let these tests sit by themselves, like they're their own thing that don't relate to any other things in life, when a lot of these are life skills. Life is hard, and you end up doing a lot of really hard things. Sometimes I'll be sitting in my car, not wanting to do the next hard thing I have to do, and I will take a few minutes to prepare myself to do the hard thing that I don't want to
do. Oh yeah. Like take all those breaths, like, "Okay, I'm just going to sit, I'm going to center myself before I have this conversation." And then you go do it.
Yeah. And so, you have some of these skills as life skills. And if you don't have these skills, they're great life skills. So This
is great time to start
developing them. Develop them, because life doesn't really get much easier.
Fair. I mean, if you're going to be a lawyer, there are going to be moments where you're like, "Oh my gosh, I feel sick about what I'm having to step into. I'm not qualified for this." Whatever storyline you've got going on, but I definitely remember as a lawyer just being like, "What? I'm so over my head right now." And I still have to go in. Imposter
syndrome, you name it.
I still have to go take this deposition, even though I literally have no idea what I'm doing.
Yeah. Not to say that it makes it easy. None of it makes it easy. But it allows you to do it without that big paralyzing response. This is all learned stuff. Most of us are not hardwired to find this easy. People who are Type A perfectionists, I think especially, we put so much pressure on ourselves. And a lot of people in law school have that personality structure. So, we then have to do the extra work to make sure that we cannot let those tendencies just really drive us into the ground.
It's not worth it, because you can't show up as your best self. All you're trying to do is show up as a pretty good version of yourself to give yourself the best shot at passing. That's really what this game is.
I'll bring it back to skiing. So I'm preparing for a ski exam. And part of what they do is they make you ski bumps, which I don't like skiing bumps, but the reason somebody told me they make you do it is because that's where people fall apart. So they're trying to see basically when we put you on something that is uncomfortable, do you have the habits in place sufficiently that you can get through it in a reasonable manner?
Nobody's expecting perfection, but are you going to totally fall apart, or are you going to get it 80% and pass the exam? That's what we're kind of looking for. No one's going to perform their absolute best on test day, because you're under a lot of stress.
Yeah. And you don't want that stress to be the driver of your performance.
Yeah, you have to find ways for it not to be debilitating. Yeah.
These are all learned skills. So, you don't have to cold plunge or ski bumps. You can just do hard things. There are plenty of hard things that you have to do in your life. But I think just being aware of this, as you do anything you don't want to do. I don't like to go to the dentist. I have to sit and psych myself up to go to the dentist.
I don't know, I'm one of those people, I'm like, yeah, it's
not pleasant. I know you dentist. Doesn't
really bother me. I don't like the dentist, nobody likes the dentist, but it's not my stress point. I have other stress points, we all have them.
We all have them. But I think you can use those stress points as a practice. And if you just start to develop this practice, it will serve you as a lawyer, because as you said, law jobs are stressful. Even the ones that aren't the most stressful are still really stressful. And you're dealing with folks who typically are in extreme situations. So, even if your stress is manageable, you might be in a meeting with someone whose stress is off the roof, over the roof?
Off the charts.
the charts. I'm just mixing all my metaphors today. But you're going to need to hold enough space to hold somebody else's anxiety too. So, use this as a practice for being just the best lawyer you can be.
So, the bar exam is a metaphor for life.
If you enjoyed this episode of the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast, please take a second to leave a review and rating on your favorite listening app. We'd really appreciate it. And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss anything. If you're still in law school, you might also like to check out our popular Law School Toolbox podcast as well. If you have any questions 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!